A Mediterranean Feast

On Friday I had some friends over for a very merry Passover Seder. I decided to put a little skew on the traditional feast of matzo ball soup, roasted eggs, and roast beast by looking to our friends in the Mediterranean. Amanda worked as my loyal sous chef and here is what we whipped up:

Watermelon Feta kebabs with mint
Baked chickpea fritters served with sliced pickles, cucumbers, carrots, and greek yogurt
Collard green dolmas stuffed with a quinoa salad
Roasted eggplant dip
Israeli pickles
Lebanese carrot salad (which I completely forgot to serve...)
Honey cake

Alex and Sarah were all star guests and provided charoset (I finished the leftovers today for breakfast), and some of the best homemade macaroons I have ever had.

Sadly when I remembered to take some pictures my camera only took one photo before informing me that the battery was dead!

Alex does not look impressed here

Saturday night I had some leftovers and was able to take a shot of the dolmas I so painstakingly rolled. Dolma just means "stuffed" or "filled" in its original Turkish, which inspired me to roll these up in collard greens instead of the usual grape leaves. Also I did not have grape leaves... They took forever and were really fussy, but a fun food for a dinner party.

Collard dolmas, steamed collards, and quinoa salad with feta

I also wanted to use up my leftover collards so I steamed them according to this method from Healthy Tipping Point. I had never made collards before and honestly they were sort of "eh." A little too slimy for me. Maybe I cooked them too long? I'm really hoping to learn to enjoy them since they are basically nutrition bombs and wildly inexpensive.

Collards steaming - you can see how little they cooked down to in the photo above

After noshing on all of those healthy greens I finished off the meal with the remainder of the honey cake. My grandmother sent me the special passover mix specifically for our seder. I was a little nervous it was going to taste super dry (it uses potato starch instead of the forbidden flour), but it was actually very moist and everyone seemed to enjoy it. It tasted just like a spicy pumpkin cake.

It was the last piece - I ate it straight from the pan

Today the sun is actually out in Boston and it is a beautiful day. I am going to go stroll around the harborwalk and get some vitamin D on my fur!