Happy Passover!

Normally I try to avoid Passover recipes that try to replicate the things that I'm giving up eating for the week. The rolls, brownies, cookies, etc. just never taste as good as the real thing and it hardly seems worth the calories when there are plenty of good things that you can eat. Of course even with the determination each year to eat salads, simple meals, and embrace the hundreds of things you can eat, I invariably end up craving bread halfway through. It's more surprising because I don't eat bread on a regular basis.
This year, I invited company over and decided to see what I could do about making some sort of kosher for Passover pie.

Passover Turkey and Potato Pie
Crust:
4 Matzos
2 Eggs
1/2 cup of matzo meal
1 tsp Thyme
8 Tbs of parve (non dairy) margarine
salt to taste

Wet matzos, break into tiny pieces into a bowl. Melt margarine. Add eggs, margarine, spices and matzo meal to bowl. Mix together. Press into a 10" pie plate.

Filling:
1 lb ground turkey
1 onion, diced
1 clove garlic1/2 cup of frozen peas
2 Tbs. mushroom soup stock base (I use the Israeli brand Osem, you could use any sort of stock)
1 cup of water
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp olive oilpotato starch (if needed)
salt and pepper

Brown onion in olive oil with the garlic, add turkey and additional spices and cook through. Add water and soup stock base (or plain stock if using that) and frozen peas. Cook until peas are tender. If the filling is too liquid, stir in potato starch until it thickens. Put in matzo pie crust.

Topping:
4 medium sized potatos, boiled
2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp parsley
3 tbs water
2 tbs margarine

Boil potatoes and then mash with additional ingredients until smooth enough to spread on top of pie. Bake assembled pie in preheated oven for 30 minutes (or until potatoes start to brown on top) at 375 degrees.
The pie reheats really well which is an extra bonus! Luckily I have just enough left to make it through these last few days even if I will be dreaming of an Italian dinner all the while.

Pie on the Internet

Jezebel is having the kind of March Madness that I can totally get behind:

Pie vs. Cake

They are in round two at the moment, so there's plenty of time but I'm hoping for an eventual showdown between Blueberry Pie and German Chocolate Cake. I encourage you to go vote.

I spent most of the weekend cleaning my apartment for Passover. I finished off a bottle of Murphy's Oil on the floors and most of a smallish container of bleach in the kitchen. It's now as clean as it was in October, but without all of my belongings in plastic bags against the bed bugs. Sadly though it does mean that baking projects will be put on hold until after Passover is over. Though if I get ambitious enough we'll see what sort of Passover recipes I might come up with, unless I choose to just eat salad all week long. I've always hated most Passover recipes that just attempt to recreate what you aren't supposed to eat for the week. Yes, it sticks to the letter of the law, but why bother? There's plenty that you can still eat, especially if you eat rice and legumes, and all those passover rolls and brownies never taste as good as the real thing anyway.