My Favorite Jewish Holiday Salad: Charoset

While it may not have a pleasant sounding name, charoset (prounounced haroset), is a delicious sweet salad made of apples, nuts and honey.

It is traditionally served every year during the Jewish holiday of Passover, which takes place in spring time.  Passover is a dinner that revolves around the telling of ancient story of how our Jewish ancestors were freed from Egyptian slavery thousands of years ago.

This yummy salad is meant to represent the mortar Jewish slaves used to build Egyptian pyramids.

My favorite part of the Passover meal is when we ceremonially eat this apple salad, washing it down with sips of wine.

Each year during passover I wonder why I don’t eat this amazing apple salad other times of the year. After all, it’s so easy to make, healthy and satisfying.

This year, I’ve made this dish several times, and my husband and I snacked on it right from the bowl, a much healthier addiction than ice cream.

I even used this salad as a filling for a Paleo tart. And holy cow was it good….

Below I give you the recipe for my version of charoset salad and show you how to make it into a tart.

Apple Honey Pistachio Charoset

Ingredients

*4 apples, cut in chunks

1-2 tablespoons of honey (depending on how sweet you like it)

1/2 cup of raw pistachios

Juice of half a lemon or 1 to 2 drops of lemon essential oil

Optional: cinnamon, cardamom

How to

Cut apples into chunks and put in food processor. Processor into a chunky paste. Transfer apples to bowl.

Put pistachios in the food processor and process until you get a chunky flour-like consistency. Add nuts to the apples and mix with a fork.

Add honey, lemon juice and spices and mix well until everything is incorporated. Enjoy this refreshing sweet salad with your yogurt, straight from the bowl or instead of jam.

*I used pink lady apples for their yummy tartness but any apple will work.

Apple PISTACHIO tart

How to

To make the tart, use dough from this recipe or your favorite Paleo muffin, cake or pie crust recipe.

Chill the dough, then grab a handful and put it on some parchment paper, cover it with more parchment paper and roll it out thin. Use a rolling pin or a tin can from your pantry to roll the dough to a pie crust thickness.  Cut out a circle shape with a large cookie cutter, or use the top of a mason jar lid.

Spoon some of the apple nut mixture into the middle and form the side of the tart by hand as if you were building a sand castle. Mold the dough around the apple filling to make a nest-like pastry

Bake in preheated oven at 360 for 15 to 20 minutes. Check on it to make sure the edges don’t burn.

Enjoy for breakfast, lunch or dinner like I did. These are amazing with a morning cup of tea!