While Passover is a spring holiday, I often find the traditional dishes to be quite rich and cozy, so a bright and crunchy salad is absolutely necessary. This tangy romaine number comes together lickety split—in fact, the most time consuming element might be washing the notoriously dirty lettuce ($2). Toss a thinly sliced cucumber ($2) with vinegar, honey, and olive oil. Here’s the fun part: Finish the salad by grating a knob of fresh horseradish. It has the visual appeal of snowy Parmesan on a Caesar, but instead of creamy-salty, it’s bright and spicy like ginger. The roots are sold at some supermarkets year-round; others more around the time of Passover, but it’s just about always 8 to 10 inches long and $3 to 5. For this salad, you’ll need about 1/2 inch, which costs just a few cents. (If you can’t find fresh horseradish, use the prepared version: in Step 1, swap in 2 tablespoons prepared horseradish and 1 tablespoon vinegar, then add more to taste after tossing the salad. It’ll cost a bit more though, as prepared is typically about $3 per 6-ounce jar.)
Store leftover fresh horseradish wrapped in plastic in the freezer for grating whenever you’d like. Alternatively, use it to make DIY prepared horseradish: Peel and grate on the large holes of a box grater (or roughly chop, then chop finely in a food processor) and mix with 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar, a big pinch of salt, and 1 to 2 tablespoons water. Store in a sealed jar in the refrigerator and use within 3 weeks. —Rebecca Firkser
$25 Passover Menu
Brisket-Braised Beans & Portobellos
Cozy Potato-Carrot Kugel
Tangy Romaine With Cucumber & Horseradish
Bonus:
Permission to Not Make Dessert
Nickel & Dine is a budget column by Rebecca Firkser, assigning editor at Food52. Rebecca usually shares an easy, flavor-packed recipe that feeds four for $10 or less—this is a special edition: a $25 Passover for six or eight. —The Editors
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