Before we go any further, you should know a couple of things about matzoh brei:

1) It doesn’t need to be Passover for you to cook it (or to find matzoh!);

2) Everybody makes it a little differently (including Claire!); and

3) It’s tasty, filling, and absurdly easy to cook.

The recipe below and the process I’ll describe will help you make matzoh brei the way my lovely mother makes it…which may not be quite the way you’ve had it before, but is definitely worth doing. I particularly recommend this recipe to people who, like me, are totally %$^&ing helpless in a kitchen and whose culinary attempts result in things like fires and irreconcilable interpersonal strife. If you have two left spatulas, give this a shot—you won’t mess it up. Probably.

All matzoh brei basically involves mixing eggs and matzoh. (Seasonings differ—Claire notes that evidently people eat this stuff sweet, although I’ve only ever had it with savory flavors (garlic, onion, salt and pepper), and that’s probably how I’ll keep it.) This recipe differs from others I’ve seen in one crucial way: The egg-to-matzoh ratio.

When most people think of matzoh brei, they think of something that’s basically an egg scramble/omlette with bits of matzoh inside. The egg-to-matzoh ratio is quite high. The recipe below has a much lower egg-to-matzoh ratio, the result of which is a thicker, chewier, eggy-matzoh-pancake-type-thing (although I feel like using the word “pancake” is blasphemous…it just feels so WASPy, you know?).

I don’t know for whom I’m more excited right now, people who’ve never had matzoh brei before or people who’ve only had the egg scramble/omlette kind. Either way, you’re in for a treat…and if I’m in the neighborhood and you tell me you’re cooking this, a houseguest.

Matzoh Brei (for 3-5 people, depending on appetites)

INGREDIENTS

1-1½ cups of hot water

½ teaspoon minced garlic*

½ teaspoon minced onion*

7-9 pieces of matzoh

3 eggs

Some salt and pepper

Butter and/or olive oil for the fryin’

*I recommend dried; more on that below.

Pour the hot water into a large bowl. Add the minced garlic and onion to the water and stir a bit. Break the matzoh into small (about an inch square) pieces over the bowl.

Stir well, so the matzoh soaks up the water (and, with it, the flavor from the garlic and onion). At this point the matzoh won’t be soaked/soggy, which is good—you don’t want it quite there. Beat the eggs well, then pour them over the top of the matzoh and mix well. Add a solid shaking of salt and a bit of pepper, and stir some more.

The result should be a kind of gloppy, yellowish matzoh mixture that sticks to the spoon and the sides of the bowl. If the mixture seems to have some excess liquid, add another piece of matzoh and mix some more. If you’ve got some matzoh that’s still dry, beat another egg and pour a bit more of it in, then mix some more. The matzoh mixture is never going to be completely homogenous, of course, but the closer you can get the easier it is to fry.

Oh yeah! We’re frying this stuff. Heat a pan (low to medium heat) and throw some butter and/or oil in there. And/or may seem surprising, but I’ve seen the two used in concert and the result is, unsurprisingly, pretty grand. If you have to pick one, I’d say use butter, but you really can’t lose either way.

Anyway, once your pan’s oiled up and good to go, put the matzoh mixture into the pan, spreading it to about ½-1 inch thick. When the bottom gets golden brown, flip it over and fry the other side. (You’ll have to break it up to flip it, which is cool–you’ll wind up chopping the thing eventually anyhow.) If you find it’s getting too charred-looking on the bottom, turn down the heat, add more butter/oil, or both. When both sides are golden brown—after maybe 10 minutes or so—and the thickest areas are cooked through, start eating.

Unless you start eating before then. Which I do.

Some (my father) like their matzoh brei a little on the crispier side and more broken up; others (this guy) prefer it a little thicker and clumpier. You can vary the consistency of the final product both by how small you break the matzoh during the initial phase or by how much you break up the eggy-matzoh-pancake-(oy)-type-thing while you’re frying. Either way, you can’t lose.

On final ingrediental note: When I first sent this recipe to the Party Leaders, they assumed that by “minced” I meant “fresh and finely chopped.” While I’m sure fresh garlic and onion would work just fine in this recipe, I’d recommend the dried versions of these ingredients—which you can find in the spice section of most groceries—because dried flecks of onion and garlic will dissolve their flavor more readily into the water you use at the beginning and will then soak into all of the matzoh as you stir. (Incidentally, you can also use garlic matzoh instead of regular matzoh, which just changes the final flavor a bit.)

If any of the language above seems imprecise, that’s because it is. Cooking in general–and cooking Jewish in particular–seems to involve the complete inability to describe exactly what you’re doing or how to do it.

More or less.

But, I have two more dishes I just must write about, and who knows, maybe they’ll be helpful, if only for your leftovers. One is the very delicious and very obvious/easy matzoh pizza. One is the less delicious, completely unobvious, and definitely avoidable matzoh meal pasta that I made Saturday night when I was feeling both sorry for myself and in need of carbohydrate.

Let’s start with the good, before we get to the bad (not to mention ugly):

My Favorite White Pie Matzoh Pizza:

This is a classic, developed in the dorm dining hall under duress, and surprisingly all the more satisfying for it. I favor the white pie in my matzoh pizza making, as I think tomato sauce can make the matzoh go a little soggy. This one is just 1/4 red onion sliced thin with a good hunk of Swiss cheese grated over, all put in the toaster oven for about five minutes. Oh, and it’s whole-wheat matzoh! Who knew? Anyway, hardly a recipe, but just a reminder that you can basically throw anything onto matzoh with some cheese melted on top and everything will turn out okay.

And now, in the much more elaborate, much less okay front…

Matzoh Meal Pasta! Barely palatable!

Palatable is about all I have to say for this matzoh meal pasta. I got the recipe from an otherwise amazing issue of Gourmet, and I’m just going to give you this link to it instead of bothering to write it out. I wouldn’t wish replicating it on my worst enemy, at least until next Passover roles around. It is…not bad…but very, very strange, as you would expect when making pasta out of matzoh meal instead of flour. You can really taste all the matzoh-y grainy bits that go into this dough, plus it expands enormously in water, making for a real clunker of a noodle.

Gourmet says using matzoh cake meal should make it light and fluffy…and it just occurs to me actually as I write this that I think I was using the wrong matzoh product, since I was using matzoh meal, not matzoh cake meal. Yikes. I guess this post is going to have to be labeled “debacle.”

I suppose we may yet meet again next year, matzoh meal pasta. Excuse me, matzoh cake meal pasta. But until then, it’s regular pasta, and bread, and all those other good things for another year. Although I may make an exception for matzoh crunch. Best stuff on earth! Stay tuned for more of my efforts to spread its gospel…

Will the transliteration confusion never stop? No, it won’t, and apparently Passover will never end. This morning, tired of plain matzoh grabbed on the run to work, I took the time to make a matzoh-centric brunch of matzoh brei, southwestern style, by which I mean served with avocado and salsa. This is a really easy recipe, either to get you through Passover, to use up leftover matzoh after Passover, or just as an actually really yummy breakfast.

Matzoh brei is a take on French toast, basically. Instead of soaking stale bread in milk and egg and frying it, you soak matzoh (stale tasting enough on its own) in water or egg and fry it. But I’ve never really liked French toast, honestly, and I’ve also never been that into the typical sweet matzoh brei, served with maple syrup. Reading a recipe for savory matzoh brei a few years ago was like a revelation for me, and I love love love the results.

Every Jewish mother has her own way of making matzoh brei, and, like a good Jewish mother in training, I have mine. Most people, it seems, run the matzoh under water to soften it (including Mark Bittman and Frank Gehry, as you can see in this totally strange and fascinating post, complete with video of the two discussing the art of the brei). I have never tried that, and I should before I knock it, but it just seems weird to me. Plus, I like the matzoh to still have a good amount of texture, which I think might go away if you run it under water. I make mine in true French toast style, and it’s never failed me.

It’s funny — I’ve gotten so much luminous feedback on my matzoh crunch and this matzoh brei is so delicious. Makes me wonder, why do we not eat matzoh all year round?

Savory Matzoh Brei

Ingredients:

1 sheet of matzoh

2 eggs

1/4 yellow onion, chopped

salt and pepper

optional: a pinch of cayenne or red pepper flakes

1. Beat eggs in a small bowl with a fork. Add pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper.

2. Crush matzoh into pieces of varying sizes and mix into egg, covering well. Let sit for 10 minutes. Mix in onion.

3. Melt a small amount of butter in a pan over medium-high heat. Pour in matzoh/egg mixture and let cook for 2-3 minutes until set on the bottom. Carefully flip over, and let cook another 1-2 minutes until set all the way through

Happy Passover, everybody! So, we once again celebrate the Jews’ continued survival with a week of not eating leavened products. For the way most people — and food magazines and newspaper columns — go on, you’d think this was a greater hardship than the Jews’ slavery in Egypt and subsequent 40 years of wandering through the desert. It’s only eight days long, guys. It’s like the Atkins diet, for a week. Plus, you get matzoh!

Glorious, glorious matzoh. I have to say, I really like the stuff, however you choose to spell it. I really only eat it during Passover, though I suppose it could very well be eaten year round. And since I started making this recipe last year, matzoh has only gotten more appealing to me. Nothing else would work as well in this recipe; the matzoh’s crisp texture and general lack of flavor make the perfect base for the toffee and chocolate topping. Last year, I used this recipe, from Marcy Goldman in A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking, called “My Trademark, Most Requested, Absolutely Magnificent Caramel Matzoh Crunch.” And, surprisingly, it actually lived up to that title!

This year, when I was googling for the recipe again, I stumbled upon the pastry chef and cookbook writer David Lebovitz’s recipe for matzoh crunch, which is actually his adaptation of Goldman’s original recipe. Won over by the mouthwatering photos, I decided to give his (very similar) take a try. He really looks at them like they are pieces of candy, not a substitute for a real dessert but a pleasure in themselves. I liked his idea to add vanilla to the caramel, but what I really loved was his suggestion to sprinkle salt over the top of the chocolate. There is nothing better, to my mind, than the sweet/salty combo, and the addition of salt to these beauties nails it perfectly.

Even I was a little nervous about this recipe and the idea of making the caramel, but it was surprisingly easy and not messy in the slightest (my other big concern). You’ll need to make these at least a day ahead of when you want them because it takes a while for the chocolate to cool (or you could put them in the freezer and speed the whole thing up). I imagine they keep for a long time, though last year I never really got the chance to test that theory out, they proved so popular.

I made two batches: one with Lebovitz’s recommended 1/2 tsp. of vanilla in the caramel and a small amount of sea salt sprinkled over the chocolate and one with a whole tbsp. of vanilla in the caramel and a lot of kosher salt sprinkled over the chocolate. I didn’t have fleur de sel, which I think was a mistake — the bigger salt crystals would have worked better here, and then I could have sprinkled them more sparsely, as they would pack a bigger punch, but still not appear in every bite. The ideal amount of vanilla, I think is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 – 1/2 tsp., but I haven’t tried that ratio out myself.

Matzoh Crunch

Adapted from David Lebovitz, adapted from Marcy Goldman

Ingredients:

4 to 6 sheets unsalted matzohs
1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1 cup firmly-packed light brown sugar
big pinch of sea salt
1/2 tsp. (or a little more, depending on your taste) vanilla extract
1 c. (or a little more) semisweet chocolate chips

Optional: fleur de sel

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil, making sure the foil goes over the edges. (I left it at that, and it was fine, but Lebovitz also recommends covering the foil with parchment paper.) Cover the bottom of the sheet with matzoh, breaking extra pieces as necessary to fill in any spaces.

3. In a small pot, melt the butter and sugar together over medium heat, stirring frequently. When the butter has melted, let the mixture boil for about 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and add the pinch of sea salt and the vanilla (the caramel will seize up for a second, don’t worry about it, just stir it). Pour over matzoh, spreading with a spatula if necessary (I found it easier to just shake the pan slightly) so the caramel is evenly distributed and fully covers matzoh.

4. Put pan in the oven and reduce heat to 350 degrees F. Bake for 15 minutes — the caramel should be bubbling, but not burning. I didn’t have any problems, but Lebovitz says that if it begins to burn in spots, you should remove the pan from the oven, reduce the heat to 325, and replace the pan after the oven has had a minute to cool down.

5. Remove pan from oven and immediately cover with chocolate chips, sprinkling the one cup as evenly as possible over the caramel. Let sit for 5 minutes. Spread the melted chips over the caramel (I used a rubber spatula). Drop more chocolate chips onto any spots that didn’t get chocolate. Wait a few more minutes so they can melt, then use that chocolate to fill in any holes

6. Optional: Sprinkle with fleur de sel. (Lebovitz also recommends sliced, toasted almonds or another nut, toasted and coarsely chopped, or roasted cocoa nibs.)

Let cool completely (I just picked up the foil overhang and transfered the whole thing to my kitchen table). Break into small pieces and refrigerate in an air-tight container (refrigeration will harden up the chocolate if it’s still a little soft). Lebovitz says it will keep well for up to a week, but I think it could probably last longer.

Oh, the suffering.