Turning Matzo Into a Meal

Jews around the world will begin celebrating the eight days of Passover tonight at sundown. Traditionally, the first two nights are organized around the Seder, but you knew that.


And, you probably know that for these eight days Jews are forbidden from eating hametz, or leavened food. That's why we eat matzo. It's all wrapped up in the symbolism of the holiday, which commemorates the sudden liberation of the ancient Jews from Egyptian slavery. As children, we're told of the story of the Jews fleeing Egypt with such haste that there was no time to bake bread that needed time to rise. So the flour and water cracker that is matzo became the staple then and ever since has been eaten every Passover. And, trust me, even though we're talking two, maybe three ingredients (salt), every family has their favorite brand of matzo. Of course, if you're feeling ambitious, you can make it yourself.

Image via Wikipedia

Even with this dietary restriction, it's amazing the dishes you can turn out. Matzo offers tremendous versatility.

Soak sheets of it in hot water, drain the water, break it up and add some beaten eggs, then put in a frying pan with oil or butter and you have matzo brei. Now some people use a 1:1 ratio of matzo sheet to egg and enjoy something more akin to a matzo omelet. My family does a 2:1 matzo to egg ratio. I prefer this style which gives you beautiful crispy puffed out pieces of matzo that, depending on your particular style, can be served with applesauce, sugar or salt. I'm a salt girl myself but our family was split with Mom's side also going for salt and Dad's for the sweet stuff. (If you're Jewish, no doubt you have the same sweet versus savory divide in your family at Hanukah over potato latkes.)


Matzo can also be the basis of a sweet, crunchy "brittle," as in covering it with chocolate or butterscotch or caramel and nuts, baking briefly and then, when cool, breaking it into bite-size pieces. Google "matzo brittle" and you'll find scads of recipes with any number of variations. In this case, the matzo essentially is just a delivery system for the sugar, chocolate and nuts. And not a bad one, actually.

And, for those who simply cannot live for a week without their favorite dishes, there are recipes for matzo lasagna, matzo spanikopita and matzo quesadillas. And, yes, even matzo pizza. Thanks, but I can do without for awhile. Of course, if you're desperately seeking ideas for other things you can do with matzo, you have to watch this wonderful video.

Then there's farfel, which is basically matzo that's been broken up. Farfel can be used as a cereal substitute or to make sweets (it takes some imagination, but yes, there are recipes for desserts with farfel like this chocolate nut cluster), kugel (pudding) or stuffing. I know someone on Twitter who is using it to make granola with dried blueberries, apricots, sliced almond and pecans. She's changing it up from this LA Times recipe.

And, finally, if you grind matzo you get matzo meal. And matzo meal itself is endlessly versatile. Use it as a bread crumb substitute or pretty much anything for which you'd use flour. You can buy it in a box or, if you're feeling industrious, grind it yourself using a blender or food processor.


Of course, if matzo meal is known for anything, it's for being the basis of matzo balls, but during the week of Passover, once the Seder is history and I have to come up with ways to live without my daily bread, I often turn to matzo meal for cooking. Look on the panel of most boxes and you'll find a recipe for pancakes, in which beaten egg whites play a prominent role to fluff them up. I also use matzo meal to bread and saute fish fillets or skinless, boneless chicken pieces for oven frying. I mix some with grated Parmesan cheese to top a baked tomato or roasted vegetables. And, even when it's not Passover, I like to use it as the binder for zucchini pancakes (grate the zucchini and onion, wring out to get rid of the liquid, add a beaten egg, minced garlic, salt & pepper and matzo meal to bind it together, then fry in a little olive oil in a skillet).

But, probably my favorite use for matzo meal is a family recipe for popovers. They're easy to make and delicious. When I was a kid, my Nana made dozens of them throughout the week. I remember them being huge and puffy with an irresistible crunch that yielded a soft inner membrane-like dough I loved to chew. They were so large that she even made bologna sandwiches for us with them, which sounds disgusting now (and certainly not kosher) but was a real treat when I was seven or eight and my parents were out of town.

With Tillie and my mom in the early 90s: the food chain

Now, of course, I make them for the family Seder and then make more for the week. I don't make them nearly as large as she did but that smell coming from the oven is straight out of my childhood, as is the taste and texture. Since they tend to soften, I refresh them in the toaster oven. They're a great breakfast treat, but I also enjoy them with the matzoh ball soup my mother invariably sends home with me after our Seder, with a salad for lunch and, okay, I have a bad habit of snacking on them during the day.

I've been challenged by indignant Israelis at Seders I've attended who refused believe that these popovers were kosher for Passover, but they are. They get their rise from eggs, not yeast. And, when they do a good rise, they are lovely, crispy on the outside and soft and hollow inside. But they collect moisture so, when they come out of the oven, use the tip of a skewer to poke a little hole on the bottom to let the moist air inside escape and let them cool on wire racks. Store them in paper bags, not plastic. And one more important note. Don't double the recipe. If you need more than the recipe yields, make separate batches.

Nana Tillie’s Matzo Meal Popovers

2 cups water

2 tbl. sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 stick butter cut into 8 pieces

2 cups matzo meal

6 eggs

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees.

Add the first four ingredients to a heavy pot and bring to a boil. Take off the heat and stir in the matzo meal. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and let it cool.

Beat in the eggs, one at a time. (If the eggs are small, add two extra egg whites.)

Let the mixture rest in the refrigerator for at least 15 minutes.

Use an ice cream scoop to drop popovers onto greased cookie sheets or into muffin tins. Bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 350 degrees and bake for another 30 minutes or until the popovers are brown and sound hollow inside.

Yield: 15 - 20

Wishing you and your family a happy, healthy Passover!

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Aaron's Eatzz: Keeping Kosher in Kearny Mesa

I’m often nostalgic for Los Angeles and New York. LA, specifically Encino, is where I was raised, and while mocking the Valley and LA is a favorite pastime of people in San Diego and beyond, it was a magical place to grow up, particularly for a Jewish kid. New York, where I lived for several years after college, is more of a spiritual home. Its uber-urban, multi-ethnic streets are where I’ve always felt most comfortable, most myself. It’s where much of my extended family lived or passed through following passage from Eastern Europe. Going to the Lower East Side always is a moving adventure in retracing both my grandfathers’ steps early in the 20^th century.

Of course, all this nostalgia is completely intertwined with food—the bagels, lox and cream cheese, hot pastrami sandwiches, kreplach (think Jewish won-tons), kugel (sweet noodle pudding), corn rye and egg creams (a milk, chocolate syrup and selzer concoction) of my childhood. Every cholesterol-laden, high-calorie bite. And, it’s what I miss in San Diego. Sure, go ahead and remind me we have D.Z. Akins and Elijah’s and Milton’s. Sorry, I enjoy them, but they’re just not the same as the old Encino Deli (now known as Froman's), Mort's in Tarzana, Art’s in Studio City, or the Carnegie Deli or Katz’s in New York. And, certainly not my beloved Zabar’s (a deli market on steroids).

So, you can imagine how startled I was to discover Aaron’s on Convoy at Balboa several years ago. No, it’s not strictly a deli; it’s a little (tiny, really) glatt kosher* market with a deli section in a little strip mall that also houses a checking cashing store, dentist’s office and bait and tackle shop. But, I live in a neighborhood where if I’m really, really lucky, the local Albertson’s will have a rickety card table set up for Passover with a few boxes of matzo, and not always kosher for Passover. That makes Aaron’s a huge find.

Tomorrow evening (Monday) marks the beginning of Passover (or Pesach), which commemorates the travail of Ancient Egyptian Jews, who having been slaves of Pharaoh, fled and wandered for 40 years in the desert, led by Moses. On the first and second evenings of Passover, a Seder is held. This large meal is structured around the reading of the Haggadah, which tells the story of the Exodus and orchestrates how the meal is conducted, rather like stage directions. Those who strictly observe Passover for its eight days require special foods that are kosher for the holiday (even using separate dishes and utensils). No leavened bread can be eaten, hence the flat cracker-like matzo, made of just flour and water, which can be ground into a meal and used for baking. Matzo symbolizes the haste in which the Jews fled that left no time to let bread rise and bake. And, it's not just bread or other leavened foodstuff (referred to as "chametz") that's forbidden. All foods must be "kosher for Passover" and packaging is always marked either kosher or not kosher for Passover. In cities like New York and LA, with large Jewish populations, kosher-for-Passover foods are pretty easy to find, even in the chain supermarkets. However, it can be a challenge here, especially outside of La Jolla. I don't keep kosher, but I do try to keep with the spirit of Passover by eating matzo and other traditional foods.

When I walked into Aaron's on Friday before lunch, owner Aaron Hutman, a long-time grocery man originally from Montreal, was uttering a frazzled mantra, “I love Pesach; I love Pesach” as he cheerfully kibitzed (chatted) with and rang up orders for customers from around San Diego County coming in to pick up Passover provisions. Hutman has owned the market for eight years and in the past, he has been able to find nearby storefronts to set up as temporary Pesach staging quarters to sell kosher-for-Passover necessities like matzo, matzo meal, wine, potato starch, gefilte fish (small ovals of deboned, ground fish, eaten chilled with horseradish) and macaroons. This year, however, he couldn’t locate a spot so the market is swept up in a Passover frenzy. My Friday visit, pre-Passover and, more immediately, pre-Shabbat (Sabbath), was probably not the best time to try to speak with him, but he was good natured about answering questions, all the while, stocking food from an unending stream of boxes he had picked up in LA before dawn that morning.

I was wowed by the solid chocolate Seder plate, something I had never seen before. Traditional seder plates have a spot for each of the symbolic items featured in the telling of the Passover story while reading the Haggadah (maror, or bitter herbs in the form of horseradish; charosets, made of chopped apples and walnuts, cinnamon and sweet wine; a roasted lamb shank; a hard-boiled egg; parsley and salt water to dip it in). So, a chocolate seder plate? It's got to be Manishewitz's answer to chocolate Easter bunnies!

Hutman has brought in a variety of baked goods from Eilat Bakery in Santa Monica and all are kosher for Passover, including almond chocolate and chocolate chip macaroons and even mandel bread, a biscotti-like cookie. In the freezer section, I was surprised to find kosher-for-Passover pizza. You, too? Well, it turns out the crust is made with matzo meal.

Along with the Pesadic foods, Aaron’s has a wide variety of kosher meat and dairy products he carries year round, as well as products from Israel, including a range of wines from Efrat Winery (Merlot, Petite Syrah, Muscat, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz), vibrantly colored bottles of fruit nectars and cans of stuffed cabbage leaves, eggplant and peppers and Syrian cracked olives.

I got a kick out of the beers—He'Brew, the Chosen Beer, comes in two varieties, Genesis Ale and Messiah Bold.

Up at the front of the store is where, to me, the real treasures are—pastrami and corned beef, and containers filled with old-fashioned delicacies like chopped liver, cole slaw and egg salad. Jacob Dashevsky, a student at San Diego State, has been helping out Hutman in the rush and was busy slicing pastrami and wrapping up orders. Hutman may need Jacob’s help after Passover since he tells me that Aaron’s will be doing more catering and setting up a larger take-out section, with both kosher and non-kosher foodstuff.

These days, there’s no extended family around for a Passover seder, but my parents and I will be celebrating the holiday together Monday night and thinking of relatives around the country who will be doing the same. I always associate the holiday with my now late grandparents, Tillie and Abe Gould, who loved to host Seders for the entire family. Poppa’s job was to mark up the Haggadah with everyone’s names to establish reading parts. After all, Passover is nothing if not participatory theater. And, of course, he hid the Afikoman for us eight grandkids to find. The Afikoman is the middle matzo from a stack of three special ones placed on the Seder table. As a game to keep the children interested, the Seder leader sneaks it out at the beginning of the meal to hide it somewhere in the house, wrapping it in a special embroidered Afikoman cover or a dinner napkin. I think the winner got a dollar back then. Nana cooked for weeks in anticipation of at least a dozen guests and usually more. Chicken soup with matzo balls (dumplings made with matzo meal), homemade horseradish, roasted chicken or brisket, potato kugel (a potato pudding), charosets and flourless cakes served with strawberries. She was a fabulous cook and baker and fortunately, when I was in my 20s I hounded her to make me a cookbook of her recipes, which she did. Here is one, for matzo meal popovers, which I doubt you’ll find anywhere else. People never believe these are made without yeast, but they are. They are the Madeleines of my life.

Nana Tillie’s Passover Popovers

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees.

Bring to a boil: 2 cups of water, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 stick of butter. Take off the heat and add 2 cups of matzo meal. Let cool.

Beat in 6 extra large eggs, one at a time. Cool in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.

Spoon onto greased cookie sheets or into muffin tins.

Bake at 450 degrees for 13 minutes, then turn down the temperature to 350 degrees and bake an additional 30 minutes. They should sound hollow inside when you tap the bottom. Makes about 15. Don’t double the recipe!

Aaron’s is located at 4488 Convoy St.

* Glatt means smooth in Yiddish. If the lungs of a kosher animal slaughtered in a kosher way are found to be smooth, then the animal's meat is considered to be "glatt kosher," a higher standard than kosher. However, it's come to refer to a store's reliable kosher supervision.

Have some thoughts about Aaron’s or other Jewish delis and markets in San Diego? Add to the conversation by clicking on comments below: