My Grandmother’s Golden Matzo Pancakes Are a Passover Should

My grandmother grew up in a family wealthy with Ashkenazi Jewish cooking, which I’d by no means have identified had been it not for a surviving doc her twin brother, my great-uncle Shush, as soon as wrote to catalog the meals of their youth. I’ve written about this letter earlier than, in my article on the way to make chopped liver, however let’s simply say that Shush was not a fan of lots of these meals, a lot of which concerned offal.

Of all of the dishes their Latvian-immigrant mom made by hand, immediately I acknowledge the names of only some—and gefilte fish is acquainted to me not as a result of my great-grandmother’s recipe survived by the generations, however as a result of my mother would generally purchase it in a jar. The failure of conventional meals like miltz (spleen), p’tcha (calf’s-foot aspic), and lungen (lungs) to keep up a foothold in my household is not a lot of a shock, given how a lot Shush, and presumably his siblings, hated them.

However there was one dish that he clearly cherished—matzo pancakes, which he referred to as pompishkehs.* Throughout Passover, he wrote, “we ate pancakes manufactured from matzo meal sprinkled with powdered sugar…a meal to be classed with the gustatory creations of all time…. Made hotcakes seem to be an aberration.” The primary time I learn his letter, my coronary heart leapt on the point out of pancakes constituted of matzo meal: I do know these! They had been the one, the solely, dish my sister and I begged for after we visited our bubbe, who would cook dinner us a batch in a matter of minutes and serve them with granulated sugar on the facet to sprinkle on prime.

*The closest factor I may discover after a fast net seek for “pompishkeh” was a Ukrainian fritter referred to as a pampushka, which, being yeasted, would not be kosher for Passover. In Claudia Roden’s The Ebook of Jewish Meals, she makes use of the phrases chremslach and bubeleh for these matzo pancakes.

Right here, lastly, was my cultural inheritance: little ovals of egg and crushed unleavened cracker. Modest certainly, but in addition inarguably tasty. A meal to be classed with the gustatory creations of all time, as Uncle Shush hailed them? I would not go that far—foie gras, tacos, and sushi would rightly be offended by the notion—however they actually provide an ease-to-deliciousness ratio that is arduous to beat.

Begin by smashing matzo into irregular bits and items. How small you make them is a matter of private selection—I like a combination, with some positive bits and a few chunky, however you’ll be able to go very positive, all the way in which all the way down to the dimensions of matzo meal (the finely floor stuff that is additionally used to make matzo balls).

Subsequent, soak them in chilly water for a minute or two to melt them. Drain the water, combine in crushed eggs and a pinch of salt, then cook dinner dollops of what I suppose we are able to name the “batter” in a buttered pan.

The matzo capabilities just like the floury element of a pancake or fritter batter, however as a result of the flour used to make the matzo was already hydrated and cooked when the matzo was made, getting it moist once more and binding it with egg is all that must be performed this second time.

A bonus is that each one the nice and cozy, toasty notes of the already-baked matzo wind up within the last pancakes, that are then griddled, identical to basic pancakes, leading to layers of browned taste.

Readers aware of Jewish meals might acknowledge these pancakes as a type of matzo brei, an egg-and-matzo creation that takes many shapes and is available in each candy and savory types. I might agree that they’re, or not less than appear to be, roughly the identical factor. The primary distinction is that matzo pancakes should be formed like, properly, pancakes, and might be made with both damaged matzo, as in my recipe right here, or matzo meal. So far as I do know, matzo brei would by no means name for matzo meal, and it may be made extra like an egg scramble, or a big, cooked egg-and-matzo mass, or something in between.

I have been cooking matzo pancakes quite a bit lately for my son, who’s one and a half now. Not solely is it one of many best breakfasts I can toss collectively for him, it is also the one unbroken chain of recipe heritage I’ve to cross on. It is not a lot, however you would not understand it from how enthusiastically he gobbles them up.

April 2019

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