My Grandmother’s Golden Matzo Pancakes Are a Passover Should

My grandmother grew up in a family wealthy with Ashkenazi Jewish cooking, which I might by no means have identified have 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 how you can 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, at the moment 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 via 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 take care of 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 beloved—matzo pancakes, which he known as pompishkehs.* Throughout Passover, he wrote, “we ate pancakes made from matzo meal sprinkled with powdered sugar…a meal to be classed with the gustatory creations of all time…. Made hotcakes appear to be an aberration.” The primary time I learn his letter, my coronary heart leapt on the point out of pancakes comprised of matzo meal: I do know these! They have been the one, the solely, dish my sister and I begged for once we visited our bubbe, who would cook dinner us a batch in a matter of minutes and serve them with granulated sugar on the aspect to sprinkle on prime.

*The closest factor I might discover after a fast net seek for “pompishkeh” was a Ukrainian fritter known as a pampushka, which, being yeasted, would not be kosher for Passover. In Claudia Roden’s The E-book 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 additionally 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 non-public alternative—I like a mixture, with some nice bits and a few chunky, however you possibly can go very nice, all the best way 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 will 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 accomplished this second time.

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

Readers conversant in 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 varieties. I might agree that they’re, or no less than appear to be, kind of the identical factor. The principle 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 lots 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 isn’t a lot, however you would not comprehend it from how enthusiastically he gobbles them up.

April 2019

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