April 7, 2015

Fried Matzah (Matzah Brei)

It feels nice to be back in civilization, where I can get
Vidalia onions. When do I have to go back to LA again?
Passover. It's a magical time of year when Jews celebrate having been redeemed from bondage (not the fun kind), by severely limiting what they can do or eat for a week. Matzah abounds, as do jokes about how terrible and/or constipation-inducing matzah is. But matzah doesn't have to be so sad and nauseating. With a little bit of work and a whole lot of butter, we can make these flat tasteless crackers into something awesome. Hopefully.

Ingredients:

12 standard sheets of Matzah
4 whole Eggs
1/2 of an Onion
3.5 TBSP Butter
1 tsp and one human pinch of Salt
1/4 tsp Black Pepper

The first step is to be either Jewish enough, or curious enough, for this awesome recipe to be relevant for you. Once you take care of that, it's time to crush some matzah. And when I say "crush," I mean "take it in your hands, place it over a colander, and squeeze until it (the matzah) is in smallish bits, and you have a deep feeling of satisfaction. Like you're a mighty hunter who just brought down a stag, and not some schlub caressing his matzah.

The next step is to beat your eggs until they lose all hope that this time will be different and you've changed. Once you see the joy for life go out of their little egg eyes, add in a teaspoon of the Salt and all of the Pepper, and stir to combine. Take half a tablespoon of Butter, and melt it over medium-high heat. Dice your onion and add it in to your hot butter. Add in an average human's pinch of salt, and sauté for about 6 minutes, until the onion starts to brown. Turn the heat off, and add your buttery onions in with your matzah. Combine with the salty peppery eggs, and mush it all into a kind of gross matzah glop.

Heat 1.5 tablespoons of your butter over medium-high heat in a 10-inch skillet. Or in a differently sized skillet, because maybe you either don't have a 10-inch one, or you're needlessly rebellious and like having an awkward number of batches for your fried matzah. Add in half of your glop, and press it down into a thick pancake. You should hear a nice sizzle when you do this. If you don't hear it, either your butter is too cool, you're suffering from Passover Deafness which is totally a thing I didn't just make up, or you put your glop in the wrong pan. Get your crap together, and make it happen. Let it cook on one side for about 5 minutes, until is gets crispy, brown, and awesome.

Not pictured: the hangover that this is curing
Now comes the flipping, which is more complicated than it seems. You've got a giant, dense, partially cooked glob of matzah gunk. You can try to just flip it like a pancake. Especially if you like ugly broken foodstuffs and grease burns. Or you can give up on being one of the cool kids, cut it into 4 sad surrender-bits, and flip each of them individually while weeping over your lost self-respect. I'm partial to sliding the entire thing out of the pan and on to a plate, and the flipping that plate over on to the pan. Ideally without breaking the plate and getting plate shards in your food, but you win some and you lose some. Regardless of the relative sadness or awesomeness of your flipping method, cook it another 5-ish minutes, until your b-side is equally awesome, crispy, and brown. Repeat the whole process with the rest of your butter and glop, and enjoy! For 8 days! 8. Long. Days.



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