Beware of Constipation.

Matzo Time! Beware Constipation.

Easter has passed and Passover arrived yesterday Monday for Jewish people. When I post this piece, I will have already celebrated a seders, the ritual meal where Jews fulfill the blessing (not commandment) to tell their children how and why Egyptians freed the Israelites and Moses from slavery. See Cecil B. DeMille’s movie “The Ten Commandments” if you don’t remember or know.

Quite a few famous rabbis from 70-700 AD pulled together a book, the Haggadah, that tells the story derived from text in Exodus, the second book of the Torah. Jesus may have celebrated a seder as his last meal, but he didn’t use a Haggadah. He also did not eat the centerpiece food of it, modern matzo.

I never particularly liked this strange dry cracker, so far removed from what the Israelites would actually have eaten. The daily bread of the middle east is pita, the one with a pocket that forms as it rises a second time under high heat in the oven. Chef Jose Andres serves at Zaytinya the best pita I have eaten, puffed up and light as a feather. See the picture of it for this blog. It doesn’t give you constipation. Matzo do.

The Torah doesn’t say Jews couldn’t use yeast when they prepared their bread on the way out of slavery. It says the bread did not have time to rise (from the yeast) before baking. Bread may have turned a bit hard in a closed oven, but if baked in a middle eastern open oven, the bread comes out soft and thin like a tortilla. I’ve eaten it in western China.  

How did the unpalatable matzo Jews now eat around the world come to be? Time Magazine published an expose on it.

In 1838 ((yes, that recently) Frenchman Isaac Singer invented a matzo dough rolling machine that led to decades of rabbinical brouhaha over whether it could be allowed. Singer argued that the machine made it easier to make Matzo within the magical eighteen minutes (not half an hour or some other easier arithmetic time frame) from start to finish, a rabbinical ruling made from whole cloth with no science added. As an aside, eighteen minutes was about the time I had to make my food, start to finish, when I competed on the Food Channel show, “Cooks versus Cons.” I practiced doing it, and now I usually make a meal inside of half an hour from the experience.

In 1888, Lithuanian immigrant Dov Behr opened a large scale matzo-making factory in Cincinnati using similar equipment and changed his name to Manischewitz (What’s wrong with Behr Matzo?).  By 1920, his company made over a million rectangular, sheets of it a day. Homemade matzo had imperfections, but his machine-made version was perfect every time.

Manischewitz still got rabbinical flack, and so he studied Talmud for over a decade in Jerusalem until even some of the ultra-orthodox rabbis considered his product acceptable. Manischewitz remains the most popular matzo in the world.

Some non-Jews really like the cracker. Maybe the novelty of it becomes attractive, although my gentile friends never got the novelty of gefilte fish too. I’m traveling to Paso Robles to drink wine later this week and offered to bring matzo to my non-Jewish friends who are hosting me. They said, “Not in your life.” I get it.

Jews have a long tradition of re-purposing matzoth to make pastries even tastier than from flour. Just grind matzo into flour (called matzo meal) and voila, it’s rabbinically sanctioned to use. in cakes but flour is not. High school biology informs me the starch in matzoth still can ferment-- carbs are carbs. You can make beer from it. Mash some matzoth in your mouth and let stick against your upper palate, which is what it likes to do. What do you taste? Sugar that will ferment if given a chance. Then peel the paste off your palate. but not at the dinner table. “Don’t ask questions,” my rabbis told me when I brought up the science above when I was in high school. Science and logic be damned.

There is however a sugar lining in matzo and not against your palate. Passover pastries do taste really good; the rainbow cakes, flourless chocolate tortes, cakes made to rise not with yeast or baking powder but whipped egg whites. Baking soda is a salt, Bisodium carbonate. What is wrong with this? Oh well.

I remember attending a Passover seder in Juneau after I finished working on wetlands there.  For dessert, the wife of my host took matzo, soaked it in white wine to soften it a bit and then successively covered the pieces in dark chocolate and whipped cream to create a fifteen-layered cake. It tasted wonderful. Otherwise, I would not remember it over 40 years later.

My wife Bette made matzoth-meal popovers for breakfast during the holiday, and we’d eat them with jam and cream cheese. I may do that myself this year and bring some to Paso Robles. For breakfast, we’d also make another matzo treat, called Matzo Brei, served with maple syrup and butter like a pancake.

Here’s a recipe for two people:

2 sheets matzo

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

4 large eggs, beaten with 1 tablespoon water

Large pinch salt and a bit of pepper if you like

Honey or maple syrup for serving

Rinse matzo sheets in cold running water until they are quite wet. Set aside to soften while you prepare the skillet.

Place a large skillet over medium-high heat and add the butter. After it melts break matzo sheets into bite-size pieces and add. Sauté in butter until matzo browns all over, about 2 minutes.

Add the eggs, salt and pepper and scramble until the mixture is just set but still light and fluffy, about 1 minute.

Serve matzo brei with maple syrup to taste.  

I play below a favorite Passover tune sung at the end of the seder in Aramaic and Hebrew, Dayenu.