By Sinky Titanicstein, Special to JTNews
There is so much that can be said about matzoh balls, all of which may be important, but if you asked me to take all that I have to say about matzoh balls and densely pack them into one word, that word would be SINKER! Yep, you read that correctly, I said sink, baby, sink!
The virtues of the matzoh ball are many—we are of course familiar with them. They can make us happy when we feel down, they bring smiles to our faces and our tummies during a week of gastrointestinal distress. They are so utterly fantastic, that we actually eat them all year long, even when we don’t “have to”!
What I cannot understand, however, is why some people like them to be light and fluffy like cotton balls or those awful “Snowballs” that you get at the local mini-mart.
During Passover, we do not eat leavened/puffy foods. This serves to remind us that our ancestors had to leave in such a hurry that they did not have time for their bread to rise. The spirit of these special Passover rules also tells us not to eat fluffy anything. In fact, I take this spirit so far as to not even wear feathered boas during the holiday—fluffy is bad!
When I eat a matzoh ball, I want to search for it in my bowl of soup; I don’t want it to be floating there at the surface like some sort of beach ball. No, I want to wander through the bowl looking for the Promised Ball (seeing any connections to our past yet?). Once I find it, I want to work to cut it into bits. Life was not easy for our ancestors when they had to flee their homes, thus it should not be easy for us.
A friend of mine is even more extreme about his matzoh balls being dense sinkers. Just the other day, when we were discussing global politics, we meandered over to the topic of matzoh balls. In his opinion, you either like your matzoh balls dense or you are with the terrorists. Personally, I think he is a bit fanatical, but I can relate to his feelings.
Matzoh balls are serious business, and I don’t want my business to be fluffy. Not to mention the fact that a dense matzoh ball simply tastes better – it has a better texture, it holds the complex flavors of chicken soup within it, it absorbs spices in a way that a fluffy matzoh ball can only dream. Shall I continue? OK then, I will.
A dense matzoh ball holds its shape throughout the entire holiday, while a fluff ball will often fall apart if not handled correctly while making the transfer from the pot to your bowl. A dense matzoh ball can fill you up, so that when you take a bowl of matzoh ball soup to work for lunch, that’s all you need. If you bring a lunch of fluffy matzoh ball soup, you’ll need about dozen to fill you up. Dense matzoh balls are simply more economical, more efficient and better for you.
Thank you for seeing it my way, and enjoy your dense sinkers this year! Happy Pesach.