Chicken Soup with Matzoh Balls and Homemade Passover Egg Noodles

Many people enjoy the vegetables that have been cooked in the soup and don’t mind them floating around in their bowls. However, from experience, I have found that almost all children and some fussy adults prefer their chicken soup clear and golden with perhaps a few carrots floating in the consommé. This seems to be regardless of how good the soup tastes from all the vegetables. In the interest of preserving family harmony and getting something nourishing into my children, I take the added steps of wrapping the carrots in cheesecloth and straining the soup when cooked to avoid the dreaded green things! All this precaution is really not necessary. If, however, you want to impress your friends with how clear the soup can be, stir in two raw egg whites after straining and bring to a boil. Then pour through cheesecloth. The resulting soup will look like those that glow in glossy magazine photographs and will taste a whole lot better than the picture.

My recipe for matzoh balls has changed since I wrote my book, Bubbie’s Kitchen, and my Passover workshop. The old recipe produced light and respectable matzoh balls, but my son-in-law Alex came up with a recipe for even better ones. I humbly bow to the master, now. My husband, Saul, loves to tell the story about how his father, on tasting my fluffy matzoh balls when I was a teenager, consoled me by telling me that they would get better, and firmer, as I practiced. His mother, who always worked full-time and prepared all her wonderful meals in short order with no recipes (and who made the type of matzoh balls that Myron Cohen used to joke needed to be “cut with a knife and fork”), had a good laugh about the fact that her husband loved her cooking so much that he thought the matzoh balls were supposed to be doughy and heavy. The recipe below produces light and fluffy matzoh balls, so if you want to cut them with a knife and fork, add more matzoh meal.

The recipe for Passover egg noodles came about because my mother-in-law and father-in-law came from very religious households that observed a higher standard of Passover kashrut (dietary laws). Matzoh balls are gebrucht, meaning that it is necessary for liquid to come into contact with matzoh in order to prepare them. This is not acceptable during Passover in very observant households. Non-gebrucht recipes do not involve matzoh coming in contact with liquid. My Aunt Sarah, of blessed memory, once explained to me that, when her grandfather was alive, all the children were sent outside during Passover to drink their milk so as not to accidentally drip it onto matzoh crumbs that might be lurking on the tablecloth. After many attempts, I arrived at the correct proportions for the recipe for these heirloom noodles, a recipe which my mother-in-law used from that day forward rather than play around with the proportions each time she made them. No one was ever able to slice the rolled crepes into noodles as patiently and evenly fine as she. Forget the mealy, tasteless KP boxed pasta that is now available. These are infinitely better!

Chicken Soup with Matzoh Balls (Knaidlach)

(Serves 12. Double the recipe for 24.)

• 1 whole chicken, cut up, with heart and gizzard, if they are included (If liver is included, do not use it in the soup. Freeze it until you have enough to make chopped liver.)
• 1 large or 2 small leeks
• 1 bunch fresh parsley (flat leaf has more flavor than curly), or 1 parsley root
• 2 medium parsnips
• 2 medium turnips
• 2 kohlrabi bulbs
• All the tops with leaves cut from a whole bunch of celery (save the stalks for salad or karpas for the seder) or 1 large celery root (also called knob celery or celeriac)
• 1 bunch fresh dill
• 2 Telma chicken bouillon cubes
• 1 Tbsp. kosher salt
• freshly ground black pepper to taste
  
• 1 lb. carrots

Rinse chicken and put in the bottom of an 8-quart pot. Cover with warm water and bring to a boil on high heat.

Skim off foam that rises to the top and discard. Turn heat to simmer.

Remove any discolored leaves from the leek and cut off tips of leaves and roots of bulb. Slice leek lengthwise halfway up from the bottom and rinse out any dirt or sand between the leaves. Add to pot.

Rinse parsley and dill well and add to pot. If you were able to get a parsley root, peel it with a vegetable peeler before you rinse the leaves and add to pot.

Peel parsnips, turnips, and kohlrabi with a vegetable peeler, cut in half, and add to pot.

Rinse celery and add to pot. If you were able to get a celery root, peel it with a vegetable peeler, and cut in half before adding to the pot.

Add bouillon, salt, and pepper to the pot.

Peel carrots removing tips. Cut in three or four lengths and cut each length in half. Put cut up carrots into a length of cheesecloth and tie up with string. Add to pot.

Add water to within an inch of the top of the pot and simmer for two hours.

Remove bag of carrots and pour soup through a strainer. Discard vegetables, separate chicken meat from bones and add to the strained soup, or save for another purpose.

Cut open bag of carrots and add to the strained soup.

At this point, the soup can be ladled into plastic containers to be frozen until needed, or add matzoh balls and boil for 20 minutes and serve. If serving with Pesach egg noodles, place a small handful of noodles in each person’s soup bowl before ladling in the hot soup.

Matzoh Balls (Knaidlach)

• 12 large or extra-large eggs
• 1-1/2 cups plain KP seltzer
• 3 cups matzoh meal
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) melted unsalted KP margarine
• 1 Tbsp. salt
• Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Mix together all of the above ingredients and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring 8 quarts of water to a rolling boil in a pot for which you have a steamer insert that can be lifted out.

Form the refrigerated dough into walnut-sized balls with wet hands. Be careful not to drip water into the dough. Drop, one by one into the boiling water. When the pot is full and about half the dough has been used, cover and let boil for 15-20 minutes. The balls will rise to the surface as soon as they begin to cook.

Remove balls by lifting them out in the steamer insert and dump them out onto a shallow baking pan.

Return steamer insert to pot and repeat the process with the other half of the dough.

When the balls have cooled slightly on the pans, place them, uncovered, in the freezer and freeze solid.

Remove balls from the pan and dump into plastic bags.

Refreeze immediately and add to boiling soup as needed. Makes 100-120.

Homemade Pesach Noodles

I began making these for the people who hated matzoh balls and really didn’t like the flavor of matzoh in everything eaten during the week of Pesach. Unfortunately, everybody eventually wound up liking both in the soup. Also, Orthodox Jews distinguish between recipes that are gebrucht and non-gebrucht. This goes to the very heart of why matzoh is so closely guarded after the water has been added to the flour—to make sure there is no rising or fermentation. The very Orthodox believe that matzoh should not come into contact with moisture at all during the holiday. Therefore, many kosher cookbooks for the holiday indicate in some way whether a recipe involves moistening matzoh (gebrucht) or does not involve moistening the matzoh (non-gebrucht). This recipe involves no matzoh and is non-gebrucht.

• 6 large or extra-large eggs
• 3 Tbsp. potato starch
• 1 cup cold water
• 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
• 1 Tbsp. KP vegetable oil

In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, potato starch, water, salt and oil thoroughly.

Heat two or more oiled 6-inch non-stick skillets until a drop of water dances on them.

Put about 2 Tbsp. of the batter into the pan tilting and rotating to distribute a thin even layer on the bottom. Be sure to stir the batter before making each crepe or the starch will sink to the bottom. It is not necessary to grease the pans after making the first one.

Fry until the edges look dry and have begun to curl away from the pan.

Invert the skillet above a plate. The pancake will fall out onto the plate. Sometimes you have to help it a little by starting the edge away from the skillet with a knife and peeling a little.

Continue making these thin pancakes, or blintzes, or bletlach, or crepes, until you finish the batter, stacking them one on top of the other as you go.

Roll six or eight of them together into tight rolls, and slice with a very sharp knife as thinly as possible.

Gently toss the shreds with your fingers to separate.

Place a small handful of noodles in the bottom of each bowl just before serving soup.