Matzo brei frittata

I’m coming up on a week of busy days with early starts. Grab-and-go breakfasts are in order. Yesterday, I found myself craving matzo brei—that Passover-morning classic of matzo scrambled with eggs—and decided to try mashing it up with my favorite make-ahead breakfast: frittata. Just for fun, here’s a rough write-up with some bad iPhone photos!

I started by running 4 matzos under cold tap water until they were damp but not soggy. I crumbled the damp matzos onto a plate and let them sit and soften while I greased the heck out of a 9-inch nonstick cake pan. I heated a large glug of olive oil—maybe 3 tablespoons?—in a skillet over medium heat, and fried the soaked matzo until the smallest bits were toasty and fragrant. Then I turned off the heat and let the matzo cool slightly.

While the matzo cooled, I chopped up the leftover parsley, dill, and scallions from making gefilte fish…

…and whisked together 8 eggs, 1/2 cup farmer cheese (I usually use Greek yogurt, but this week I got a little creative at the market), a large pinch of salt, and lots of black pepper.

I stirred the herbs into the eggs, then mixed everything together in the cake pan. I let things sit and mingle for a bit while I preheated the oven to 350° F (and watched a bit of an old BBC Poirot episode).

Once the oven was hot, I baked the frittata until it was fully set in the middle, which took about 25 minutes. Then I let the frittata cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, turned it out onto a cutting board, and cut it into wedges. Behold my breakfast for the week!

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Gefilte fish, hold the onion

Chag sameach, everyone! It’s the first night of Passover, and I’ve been sitting on this recipe for a year. Time to let this one out into the world.

I am one of the only people I know who genuinely likes gefilte fish. Yes, even the gelatinous gray pucks from the Manischewitz jar. To me, it’s one of the core tastes of Passover. But the premade gefilte fish I grew up on contains onions, which I am avoiding. So last year I decided to try my hand at a homemade version, flecked with scallions and herbs. It was a wild hit, and is now a permanent fixture on my seder menu. It’s flavorful enough to enjoy on its own, and delicious with a swipe of prepared horseradish if you swing that way.

I adapted this from a recipe by the great doyenne of Jewish American cooking, Joan Nathan. My primary tweaks were to swap scallion tops for onions, to add carrot for sweetness, and to bump up the herbs. Gefilte fish is traditionally cooked in fish stock; this recipe has you make a light vegetable broth instead. But if you have access to fish bones, definitely throw some of those in—they’ll contribute flavor and help the liquid turn into the familiar gel as it cools.

Although I’ve adapted this recipe for my own FODMAP sensitivities, it is not gluten-free, since traditional matzo meal is made with wheat flour. If that’s a no-go for you, your best bet is to buy gluten-free matzo and blitz it to crumbs in the food processor. Be aware that most gluten-free matzo is not kosher for Passover, so seek out the real certified stuff if that matters to you.