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Pecan Matzoh Balls? What About Roasted Fennel?

by Alix Wall · April 9th, 2008
Cookbooks, Cooking, Holidays

matzah2.jpg

First, a word from our sponsor: We interrupt Alix Wall’s posts about Vietnam (at least one more is still coming) to write about a more immediate concern: What is Alix going to cook for Passover?

My husband and I are hosting our family for Pesach. Maybe that isn’t a big deal for some of you, but for me, it is. I only had the seder at my house one other time, and I was so busy that I pretty much let all my family members do all the cooking. Not this year.

I am taking it very seriously this year; maybe because this is the first year that we are hosting, instead of just me. And maybe because I’m thinking of my mom now, and how flawlessly she could pull off a seder. Passover can be a difficult time of year for me; she died only a month after it. She was already very ill at her last seder, in 2002, but she managed to do a great deal of the cooking anyhow.

My uncle has let it be known that his expectations are high, now that I’m a professional chef. I don’t care about that so much. What’s dominating my thoughts these days is the memory of the pecan matzoh balls.
My cousins Mike and Rebecca were hosting that year. They were then living in Houston. They found the recipe in Joan Nathan’s Jewish Cooking in America, and saw that pecan matzoh balls originated in Dallas. Since they were temporary Texans, they thought it would be, well, cute.

They thought wrong. While I can truly say that my family are all pretty much foodies, and like trying new things, when it comes to the Jewish holidays, they want their traditional fare. The one exception is Sephardic charoset, which has been a staple of our seders for years now.

This is why I’m such a stress-case now. The other night I was looking in The Gefilte Variations by Jayne Cohen, one of the many cookbooks I inherited from mom. I came upon roasted fennel matzoh balls. I love the sound of them, but do I dare? Or do I stick with the tried and true?

This also goes for kugels. Do I stick with a boring old potato kugel, or instead make one with wild mushrooms and roasted garlic, or cauliflower and leeks? With kugel, it’s an easier decision, but somehow the matzoh ball one seems huge. Have you ever tinkered with your matzoh balls, adding something non-traditional to them? Was it successful? I’d love to hear about it.

Photo credit: Cooking for Engineers

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10 Responses to “Pecan Matzoh Balls? What About Roasted Fennel?”

  1. KRG Says:
    April 9th, 2008 at 8:40 pm

    Yep! I made the walnut matzah balls (which are suposed to go with a pomegranate sauce, but usually only do if there’s any leftover) from Copeland Marks’ Sephardic cooking. I don’t know if this book is still in print, but if it isn’t it ’s worth searching for. These matzah balls are not only a yearly request, but I’ve actually had people ask me to deliver (I don’t know why they can’t make them themselves, I’m happy to give them the recipe, but whatever).
    They are completely fabulous!
    I don’t care for kugel at all, so that’s not an issue.

  2. Benk Says:
    April 9th, 2008 at 8:52 pm

    Go for the Fennel Matzah Balls! And the fancy-schmancy kugel too!

  3. shev Says:
    April 10th, 2008 at 4:48 am

    Kugel with wild mushrooms sounds DREAMY! (how can I make some?)

    Dare I suggest - you can make some traditional and some new-fangled of everything?

    Mostly importantly, enjoy. You are making new memories for the guests at your seder. What a gift. Chag Same’ach.

  4. Amy Buondonno Says:
    April 10th, 2008 at 7:42 am

    My Hubby is like that, where he doesn’t mind experimental cuisine… except on the holidays. His take is that there are 364 other nights of the year to experiment, let the holidays be for memories. If one of those experiments happens to marked as an addition to the holiday table, great - but otherwise, he wants the foods that trigger his associations.

    We go to a cousin’s for first-night seder, and have a very traditional Ashkenazi-American spread. Second night at home is my chance to play and create some new memories for my sons. That’s when we have a tomato-based soup instead of chicken broth, and I think those roasted-fennel matzoh balls and mushroom kugel would go very well indeed!

    What are you doing for the non-food parts of the seder? Will you use a familiar haggadah, or branch out? Has your family embraced the orange on the plate, or the Miriam’s Cup? Maybe introducing a change at the table would be easier if there was another differentiation to wash it down. Put your mark on the event in multiple ways!

  5. Zev Winicur Says:
    April 10th, 2008 at 11:08 am

    I’ve never tried walnut or pecan matzah balls. I’ve been trying to break out of my Ashkenazi roots and embrace my true hidden Sephardic self…and this sounds like a good way to do so.

    If you are looking for a new kugel recipe, try my Root and Tuber Kugel. It is a slightly more exotic version of the standard potato kugel with carrots and sweet potatoes.

    http://wolfsongenterprises.blo.....kugel.html

  6. Tovitim Says:
    April 14th, 2008 at 11:31 am

    The “rules” are simple….according to me. You can add, but you can’t subtract. As long as all the basics are there, and for some reason, this means the brisket (even though I’m a vegetarian, I’d be pretty PO’d if I flew all the way home and my mom forwent it), too, you are welcome to add anything, including fancy shmancy stuff. It simply has to be IN ADDITION, not as a replacement.

  7. Natalie Sztern Says:
    April 16th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

    If we start to play on the concepts of creating nouveau jewish food for our seders, then how will our kids grow to know true Jewish foods? Then, like the language of Yiddish, it too will be a dying food trend and it is my belief that every Jewish kid should know what a true potatoe kugel tastes like for passover just like they should know what tzimmes is….

    As a canadian, the desire to assimilate is not as strong as it is in US and we don’t look for new and different trends when it comes to the holidays…we look to tradition not away from it

  8. Alix Says:
    April 21st, 2008 at 4:20 pm

    The roasted fennel matzoh balls were a great success. Perhaps I will post the recipe next year. The cauliflower leek kugel on epicurious.com got a big thumbs-up as well. And the wild mushrooms made a wonderful addition to your standard potato kugel. Overall, the Wall family seder was a great success!

  9. Jayne Cohen Says:
    April 22nd, 2008 at 6:18 pm

    Glad you enjoyed the roasted fennel matzoh balls and wild mushroom-potato kugel. They–and other new improvisations–are also in my new book, Jewish Holiday Cooking, just published by Wiley. In response to Natalie, I strongly feel that these are dishes that DO capture the taste of the Jewish holidays. It’s part of Jewish DNA to keep changing and adapting. For a cuisine to remain vibrant and alive–not a culinary dinosaur–it should evolve along with our changing palates. And the addition of new words to Yiddish has helped revive interest in the language, making it more user-friendly for contemporary Jews. What you think of as a classic Jewish food, the potato kugel of Eastern Europe, merely reflects Jewish food at a particular point and place in our history. If you go back a few centuries, there were no potatoes in that area at all. Jews have always added and adapted foods and cooking techniques as they became available. So for anyone who would like to share their interesting matzoh bries or minas (Sephardi matzoh pies), please check out the Passover post at Food Talk on my website: jewishholidaycooking.com. Winner will receive a copy of my new book. Hag Someach!

  10. Alix Says:
    April 22nd, 2008 at 8:12 pm

    Jayne, thanks so much for writing! (And I’m glad I wrote that the fennel matzo balls were a success!) I never suspected you might read my post when I wrote it, and I’m glad you did. I couldn’t agree with you more. I took Tovitim’s advice and made two batches of matzo balls (actually my cousin made them, but my idea) one with the roasted fennel puree, and one the traditional sort. The fennel won hands down; we had maybe 10 of the regular ones left, but the fennel ones were gone.

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