Well, That's How The Maztoh Ball Bounces!

This is the time of year when Jews repent, or as we say, atone, for all our sins.  We knock it all out in one day, Yom Kippur.  None of this confession once a week stuff for us, we don't pay retail, even in sin (thank you for the use of your joke Jon Stewart).  What happens is we gorge ourselves and then fast for 24 hours, while we feel REALLY sorry for all the bad things we did the past year, then we gorge ourselves again since we're forgiven.  It doesn't stop anyone from sinning again right away, but it is a good excuse to eat (like we need another excuse).

Since I haven't sinned all year, I'm going to celebrate by trying to make caveman matzoh ball soup.  Traditionally, matzoh balls are made with matzoh meal, aka ground up matzoh.  Also traditionally, since matzoh is involved, it's really a staple of the Passover meal, but Jews love the stuff so much, we make it pretty much for any holiday these days.  However, cavemen don't eat matzoh, which is simply wheat flour and water baked into a flat bread.  Remember, no wheat, or grains of any kind on the caveman diet.  So I'm going to attempt to make it with almond flour, which if you're a regular reader, you know that's how I make caveman flatbread.

Other than that the recipe is pretty simple.  All it is are eggs, oil, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper (usually salt, but not on the caveman diet), and matzoh meal.  So I replaced the matzoh meal with almond flour and some arrowroot as a thickener, and let it sit in the fridge to set for about a half an hour.  Now the really good cooks get their matzoh balls to be light and fluffy.  Some do this by adding seltzer to the mixture, or by whisking the egg whites into a fluffy consistency, or other secrets people have picked up over the years.  But I don't like them fluffy.  I like them hard as rocks.  I want to have to chisel mine open.  That's the way my grandmother made them, and that's the way I like them.  She knew how to make them fluffy, but my uncle and I liked them to be slightly harder than golf balls, so she made the rest of the family suffer for our tastes.  But being how this is an experiment, I have no idea how they'll come out.  I'll try to make them hard, but no guarantees.

I'm actually jumping ahead.  Because before you make matzoh balls, you make chicken soup.  In this case of what came first, the chicken or the egg, the chicken definitely comes first.  This is a traditional soup, much like my grandmother made, and many grandmothers throughout Europe and Brooklyn.  I start with a whole chicken in the pot, including the neck, but not the giblets (all ingredients, all organic, all the time).  Add water until it's covered.  Then I add carrots, celery, parsnips (usually turnips, but I'm a little sick of them after last week's brisket, so I left them out this time), onion, garlic, parsley, and dill (which my grandmother didn't use, but I love it, and so do many others, so in it went).  Usually a main ingredient is salt, but that's not happening on my watch.  So to add some extra flavor to make you forget about the lack of salt, I also add some sage and thyme, which of course go well with chicken.  Then I cook it on low for four hours.  That's it.  All organic, no salt (I'm used to it, but I'm sure you would all be reaching for the salt shaker if I served it to you), and all good for you, even the fat from the organic chicken, which is rich in Omega-3 fat, the building block of good health.  I made the soup the night before, because I think something magical happens to soups the next day, and the flavors get better.  It also gave the soup a chance to cool, so I could take all the meat off the chicken bones without scalding my hands.  I put all the dark meat back into the soup, some of the white meat, and saved the rest of the breast for leftover sandwiches and salads in the days to come.  The wings I ate on the spot.  I cannot pass up an opportunity to eat a chicken wing, ever.  It's not a sin, so no atoning necessary.

We now rejoin our previously interrupted matzoh ball recipe, already in progress:  Since I'm leaving out the matzoh meal flavor (voted best flavor by Jews in their 40's), and no salt either, I need to replace the flavor somehow.  So I'm adding about a quarter cup of the broth to the mixture.  Hopefully it will give it some flavor.  I also added some extra parsley.  Then I boiled up some water, and added even more broth.  The thought is, when matzoh balls are dropped into liquid, they soak it up like a sponge while cooking, so hopefully they'll soak up even more flavor.  But these are made with nuts, not flour, so I'm not sure how much soaking anything's going to be doing.  Anyway, in they went.  They were real hard to form into balls, but I managed to get them in.  As soon as they bounced to the top, I figured they were done.  I cut through one to make sure, and yes, it was cooked through.  They looked a lot like matzoh balls!  The soup came out great too (it's hard to screw it up).  Take a look:

Now I'm cheating a little with this photo.  It looks like the matzoh ball is resting nicely in the bowl with all the soup around it, but actually, the thing fell apart, and that's only half a ball resting on top of a pile of soup stuff.  They didn't come out great.  They were firm, but only the parts that actually made it out of the soup in one piece, which weren't many.  Most of it fell apart immediately and tuned into an almond oatmeal that tastes a lot like chicken soup.  Not bad tasting, but nothing I would crave.  Ever.

Maybe God is angry because I attempted to make Matzoh Balls healthy.  Or maybe I'm being punished because I'm not fasting with the rest of the tribe.  Or maybe you just can't make matzoh balls out of almonds.  Either way, back to the drawing board, and at least I have some delicious soup to eat, and some chicken stock to freeze for future dishes and soups.  But I should say one prayer before I'm struck down by lightning.  "Dear God... Ugga-Bugga.  Amen."  Whew, safe for another year.

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