Did you know that the average apple contains 5 to 10 seeds each?
Welcome to the Chop Shop Podcast.
I'm Sally Sampson.
And I'm Harry Rosenblum.
Our mission at Chop Shop Family is to enrich the lives of families by inspiring and teaching them to cook and eat real food together.
This week, we're talking about matzah.
Matzah is a flat bread that is almost like what we would call a cracker in the modern age, and it is generally eaten around the holiday of Passover by people who follow the Jewish religion.
And matzah is unleavened.
Why is that?
So unleavened means it's not risen, it's not puffy.
Like I said, it's flat like a cracker.
And the reason that matzah is unleavened is that it is a reminder of something that happened a really long time ago, about 3500 years ago, When the Jewish people had been enslaved in Egypt by the pharaohs.
They needed to leave and they decided they were going to get out of there.
And normally they would let the bread rise and their bread that they ate probably looked similar to bread we think of today that has a lot of air holes in it.
Well, they didn't have time for that part of the process to let the yeast make the bubbles.
And so they just had to bake all the bread, because they still needed the food and they needed the calories that would be in that bread.
And what came out was a sort of flat cracker, which turned out to be pretty easy to carry because it was flat.
Cool.
So matzah is generally eaten around the holiday of Passover.
Like I said, there's another Jewish holiday called Hanukkah, which actually starts tonight, the day we are recording this particular episode.
And matzah sometimes appears in other foods like matzah ball soup.
Matzo balls are like dumplings served in chicken soup, usually.
Everyone's family makes them in a slightly different way and they use matzo meal which is crushed up, matzo
Yeah, I did some research, and the soup itself seems to have Eastern European roots.
Dumplings in chicken soup is popular in Eastern Europe historically, but really wasn't until the late 19th century in the United States.
Cincinnati based Manischewitz company that you might be familiar with was founded in 1888 and they began mass producing lots of products.
And that really popularized matzo ball soup as an everyday dish.
And it's one that I think of not so much associated with a particular holiday, but as a Jewish food that you find in a lot of delis.
Some people call chicken soup Jewish penicillin because it's such a famous cure for colds.
Here at Chop Chop, we add matzo balls to our chicken soup.
Whether or not this soup is actually a cure, it will make you happy.
Absolutely.
Check out our recipe for matzo ball soup in our sub stack.
So here's what you can learn from making this recipe.
You can learn about cracking, separating, and whisking eggs.
You can learn about measuring, counting and forming matzo balls, because in matzo ball soup you have to make the balls first and then actually you cook them and add them to your chicken soup that you're cooking at the same time.
You can learn about chopping herbs, and you can also, of course, like so many recipes.
You can learn about math.
Matzo balls, Sally, do you prefer floaters or sinkers?
I have to say, I like them both.
I don't have a really strong feeling either way.
So listeners, growing up we always talked about which one was better in my family, whether there were matzo balls that float that were light and airy in the soup, or matzo balls that were hard and more dense.
And I agree with you, Sally.
I do like them both.
My grandmother was always trying to perfect the floater.
And her secret was seltzer.
She would add seltzer to the dough.
I can't say whether or not I think that would really do anything, but maybe.
I've actually heard of that and never tried it.
It's an interesting idea.
Sally, let's talk a little bit more about eggs in this recipe, because it is a big part of this recipe.
Mm-hmm.
Some people think you should crack eggs on the side of the bowl and others on the counter.
Harry, what's your preference and why?
I like to crack them on the flat surface.
I like to crack my eggs on the counter next to the bowl.
And then as soon as I feel the egg crack, lift it up over the bowl.
Of course, cracking eggs generally is something where you have to be careful not to hit them too hard, because you don't want to get egg all over your counter.
But I find if I try to crack them on the edge of the bowl, often the edge of the bowl is so thin that it'll go all the way through the egg.
And then I have egg all over my bowl and all over my counter.
And then I have shell in the eggs in the bowl as well.
Not a good thing.
What about you, Sally?
You know, I think I usually do it on the bowl.
Do you?
I think that I was taught that if you do it on the counter, that's potentially too messy.
Hmm.
It definitely can be.
So here we're talking about chicken eggs, which are the most common eggs that we eat.
But people also eat duck eggs or goose eggs or quail eggs, which are really, really tiny.
I've seen ostrich eggs at the market.
They're huge, about the size of 20 chicken eggs.
I believe they're the largest bird egg in the world.
Harry, have you ever had one?
I never have, but I've also seen them at the market and I've always been curious.
But, you know, I don't have any recipes that need 20 eggs at once, so I've never gotten one.
But I have read that they are very hard because if you imagine making the egg so much bigger that the shell would get thicker and that you need like a hammer to open them,
Are you serious?
Crack them on the counter.
Yes.
Wow, that's cool.
Do you want to hear a joke?
What do gingerbread men if they break a leg?
What?
They use candy canes.
Now we have a mindfulness exercise with eggs.
This exercise, while very challenging, is fun.
The point is to help focus attention on this one task noticing the color, texture and shape of the egg, how the weight is distributed and how it does not want to balance.
The point is not to win or succeed.
I love the idea of doing a little bit of mindfulness in the kitchen and taking a look at the egg.
I think we often use ingredients and we don't actually examine them very closely to see what they look like.
So this exercise.
You need one uncooked egg per person and you need a flat surface, kind of like a countertop, and you need a little bit of table salt.
So the way this works is that you want to hold your egg and you want to take a look at it and you'll notice that the egg is more rounded on one side and more pointy on the other side.
And you want to try to balance your uncooked egg on end.
So think about that, listeners.
You want to try to get it to stand up.
And I don't know if you can actually do it.
I have to try it.
I haven't actually even tried it.
It's probably kind of frustrating.
So be careful.
You don't want to get mad when you're doing it.
But now try this.
You can take some salt and you can sprinkle it on the surface.
Use about a half of a teaspoon and carefully put the egg on top of the salt.
Can you get it to balance then?
Now, if you blow away all of the salt, will the egg stay up or will it fall over?
I think it'll stay up, because what you have is these little crystals of salt that are basically forming little places for the edge of that egg to rest.
Have you tried this, Sally?
I did try it and it does work.
And it's very cool because when you blow away the salt you don't see the little grains of salt that are holding it up.
So it looks like it's just balancing itself.
It's kind of thrilling to do.
Sounds really fun.
I wonder if it would work with other things that weren't as uniform as salt crystals.
Like, could you do it with cracked pepper or cinnamon or some other kind of spice?
Stella and her sister Lola recorded themselves trying this egg-sercise at home.
Let's take a listen.
Okay, so you take one too.
I have my egg.
Oh, it's so cold.
We have brown eggs.
My egg is very smooth.
What about yours?
Mine's like smooth, but it has like a little bit, it's like a spot.
Yeah, yours is kind of speckled.
And it's like, it's not heavy, but I feel a little weight.
Yeah, and it's cold.
Okay, so then we both have to try and balance it on the table on one end.
Okay, mine is not doing that.
You can't lean it up against something.
Okay, let's try one more time.
Yeah, that doesn't work.
You have to do it on like kind of the top end, you know what I mean?
Does it say that?
Yes.
So the next thing we do is sprinkle some salt.
So you want to open it.
I'm putting some salt on the table and then you can put your egg on top.
You just leave it in a pile.
Okay.
And then it balanced.
That's pretty cool.
And then you can blow away the salt and see if it still balances kind of hard.
And it's still balanced.
Yeah, and why do you think that is?
Um, I have no clue.
Well, if you look under, you see that still has a little bit of salt under the egg to balance it.
Nice okay yay, we did it, thank you.
Thanks for listening to the Chop Chop podcast.
Be sure to check out our Substack newsletter, which is for grownups, and we hope you'll join us there.
Go to chopchopfamily.substack.com and join the conversation.
This podcast is written produced, edited and hosted by Harry Rosenblum and Sally Sampson, with engineering by Matt Patterson.
Stella Maiden is our intrepid intern.
Shout out to Lola, Amelia, and Audrey.
Thanks for adding your voices to our show.
Music in this episode by Jim Hall, Beat Mechanic, and Lisa Hammer.
We are also a part of Kids Listen, the number one place for finding great podcasts for kids of all ages.
You can learn more at kidslisten.org.
And don't forget to sign up for the Chop Chop sub stack to get more recipes in your inbox every week.
Our next three episodes include eatable gifts cookies, eatable gifts salad dressing and a very special New Year's Eve dinner.
Please stay in touch whether you have a joke you'd like to share.
If you'd just like to tell us what you had for lunch,
We love to hear from our listeners.
So please send us your recipes poems, book or podcast recommendations or anything else you think we'd like.
Ask a grown-up to help you email us at podcast at chopchopfamily.org.
Thanks for listening.
