Norton Melaver, Matzah Brei King

Day 3 of Passover/Pesach. The heavy days of Seder table food are behind us. As kids, we looked most forward to a) getting past those long, tedious dinners and b) our dad’s single, solitary annual gift to the kitchen table: matzah brei. Or, for those not in the know, flattened, unleavened, large square cracker things (matzah) broken up into half-fist pieces, dunked in an egg wash, and cooked pretty much like the way we once did scrambled eggs before I started to get all hoity-toity with this dish in our soul food kitchen. Oh year, as far as my dod was concerned, I left out the one essential ingredient: SALT.

You might as well have called this dish salt brei, it was that heavy-handed. We teased dad every year and all during the year about this heavy-handedness. My mom tried (unsuccessfully) to nudge him in the direction of salvaging her children’s health. There was always a double portion of Morton’s salt in the cupboard at this time, at it wasn’t to symbolize double portions of manna from heaven. Dad simply enjoyed, no relished, the one time of the year when he, not anyone, most of all his health-food conscious partner in life, when he ruled the kitchen absolutely. And we loved it.

To this day, if that initial bite of matzah brei doesn’t sear my lips and the inside of my gums with an insane amount of salt, I am certain that the dish has been under-seasoned. I glance desperately around the table for the shalt shaker. It’s that (sorry) ingrained.

I think Dad passed on to me his clogged sinuses — and the concomitant need to season foods rather liberally, to compensate for whatever the senses were blocking. It’s a pet theory anyway. But part of his deep and profound legacy was this notion that the pure enjoyment of a meal (sometimes) transcended bad cooking. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not looking to rationalize mediocre fare for my guests. On the contrary. Just saying that sometimes the most important take-aways from a shared meal are in spite of the food, not because of it.