All gentile families eat leavened bread; all Jewish families have their own recipe for matza brei.
–Leo Tolstoy, opening line of Anna Karenina

That may not actually be a direct quote from Anna Karenina, but it is true that there are as many matza brei recipes as there are Jewish families with frying pans.  The basics are the same:  matza and eggs.  After that anything goes: savory or sweet, schmaltz or butter, salsa or cinnamon, onions or maple syrup.  Also, everyone says that their family’s is the best.

You too can join the Jewish people and make your own version of matza brei.  I’m not known as a great chef (so recipes will not be a regular feature here), but here’s my version.

Ingredients:

1 Matza

2 Eggs

Some Butter

Salt and pepper to taste

Break two eggs into a bowl and whisk them with a fork.

To save on bowls, wet the matza under running water in the sink.  Pretty wet, but don’t let it fall apart in your hand.  Break it into pieces in the eggs.  You can add the salt and pepper at this stage, but if you forget you can always add it later.

Let it soak for a couple of minutes.  In the meanwhile, you can make a lazy salad (see below).

Heat the butter in a pan.  Yeah, that’s right.  BUTTER!

Elegantly dump the eggs in the pan

and cook them like scrambled eggs.  That means the matza brei shouldn’t get too dry.  It should still glisten a bit.

The second it looks done, get it off the heat and plate it.  Here you can see it served with my world famous lazy salad – cut up a cucumber and a tomato and sprinkle them with a little salt.  This one has a bonus ingredient of olives.  I also tried to make the whole thing “fancy” by adding chives.  While it wasn’t really a mistake, it was rather unnecessary.

Voila!  Not-so-terrible, perfectly edible matza brei!  B’tayavon and bon appetite!