Matzah-free tradition

ILOVE Pesach. It signals the spring, it commemorates freedom, it brings families together — and hiding the afikoman from your children is great fun. It’s just the food I don’t like. If I had to list my 10 favourite things to eat, four of them would be challah, pitta, bread and more bread. To be honest, the only kind of bread I am not so keen on is the unleavened stuff they call matzah. How many times have I wistfully reimagined the story of Pesach so that the Israelites just about had time to bake lots of bread before they set off? In my fantasy we remember their ingenuity by spending a week eating doorstep sandwiches.

I’m not a big fan of Pesach baking either. I would much rather spend eight days not tucking into Passover cakes. I make two honourable exceptions — Claudia Roden’s magnificent Pesach orange cake and my colleague Ruth Joseph’s sumptuous chocolate raspberry and cream torte, included in our book, Warm Bagels and Apple Strudel. And don’t start me on matzah brei. Apart from the odd summer barbecue, it was just about the only thing my dad cooked all year. He did it so lovingly that it seemed churlish to point out that the scrambled egg would have tasted much nicer without the bits of soggy matzah in it. However, there is a dish which, although not thought of as specifically a Pesach delicacy, would not exist without it — fish fried in egg and matzah meal.

I am not going to attempt to teach my grandma to suck eggs (in salt water) by giving a detailed recipe for fried fish. Just coat your fillets of haddock, cod or my current favourite white fish, pollock, in egg, then matzah meal, and fry in very hot oil on both sides until golden. Job done.

But instead of unscrewing your jar of chreyn at this point, try it with a dollop of homemade Italian salsa verde. Take a handful each of fresh basil, fresh mint and flat-leaf parsley, one peeled garlic clove, a teaspoon of capers, two tablespoons of oilve oil, a pinch of salt, the juice of a lemon and a couple of salted anchovy fillets. Blitz them all in a food processor and your sauce is made. You can also make it by hand in a pestle and mortar but if so, make sure you crush the garlic before adding the other ingredients.

And there you have my guide to getting through Pesach — lots of fried fish, scrambled egg without matzah and dreams of fluffy, pillowy white bread.