I’ve been meaning to share this with you guys since about, well, Passover, but I was too lazy to type it up until now.
The original recipe was for cheese-and-potato blintzes, but my mother tried adapting it for meat meals and it turned out delicious. So it’s not so much a recipe as a method. Anyway, I’ve tried making it twice now, and I think I’ve got the hang of it.
Matza blintzes with chopped meat
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Soak the matza.
The way my mother showed me is that you pour some water in a pan, put in as many square matzas as you can fit, then stack some more matzas a couple layers high. Pour a bit of water on top of each layer, and cover the top layer with plastic wrap. -
Fry up a meat filling.
Chopped beef or lamb, onions and garlic, herbs of your choice, spices-- it’s pretty flexible. What I’ve been doing is frying the meat first, taking it out, then sauteing the onions and garlic in the leftover fat.
After the frying, add in mashed potatoes. Or take regular boiled potatoes and squeeze them out of their skins, if they’re soft enough. Mix everything up and you have your filling. -
Cut your soggy matzas in thirds without destroying them.
Okay, this is the trickiest step; I made a terrible mess of things the first time I tried it, and mom had to step in.
Cut straight through the whole stack, then delicately take out each strip individually. Support the ends especially as you’re lifting them.
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Roll up the meat and matza into little cigars.
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Coat them with egg.
Even if you’ve gotten the matza strips out in one piece, they’re still pretty fragile, so the egg will help hold them together. Just be careful to keep the rolls in more-or-less one piece while you’re egging them. -
Fry them up.
Again, you need to be gentle lowering the rolls into the pan, and turning them over.
And that’s it. They look pretty ugly, but they taste divine. If you bought a box of matza for seder and it’s sitting there still three quarters full, matza blintzes are a great way to use it up before next Passover.