In the post-war times, food was more plentiful, but passover cooking was always special. A live chicken was procured from a farmer, taken to a kosher butcher (a schoichet), killed, its blood was drained. Then, the chicken was dunked in a vat of boiling water to remove the large feathers, and briefly held over an open fire to burn off the tiny ones left over. Finally, she brought the chicken and some market veggies home and started cooking.
I'm describing this procedure to show you, supermarket-shopping, factory-chicken-eating reader that this was SPECIAL. Not just expensive or labor-intensive, but something not done every day, or every week.
I'll make it a little more difficult for you then too -- you must procure an organic, free-range, kosher chicken. A fat one. If you hit 2 out of 3, I'll excuse you -- but an effort make you must. And fat (shmaltz) is an integral part of this dish.
Besides the chicken, you'll need:
- 2 onions
- a carrot
- 1 or 2 eggs
- Matzo meal
Take apart the chicken; the soup will be made from the chicken legs, wings, back and neck. The rest of the bird should go into a stew, roasted or fried -- we get an entire feast out of one bird! Make sure you take off the skin and fat from the parts going into the soup and reserve them. Place chicken parts into a big pot of water, add one whole onion (peel the outside skin but leave some of the yellow skin on -- it'll color the soup), and a carrot (whole, peeled). Set on the stove and cook, skimming off the scum as the soup begins to boil. Reduce the heat and let simmer while you start working on the magical part of the recipe.
Remember that skin and fat you've taken off? Cut it up into small pieces, and toss into a frying pan (cast iron if you have one). Let the fat render; when pieces of chicken skin begin browning, pour off a little of the fat and reserve it. Then, throw in some onion (chopped into tiniest pieces you can manage). Fry until onions are caramelized, chicken skin pieces are curled up and crispy, like kosher pork rinds. Throw the rinds (schkvarkes) into a colander and let the fat (schmaltz) drain into a bowl.
Salt the schkvarkes, and please try not to eat them all at once. Trust me, by this point the aroma in the kitchen is overwhelming, your stomach is growling and your cardiologist is on the line telling you to go test your cholesterol again. You WILL eat them, trust me. And you'll eat them all if you don't stop yourself. Put some in a little dish aside to snack on while you finish cooking. Oh, and pour yourself a cold shot of vodka, it offsets the fat very nicely.
Put another pot on the stove, and bring some salted water to a rolling boil, like you would for pasta.
While the water is boiling, put some matzo meal (about a cup or cup-and-a-half) into the bowl with the schmaltz, add an egg (or two, if you like your matzo balls eggy), and stir with a spoon or, like my grandmother did, with your (clean) hands. The dough should be sticky and resemble play-doh. No pieces of matzo should be dry, there should be no clumps at all.
Take the fried onions and fold them into the dough so they're evenly distributed.
Wet your hands, roll a ball about the size of a walnut. Then, take a morsel of crunchy fried chicken skin and press it into the ball. Cover over the hole, and dunk it into boiling water. Keep going until all of the matzo balls are done. They'll be cooked in a few minutes.
When they're firm, transfer them into the soup. About the same time, season the soup with salt and pepper (my grandma always under-seasoned her soup so everyone could put a desired amount of salt and pepper at the table -- but I prefer mine seasoned on the stove). Take out the boiled onion and carrot; throw away the onion but cut up the carrot and put it back into the soup.
You are now done. Your drooling family is now hanging in the kitchen trying to steal the remaining schkvarkes. Finally you can give in and feed them, their patience will be well rewarded.
Enjoy!!!
