Fawn * Matzo Ball Soup

In the spring of 1977, Fawn was newly married, recently graduated and just beginning her life in Chicago. As she went about planning her first Passover Seder, she knew the first thing she needed was a good matzo ball soup. Fawn recalls, “even though it wasn’t that long ago, long distance phone calls were expensive and there was no such thing as email. So, when I requested my grandmother’s recipe, I did so the old fashioned way: with a pen, a piece of paper and an envelope.”

Fawn

Grandma Annie responded in turn with a letter sprawled in graceful, looped cursive. Aside from the beautiful handwriting, a few things stood out about the letter: some of the measurements were vague, the instructions skipped out of order, and the subject switched rather abruptly from cooking to dancing lessons. “I knew she was losing her memory,” Fawn says, “because normally her thoughts were much more organized.”

Fawn, her grandmother, her daughter, and her mother

Grandma Annie's letter

“Growing up, my grandmother was always in charge of the holidays,” Fawn says, “but I actually saw her almost every day. We had three generations living in this little house on the coast of Boston and my grandparents lived on the ground floor. Grandma Annie always kept a jar of M&Ms on the kitchen counter, which meant that if you were walking up the back stairs all you had to do was open up the door to say ‘Hi, Grandma!’ and you could grab some candy. And I don’t think it was an accident that she put it there!”

Though she never had the opportunity to go to college, Fawn’s grandmother had always been sharp. “She was kind, musical, artistic. Later in life, she painted over one hundred oil paintings,” Fawn tells me, motioning to a gorgeous landscape hanging on the wall. “She had a porch overlooking the ocean, and she and a couple of friends used to set up their easels outside and paint for hours.”

And of course, Grandma Annie made a mean matzo ball soup. Even as her grandmother began to forget, Fawn remembered it vividly – the taste, the texture, the smell of it simmering on the stove. With a loose recipe, a bit of tinkering and a few boxes of matzo meal, Fawn was finally able to replicate the soup that she had come to love so dearly: a clear, bright broth filled with matzo balls that are pleasantly dense yet still delicate. What really sets the soup apart, though, is the tiniest pinch of cinnamon to lend the matzo balls a subtle sweetness and unexpected depth.

Today, Fawn is still cooking the same matzo ball soup that her grandmother used to make for her as a child. It’s her favorite variation of this classic dish, a preference which may have just as much to do with memory as it does with taste – and in reality, these two things are hard to separate.

Three Quick Questions…and Fawn’s Answers

It’s your last meal. What do you have?
I would have yogurt and fruit, for two reasons. First, if it’s my last meal, I’m probably not in the mood to eat. Second, if it’s my last meal, I probably don’t want to be very wasteful! And I like yogurt and fruit.

Your kitchen is burning down. What’s the one thing you grab?
This is really going to be different, but I would grab my Pyrex liquid measuring cup. I use it every day and have one in each of my houses. I use it to measure things, stir things, make oatmeal and pour pancake batter — it really works for just about anything. I’ve always had one, and occasionally when one breaks I’ll get another.

Do you have a favorite cookbook?
I have two favorites, which are very old cookbooks. The Jewish Gourmet Cookbook is where I learned certain traditional Jewish recipes like stuffed cabbage, things that I don’t make quite so much anymore. And then I love Wings of Life, which I got when I was newly married. That was the book that taught me things like how to make a soup, how to cook with grains and how to make a quiche.