Baking with Matza

What Jews do with matza during the Passover festival should be an inspiration to bakers everywhere, whether you are Jewish or not, and whether you use matza or not. One Hundred Things to Bake With Matza might be the title I choose for my autobiography one day. You would think that eight days (or seven for the reform minded) of abstinence from all things containing a raising agent (corn, pulses and peas included if you are a hardcore Ashkenazi) would make most people retreat to a world of omelettes and grilled fish with a variation on the simple salad for the entire week - and for years I was one of those people, celebrating the minute I put all my Passover kitchenware away, with a massive pizza and several beers, both Banned Substances during Passover. But no. For many, Passover presents a classic Masterchef-like baking challenge. How many ways can you create something edible from a sheet of matza? We will leave aside matza ball soup, matza brei (don't even ask) or, hilariously, matza lasagna (which my kids love). Let's stick with the sweet stuff. Passover cheesecake, with matza meal in the crust instead of digestive biscuits. It's delicious. Granted, you need a pneumatic drill to cut the base, but once achieved, it is a yummy, buttery, sweet mixture that holds its own perfectly under its vanilla cream topping. Chocolate walnut macaroons, with quantities of egg white to create and hold the biscuit shell. Every modern woman is acquainted with the classic flourless chocolate cake that in the 21st century has overtaken the traditional almond slab (plava) beloved of our parents and grandparents. But the Oscar for applied matza baking, goes, in my view, to the chocolate caramel matza bites. There are two reasons for bestowing the crown on this particular baking feat. The first is, because against all odds it is ridiculously yummy. It is the perfect replacement for things like millionare's shortbread, chocolate peanut butter squares or Rocky Road (actually, there is nothing wrong with making Rocky Road at Passover as long as you don't use Maltesers, etc etc...except that making different stuff at Passover is part of the point).  Here is how you do it. Line a tray with foil and then with baking paper. Cover it with sheets of matza, the bogstandard kind. Boil up soft brown sugar and butter. Off the heat, add vanilla and rock salt. Pour the concoction over your matza. Put in the oven to bake for 15 mins, check regularly to ensure it doesn't burn. Take it out. Shake loads of milk chocolate chips all over it. Leave for five minutes for the chips to melt. Then spread with a spatula, leave to harden, then break into bits and serve. It will be gone in seconds. Which leads me to the second reason for the crown, which is - why, oh why, would you do this to matza? The purpose of matza is to remind us of the Exodus story every time we put this cardboard stuff in our mouths. But turning it into a horribly moreish teatime fixation, transcends its purpose. It turns it into something pretty damn fabulous, a possible contender for the Great British Bake Off final, which, though it may toy somewhat with the ultimate purpose of Passover, does make the whole week of abstinence a lot less gloomy prospect. Matza baking. Come on. Roll up your sleeves and grab that brown sugar. You know you want to.

Cracks in the Pavement

To get from my house to the subway is a 15 minute walk - 12 minutes if you speedwalk as I do pretty much every day that I am commuting to work - and, on the way there, it is all uphill. Not steep, mind you - the street from our house to the main road is most obviously a climb and even that is fairly gentle, not all that pleasant at 0600 after a bad night's sleep or a wild night out partying, but manageable if you're on form - and then it's a steady upward trajectory to the station. The walk home, therefore, has pleasing psychology - downhill all the way to your place of rest. This is how the able bodied experience it. But when I started this blog, my left leg was encased in plaster, I wasn't allowed to put weight on it at all for three months, and I thought my biggest challenge would be working up the strength to haul myself to the end of the street. It wasn't. it took me two weeks just to work out how to get up the uneven, steep steps to my house. Only two of them, but there might as well have been a hundred for all I was able to get from the street to the door. No. Distance itself is the easy bit. It's the change in the pattern that is the hardest for the less mobile to manage. An upward incline is exhausting. I met my neighbour walking down the hill as I was walking up it yesterday. My neighbour was facing a possible permanent paralysis 6 months ago, from a combination of injuries to his lower back. He has been doing gruelling physiotherapy 24/7 to regain movement, and his progress has been extraordinary - a testiment to his steely determination, an inspiration to us all. His wife was walking next to him and she waved to me as we approached. He's just done his first hill walk! She called to me. It's exhausting, he said, with humour and a touch of surprise in his voice. No surprise to me. A hill incline that the able bodied barely register, is a huge barrier to the less mobile. But even that isn't the toughest challenge. It's the variations in the terrain - the cracks in the pavements. When I had my first child, the midwife advised me to take the pram out without the baby in it for my first ever outing, and push it to the end of the street and back, just to familiarise myself with the lumps and bumps in the sidewalk. I thought she was completely nuts till I tried it. When I was on crutches, every tree root creeping from its bed to the houses, was lethal. Every broken flagstone was extra effort to negotiate my way round. Every gap between the tiles was a trap for my crutch or for my one mobile but very tired foot. Make my way to the station? For three months it was all I could do to make it to my neighbour's house. We have no idea just how hard it is to get around till we are challenged ourselves.  I was out of action myself for six months, and it took me a further year to achieve full mobility again after my operation to rebuild my foot. I didn't just get a new foot (and a new lease of life) out of it. I also gained an insight I didn't ask for and could not have appreciated any other way, of the daily grinding difficulty of being less than fully mobile. It is really, really hard. Guys: an Easter message to you all. Stop worrying about whether you can afford those Louboutins, and take five seconds to be grateful your feet will take you somewhere uncomplainingly, whatever footwear you choose to encase them in. Perspective. I'm just saying.

Mini skirts and margaritas

QVC shopping channel. It is a total mystery to me. QVC is what I turn to when I am in my bedroom putting on make up or applying polish to my toenails and want something random to watch. The format is generally the same - it always includes a presenter so full of enthusiasm for the product she comes over a bit like a TV evangelist, and the patter is just incredible. It is, like, literally non stop chatter about the must have cardigan, lawnmower, blusher or weight reducing vibratone. Today as I flicked it on while wandering around my bedroom wondering what to wear for my evening out, I hear Trinny Woodall on the TV publicising her Trinny and Susannah clothes like mad. She's doing a pretty good job at it too. The most awesome feature is the way every time the camera goes back to her, she has managed a quick change into another of the outfits she wants to sell. Respect. Trinny's focus is on older women who worry about the size of their boobs or their tummy, which basically, is pretty much everybody over the age of 12.  She tells us that older women with big boobs want to try and draw the attention away from them a bit. I have generally noticeable boobs so I start to pay attention. Then she says, that one of the many evil consequences of menopause, is the loss of your waist. Then she goes on to share that she will not wear a dress that stops above the knee because her knees "talk to each other". I am now horrified. I am not yet approaching fifty, but menopause is in the ball park so I strip and do a quick, paranoid self evaluation. My knees are reassuringly round. I definitely have a waist. And yes my boobs are, well, boob shaped, and it's true that I would like to wear garments that they are not going to fall out of during conversation, but otherwise I am not in any mood to swathe them in triple poly lycra ("poly", for the uninitiated, appears to be the modern, posh term for "polyester". Don't Be Fooled). I turn back to my wardrobe. Well. I was going to wear my black Levis with a bright colour block t shirt and a black and white cotton biker jacket my niece conned me into buying at River Island last year during a girlie shopping trip. But I am so horrified by the impending downward spiral of my post menopause body, that I decide extreme measures are needed. I fish out from the back of the wardrobe, a lacy black miniskirt. I am fully aware that black lace is now Very Last Season but I do not care. I put it on, throw a black loose knit sweater on top, sheer black tights and knee high black suede boots, ropes of purple necklaces and I am good to go. Husband gulps slightly and asks whether he is a bit underdressed for our evening out. I reassure him, then steer him towards a cocktail bar, where we order margaritas, knock them back, listen to the relentlessly 80s music, and congratulate ourselves on having  challenged the inevitability of our impending middle age. Later on I sit in the Almeida Theatre watching King Charles III thinking, I'll bet nobody else staggered out of a cocktail bar minutes before hauling themselves up to the Circle with a plastic jug of tap water and an ice pack. I may be approaching menopause but one thing has not changed in me: tell me how things ought to be, and I will produce a stick of dynamite and put it right under the backside of Conventional Wisdom. Next stop: what happened to my leather bra top?