Matzo Ball Soup -- The Eight-Thousand-Mile Gesture

The phone rang at two in the morning. Two a.m. phone calls are never good. They are the phone calls that arrive wearing bad news like a uniform. I answered with the adrenaline of a woman who has been sleeping next to a man with Alzheimer's for three years and has learned to surface from sleep like a submarine: fast, fully alert, ready for whatever the water holds.

It was Miriam. "Ruthie," she said. "Noa is sick." Miriam's daughter. My niece. Sick how? Sick badly. A car accident in Tel Aviv. She is in the hospital. She will be okay — probably, eventually, the injuries are serious but not life-threatening — but Miriam's voice on the phone was the voice of a mother who has been to a hospital to see her child broken, and the voice was shaking, and I stood in my kitchen at two in the morning in Oceanside, Long Island, eight thousand miles from Tel Aviv, and I could not hold my sister and I could not hold my niece and I could not do anything except say: "She will be okay. She will be okay, Miriam."

I stayed on the phone for two hours. Miriam talked. I listened. This is what sisters do at two in the morning when the world is breaking: one talks and one listens, and the listening is the holding, and the holding is the love, and the love crosses the eight thousand miles and the nine time zones and arrives at a hospital in Tel Aviv where a woman I carried on my hip when she was three is lying in a bed with broken bones and the knowledge that her mother is on the phone with her aunt in America, and the phone call is the chain, and the chain doesn't break.

In the morning, I made chicken soup. For whom? For Miriam, who cannot eat it because she is in Tel Aviv. For Noa, who cannot eat it because she is in a hospital. For myself, then. For the making. For the steam that rises from the pot like a prayer and dissipates into the kitchen air and carries with it the only medicine I know. I cannot fly to Tel Aviv. I cannot hold Noa's hand. I can make soup. The soup is the gesture. The gesture is the love. I will freeze the soup and send it when Noa is home, the way Jewish women have been sending soup to the wounded since there were Jewish women and there were wounds.

Marvin slept through the phone call. Marvin sleeps through everything now. I did not wake him. I did not tell him about Noa, because telling him would mean explaining who Noa is and who Miriam is and why a phone call at two a.m. makes me cry, and the explanations are too heavy for a mind that can barely hold the present, let alone the family tree.

The soup is in the freezer. Noa will recover. Miriam will breathe again. The chain stretches thin but does not break. Not today.

This is the soup I made that morning — the one sitting in my freezer right now, waiting for Noa to come home. Matzo ball soup is not a recipe in my house; it is a reflex, the thing my hands know how to do when my heart doesn’t know what else to do. I chose it because it is what my mother made, and what her mother made, and because some gestures are older than grief and outlast it.

Matzo Ball Soup

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 1 hour 30 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 50 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• For the matzo balls:
• 4 large eggs
• 1/4 cup schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) or vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup chicken broth or seltzer water
• 1 cup matzo meal
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 tablespoons fresh dill, finely chopped (optional)
• For the soup:
• 1 whole chicken (3 to 4 pounds), cut into pieces, or equivalent bone-in parts
• 3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch rounds
• 3 stalks celery, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 large onion, halved
• 1 parsnip, peeled and halved (optional)
• 1 bunch fresh dill
• 1 bunch fresh parsley
• 10 cups cold water
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

1. Make the matzo ball mixture. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, schmaltz or oil, and broth or seltzer. Stir in the matzo meal, salt, pepper, and dill if using until just combined. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes — this is not optional; the rest is what makes them light.
2. Build the broth. Place the chicken pieces in a large stockpot and cover with the cold water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, skimming the foam from the surface as it rises. This skimming matters: a clear broth is a patient broth.
3. Add the vegetables and aromatics. Once the broth is relatively clear, add the onion, carrots, celery, parsnip, dill, parsley, salt, and pepper. Reduce heat to low and simmer, partially covered, for 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes, until the chicken is very tender and the broth is golden and fragrant.
4. Form and cook the matzo balls. While the soup simmers, bring a separate large pot of salted water to a boil. With wet hands, gently roll the chilled matzo ball mixture into balls about 1 inch in diameter — do not pack them tightly. Drop them carefully into the boiling water, cover, and cook for 30 to 35 minutes without lifting the lid. They will puff and float.
5. Finish the soup. Remove the chicken and shred the meat, discarding skin and bones. Strain the broth through a fine-mesh sieve, discarding the spent vegetables (they have given everything they had). Return the broth and shredded chicken to the pot. Taste and adjust salt.
6. Serve or freeze. Ladle hot broth with chicken into bowls. Add two or three matzo balls per serving. Garnish with fresh dill if desired. To freeze: cool completely, store broth and matzo balls separately, and ship with love when the time comes.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 310 | Protein: 28g | Fat: 14g | Carbs: 18g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 620mg