When Hillary Sterling, the chef at Ci Siamo in New York City, created a homemade matzo recipe for her restaurant, she was not picturing those perforated squares in the cardboard box.
Her muse was pane carasau, the crackerlike Sardinian flatbread that she once devoured on a trip to the region. Airy, dimpled and singed at the edges, the paper-thin flatbread reminded her of the blistered rounds of handmade shmurah matzo she ate during her childhood in Brooklyn. Except it was better.
The dough should be rolled extremely thin and baked quickly on high heat.Credit…Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.
The main difference between pane carasau and matzo, she learned, is that the Sardinian cracker is enriched with olive oil for tenderness and salt for flavor, while traditional matzo is made from just flour and water. Her recipe isn’t kosher for Passover, but that wasn’t the goal.
“Our job is to make people realize that matzo could actually be good,” she said.
Every year, she trains her cooks on how thin to roll the dough (extremely) and how long to bake it (quickly, at high heat on a heated pizza stone), so that it comes out crunchy and well browned all over.
The training always includes a sampling of commercial boxed matzo so the team can understand the difference.
“Once they taste bad matzo,” Ms. Sterling said, “they really see the importance of what we do.”
Her recipe, which I’ve adapted here, will be published in her new cookbook, “Ammazza!” which comes out in May. It’s not a Seder cookbook — the title, Roman slang for “wow,” has nothing to do with matzo crackers — but does include a Passover chapter featuring her takes on the classics: brisket, schmaltzy kugel and her Grandma’s boozy Jell-O spiked with brandy.
Roasted carrots pair beautifully with smoky, spicy harissa.Credit…Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.
One relatively radical idea she shares is to use the symbolic elements of the Seder plate as inspiration for dishes to serve throughout the meal. There’s a recipe for kumquat mostarda, which is a nod to the tradition of putting an orange on the Seder plate as an act of inclusion of L.G.B.T.Q. Jews, and another for roasted eggs with black pepper and pecorino. I was drawn to a simple harissa vinaigrette, which she pairs with roasted beets as a vegetarian stand-in for the lamb shank. In my version, I use roasted carrots, which pair beautifully with the smoky, spicy dressing.
These dishes aren’t strictly traditional or kosher, but all of them have good stories behind them. And telling those stories together, Ms. Sterling said, is why we gather at the Passover table.
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