If this is your first time reading this column, this much is important to know: I love sandwiches. I spend long car rides gazing out the window, imagining pastrami on rye; savory salami and melted provolone on crusty baguettes pervade my dreams.
So for me, as both a lover of sandwiches and a Jew, this week has been especially difficult. The Torah mandates that in honor of the Passover holiday, I forego the consumption of leavened bread. I have been faced with a conundrum. A week without sandwiches? It's my worst nightmare come true.
There are many theories about the meaning and purpose of the Passover matzah, but the one that I subscribe to goes as follows: In the book of Exodus, Moses' Israelites were forced to flee Egypt very quickly, where they had been slaves under an unruly pharaoh. These Israelites did not have time to wait for their dough to rise; instead, walking through the desert, the dough on their backs was baked by the sun.
The result was a flat, cracker−like substance — not a very flavorful food, but enough to last them a while on their desert voyage.
Eating matzah is both a bitter reminder of my ancestors' struggles and a reason to appreciate my current state of relative luxury. It forces me to practice self−restraint and make sacrifices, a theme that is present not only in Judaism but in other religions as well.
And nowhere has this sacrifice been more present than in my feeble attempts to use matzah to construct sandwiches in the dining hall. Matzah presents many problems for a sandwich−maker. First off, it is extremely bland and adds no flavor to a potential sandwich. Second, its thin, crusty texture renders it unable to soak up mustard, mayo, vinegar or any other condiment. And finally, even if one is able to find a way to create a flavorful sandwich combo, matzah's fragile construction makes it unable to bend with a consumer's bite, causing what was once a sandwich to ultimately come to a tragic, crumbly, messy end.
I have found this week that the best way to utilize matzah in a sandwich format is to only use one piece, and then put a spread on it. The result here is what some would call an "open−faced" sandwich, though as I stated in my column a few weeks ago, anyone who claims that a true sandwich can be open−faced is just as oxymoronic as that guy down the hall who insists that his open relationship isn't going to end with someone getting hurt.
Peanut butter and jelly spread on a piece of matzah isn't half bad, and neither is melting some cheese, adding tomato sauce and salami, and creating a matzah pizza. The less matzah you use, the better. The topping should be the star here, and the hope is that it will overshadow matzah's lack of flavor. If all else fails, follow a basic law of lunch hall dining: If it doesn't taste good, just smother the whole deal in Nutella.
Look, I'm no Moses. Making a delicious sandwich with matzah is the food equivalent of parting the Red Sea, and I'm not a man of miracles. This week has been tough, but that's the point. While I have gotten by with using matzah as a cracker to be dipped in guacamole or salsa, or smeared with peanut butter or Nutella, using matzah to make a sandwich would not do justice to the sandwich genre.
Instead I will wait, patiently, for Passover to conclude. And when I am freed from my sandwich exile, I will once more return to that land between the slices where I feel at home, but this time with taste buds even more excited than before.
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Ben Kochman is a freshman who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Benjamin.Kochman@tufts.edu.
