MATZO PIE

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Take a half-stick of butter and rub it along the bottom and sides of a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Melt the rest of the butter in a very large skillet over medium heat, then add 3 sliced leeks (just the white and light green parts), 1 chopped onion and 4 minced cloves of garlic along with a few dashes of salt. Stir everything around until it’s soft, maybe 10 minutes or so. Add the entire 8-ounce bag of spinach and cook until wilted. It will seem like way too much spinach but it will magically reduce and you’ll be fine. Remove the skillet from the heat. Next, mix together 3 eggs, 3 cups cottage cheese, 2 cups feta cheese, ½ cup yogurt, ½ cup mozzarella, 1 tablespoon each fresh oregano and parsley and 1 teaspoon each fresh lemon zest and fresh mint. Set aside. (The very nice lady from QFC said that she blends her cottage cheese to make it smoother, but I lazily skipped this step and it still turned out fine, texture-wise.) Fill a shallow dish with warm water. Put 2 matzos in the water and let them soften for 1 to 2 minutes, no more. You’ll see the crackers get wrinkly and you might hear a slight popping noise as they expand, like Rice Krispies. Remove them and shake off as much water as you can. They may break apart, but that’s OK — just arrange the pieces, puzzlelike, so that they cover the bottom of the baking pan. Cover the matzo layer with half the cheese-and-egg mixture and then half the leek-and-onion mixture. Repeat the matzo-softening process with 2 or 3 more matzos, followed by another layer of cheese-and-egg and a final layer of leek-and-onion. Soften your last 2 or 3 matzos and put them on top. Whisk the remaining egg and brush it over the top. Bake it for 50 minutes. Don’t do what I did and try to put extra mozzarella cheese on top because it will burn, and then you’ll have to cover it up with even more cheese, and then you’ll put it back in the oven and it will burn even more. This is not like the exasperating lasagna I tried to make last year and (I can’t believe I’m s

Unbalanced

% Daily Values based on a 2,000 calorie diet