Potato-Leek Matzoh Balls

Alongside the golden-fried veal chop my mother made for me for the second seder meal was a tangle of commercial Passover noodles blanketed with tomato sauce. Tangle is definitely the word here: often the noodles were a gummy mess, inalterably linked together like synapses on a circuitous route. Copious amounts of her homemade tomato sauce—so good I could eat it with a spoon, and often did—camouflaged the noodles and made believe they were Italian.

All this came back to me when I ret