Jewish cooks are very territorial about their kugels. You bind noodles with eggs, enrich them with fat (butter, margarine, chicken fat, or oil), pepper the mixture with an endless variety of colorful and tasty additions, such as vegetables, fruit, and/or cheese – and, to quote my mother, “What could be bad?”
Often you find a hostess serving the same kugel year in year out, with so much oo-ing and ah-ing, for years, so why change kugels in midstream? Oh, the hostess will look at your recipe, but then comes that knowing smirk as she says, “But I have mine.”
Nothing prepared me for the lengths to which a kugel-maker would go to defend his or her own kugel until I wrote my family cookbook. Dozens were submitted; only a fraction of them could be printed. Choosing amongst them was a task better left to King Solomon. I called it “The Kugel Wars.” My editor thought she was cutting recipes – to me she was cutting cousins!
“Take mine!” “No, mine!” they all pleaded. It got ugly. Otherwise perfectly agreeable cousins practically came to blows extolling the virtues of …what? We’re talking a noodle concoction here.
According to tradition, the kugel is Sabbath fare, imbuing it with almost mystical qualities. Its origins can be traced to the Middle Ages, when it was cooked along with the cholent (Sabbath stew). In a paper entitled “Holy Kugel: The Sanctification of Ashkenazic Ethnic Foods in Hasidism,” Professor Allan Nadler discusses the symbolism attributed to this humble pudding by the Hasidic rabbis:
That the most common and simple of all the Sabbath foods – kugel – became the most elevated and imbued with mystical significance in Hasidic lore is entirely consistent with Hasidism’s original nature as a populist movement that sanctified the mundane experiences of the simple, untutored Jewish masses.
Jerusalem kugel is named after the city of Jerusalem. Legend has it that it originated in Jerusalem with the followers of the Vilna Gaon in the 18th century.
What better way to celebrate Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), falling on June 2, than with a Jerusalem Kugel. While my mother’s family prefers kugels of the sweet, cheesy variety – sweet enough to be thought of as dessert, but usually served as a side dish – a recipe for Jerusalem Kugel, sent by my father’s cousin, Nehama Hashman from Haifa, was new to me. Known there as Kugel Yerushalmi, Jerusalem Kugel is very dense and both savory, from its heavy dose of pepper, and sweet, from caramelized sugar.
I met Nehama when I visited Israel in 1990, but I had often heard the harrowing story of her family’s escape from the Nazis. Like my dad, she was born in Sambor, Poland (presently in the Ukraine). Unlike my father, who came to America as a child of eleven in 1930 with his family, Nehama’s family remained in Sambor. She was just five years old when the Nazis swept through the town on August 4, 1942. Only twenty Jews in the entire town were saved, among them little Nehama and her mother and father, who were hidden in a railway station for sixteen months by the gentile manager of a restaurant. After the war the family immigrated to Israel, where Nehama’s sister was born, to build a new life. For many years she corresponded with the righteous gentile who protected them, and she recently gave testimony to these events through Steven Spielberg’s Shoah project.
Jerusalem Kugel, she told me, is traditionally served for the Sabbath kiddush and therefore is prepared by the observant before sundown on Friday and cooked in a slow oven overnight. Gil Marks in “The World of Jewish Cooking” mentions that the dish was popularized by the Hasidim of Eastern Europe, who began immigrating to the Holy Land in the late 1700s “in order to live a more fully religious life.”
Typically it is accompanied by pickles, so all four taste sensations — sour, salty, bitter (well, at least peppery), and sweet — collide at once. According to Aviva Goldstein, writing for www.jewishmag.com: “The combination seems to be so deeply rooted in the Jerusalem culture that to serve the kugel without a pickle is like ordering corned beef on white bread with mayonnaise.”
Israelis use a lot of pepper — I’ve seen recipes calling for 2 teaspoons or more – but ¾ teaspoon was all I could handle. Let your palate be your guide.
Preparing the caramel can be a little tricky. The sugar caramelizes in the oil, but the oil and sugar never come together. As soon as the sugar turns deep amber in color, remove it from the heat and pour the mixture into the noodles. Cook it any longer and your kugel will taste burnt.
Because the kugel’s origins are so intimately connected with that of cholent, I am including my Grandma Ruchel’s recipe for the Sabbath stew, as interpreted and modified through the years by my Aunt Isabelle. Any fresh vegetable, grain, and/or beans can be added to cholent; any meat, chicken, or none at all. “Use your imagination!” instructed Aunt Isabelle, and so I did with my Had-to-Try-It Cholent. Enjoy!
Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of “Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family” and can be found on the web at www.cookingjewish.com.
Nehama Hashman’s Jerusalem Kugel
Serves 10 to 12
Ingredients:
- Vegetable oil, for greasing the tube pan
- Kosher (coarse) salt
- 1 lb. fine egg noodles
- 4 large eggs
- ¾ cup sugar, or more to taste
- ¾ teaspoon black pepper, or more to taste
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- ¾ cup raisins (optional)
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 300°F. Grease a tube pan with removable bottom.
- Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add the noodles and cook until al dente, about 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, beat the eggs, ¼ cup of the sugar, 1½ teaspoons salt, ½ teaspoon of the pepper, and the cinnamon in a large bowl.
- Drain the noodles well and place them in another large bowl.
- Prepare the caramel: Heat the remaining ½ cup sugar and the oil in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar starts to clump, about 9 minutes. During this process, do not answer the phone or doorbell. Start stirring constantly. The clumps will recombine and the sugar will start turning from white to tan to amber in a matter of seconds. (At no time will the sugar and oil combine.) The moment the sugar turns deep amber, remove the pan from the heat and pour the caramel and oil into the noodles, stirring constantly until thoroughly combined.
- Stir the hot noodle mixture, a spoonful at a time at first, into the egg mixture. As the eggs adjust to the heat of the noodles, you can incorporate larger and larger amounts of the noodles until all are thoroughly combined. Add ½ teaspoon salt and the remaining ¼ teaspoon pepper, or to taste (see Note). Add more sugar if needed. Stir in the raisins, if using.
- Transfer the mixture to the prepared tube pan, cover it tightly with aluminum foil, and bake for 2 hours.
- To serve, very carefully remove the foil. (Maybe it’s the pepper, but this fiery kugel really spews steam! Ouch!) Allow the kugel to cool in the pan for a few moments. Then run a flat knife around the side of the pan and around the tube (this may be unnecessary if your tube pan is nonstick). Grasp the tube with a towel or potholder and lift it out of the pan. Loosen the bottom of the kugel with a flat knife.
- Slice the kugel with a serrated knife and serve, crusty side up.
Note: To taste the mixture, or any mixture containing raw eggs, microwave a Tablespoon or so until the egg is cooked, 5 to 15 seconds; then taste.
Source: “Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family” (Workman) by Judy Bart Kancigor
Grandma Ruchel’s Cholent
Serves an army
Ingredients:
- ¾ cup dried baby lima beans, rinsed and picked over
- ¾ cup dried kidney beans, rinsed and picked over
- ¾ cup dried yellow split peas, rinsed and picked over
- ¾ cup dried lentils, rinsed and picked over
- 4 lbs. beef flanken or brisket, or a combination
- 2 large onions, chopped
- 3 medium-size (about 1 lb.) russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 Tablespoon kosher (coarse) salt, or to taste
- 1 teaspoon good-quality paprika
- ½ teaspoon black pepper, or to taste
- 2 cups dry red wine
Instructions:
- Combine the lima beans and kidney beans in a large bowl, and add water to cover (about 4 quarts). Set aside to soak overnight.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Drain and rinse the beans.
- Combine the beans, split peas, lentils, meat, and all the remaining ingredients in a Dutch oven or other large, heavy, ovenproof pot. Add water to cover. Bake, covered, for 1½ hours.
- Reduce the oven temperature to 250°F and continue cooking, covered, for 10 to 24 hours. (The longer it cooks, the thicker the mixture will be.) An hour or two before serving, check for seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed. If you like a thicker cholent, uncover the pot and finish cooking. If it is too thick, add some water, re-cover the pot, and continue cooking.
- Spoon the cholent onto plates, and serve.
Source: “Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family” (Workman) by Judy Bart Kancigor
Had-to-Try-It Cholent
Ingredients:
- 2 to 3 lbs. first-cut beef brisket
- 1 cellophane package (12 oz.) bean soup mix with seasoning packet, such as Manischewitz Four Bean or Hearty Bean
- 1¼ cups pearled barley, rinsed
- 5 small potatoes, quartered
- 2 large onions, chopped
- 8 oz. baby carrots
- 2 ribs celery, cut into ¼-inch-thick slices
- 5 parsnips, cut into ¼-inch-thick slices
- 10 cloves garlic, sliced
- ¼ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
- ¼ cup prepared barbecue sauce
- 2 Tablespoons honey
- 3 bay leaves
- 2 cups dry red wine
- Kosher (coarse) salt and black pepper to taste
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Arrange all the ingredients in a Dutch oven or other large, heavy, ovenproof pot. Add water to cover, cover the pot, and bake for 1½ hours.
- Reduce the oven temperature to 250°F and continue cooking, covered, for 10 to 24 hours. (The longer it cooks, the thicker the mixture will be.)
- An hour or two before serving, check for seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed.
- If you like a thicker cholent, uncover the pot and finish cooking. If it is too thick, add some water, re-cover the pot, and continue cooking.
- Spoon the cholent onto plates, and serve.
Source: “Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family” (Workman) by Judy Bart Kancigor. Serves same army, different regiment
The words of this author reflect his/her own opinions and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Orthodox Union.