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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 \u2013 and, to quote my mother, \u201cWhat could be bad?\u201d<\/p>\n
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, \u201cBut I have mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cThe Kugel Wars.\u201d My editor thought she was cutting recipes \u2013 to me she was cutting cousins!<\/p>\n
\u201cTake mine!\u201d \u201cNo, mine!\u201d they all pleaded. It got ugly. Otherwise perfectly agreeable cousins practically came to blows extolling the virtues of \u2026what? We\u2019re talking a noodle concoction here.<\/p>\n
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<\/i> (Sabbath stew). In a paper entitled \u201cHoly Kugel: The Sanctification of Ashkenazic Ethnic Foods in Hasidism,\u201d Professor Allan Nadler discusses the symbolism attributed to this humble pudding by the Hasidic rabbis:<\/p>\n
That the most common and simple of all the Sabbath foods \u2013 kugel \u2013 became the most elevated and imbued with mystical significance in Hasidic lore is entirely consistent with Hasidism\u2019s original nature as a populist movement that sanctified the mundane experiences of the simple, untutored Jewish masses.<\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n What better way to celebrate Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), falling on June 2, than with a Jerusalem Kugel. While my mother\u2019s family prefers kugels of the sweet, cheesy variety \u2013 sweet enough to be thought of as dessert, but usually served as a side dish \u2013 a recipe for Jerusalem Kugel, sent by my father\u2019s cousin, Nehama Hashman from Haifa, was new to me. Known there as Kugel Yerushalmi<\/i>, Jerusalem Kugel is very dense and both savory, from its heavy dose of pepper, and sweet, from caramelized sugar.<\/p>\n I met Nehama when I visited Israel in 1990, but I had often heard the harrowing story of her family\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s Shoah project.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cThe World of Jewish Cooking\u201d mentions that the dish was popularized by the Hasidim of Eastern Europe, who began immigrating to the Holy Land in the late 1700s \u201cin order to live a more fully religious life.\u201d<\/p>\n 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: \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Israelis use a lot of pepper — I\u2019ve seen recipes calling for 2 teaspoons or more \u2013 but \u00be teaspoon was all I could handle. Let your palate be your guide.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Because the kugel\u2019s origins are so intimately connected with that of cholent, I am including my Grandma Ruchel\u2019s 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. \u201cUse your imagination!\u201d instructed Aunt Isabelle, and so I did with my Had-to-Try-It Cholent. Enjoy!<\/p>\n Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of \u201cCooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family\u201d and can be found on the web at www.cookingjewish.com. <\/i><\/i><\/p>\n Serves 10 to 12<\/p>\n 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.<\/em><\/p>\n Source: \u201cCooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family\u201d (Workman) by Judy Bart Kancigor<\/em><\/p>\n Serves an army<\/p>\n Source: \u201cCooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family\u201d (Workman) by Judy Bart Kancigor<\/em><\/p>\n Source: \u201cCooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family\u201d (Workman) by Judy Bart Kancigor.\u00a0<\/em>Serves same army, different regiment<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 \u2013 and, to quote my mother, \u201cWhat could be bad?\u201d Often you find a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":219,"featured_media":43586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","category-recipes"],"yoast_head":"\nNehama Hashman\u2019s Jerusalem Kugel<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
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\nGrandma Ruchel’s Cholent<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
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\nHad-to-Try-It\u00a0Cholent<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
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