“I am sacrificing my health for journalism this morning,” I tell my friend, Rona Gindin. “I’m having noodle kugel for breakfast.”
“I’m so jealous! MMMMMMMMM!” The response is swift and passionate. All caps is not an embellishment. I ask her why this extreme reaction.
“One is science,” she tells me. “It’s just delicious.”
And the other?
“It just brings me back. I do very little that’s Jewish in my life. Noodle kugel somehow brings back the warm fuzzies of the culture I was born in.”
Gindin is the longtime food writer behind Rona Recommends (ronagindin.com/recommends) and current dining editor for Winter Park magazine. She’s lived in Central Florida for ages and raised her children here, but like me, grew up on Long Island. And noodle kugel (my family called it noodle pudding) is a sweet, creamy, crunchy, buttery staple found on the tables of many Jewish families as we approach what’s often called the High Holy Days.
The first is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year (clocking in this year at sunset on Sept. 25). The second is Yom Kippur, the day of atonement (sunset, Oct. 4). Yes, this article is timed accordingly but to the surprise of no one who knows me, its inspiration had little to do with either. Rather an article I saw posted in my Facebook feed a while back, the title of which spoke directly to my clogged-but-happy, kugel-loving heart.
Please Stop Ruining Your Kugel with Cornflakes, by Laura Gottlieb, appeared as a July 2020 post in The Nosher (myjewishlearning.com/the-nosher), a feature on MyJewishLearning.com.
For those of you unfamiliar, noodle kugel is a dish of the Ashkenazi Jews, those from the diaspora that established communities in Germany, France and Eastern Europe. Roughly translated, kugel means “something round,” and so it makes sense that it was actually a dumpling in its earliest iteration.
It was also savory, which some noodle kugels still are. But not the ones that Gindin and I grew up with, which by the time we came around, had transformed, splitting off into something desserty, and far more puddinglike.
“Not Jell-O,” Gindin points out. “Bread.”
Indeed, it falls squarely into that British “pudding” compendium: carbs + butter + eggs + sugar + vanilla + baked. Add to this several creamy dairy components — sour cream, farmer, cottage and/or cream cheeses, and more; family recipes vary — and the warm, wonderfully autumnal notes of cinnamon and raisin, and you have the “scientifically” delicious flavors and textures Gindin previously referenced.
Along the way, some home cooks accessorized kugel with (sorry, I can’t contain myself) abominations like fruit cocktail and cornflakes.
The latter is supposed to make the top crunchy. But the top is already crunchy. And chewy. With delectably oven-browned egg noodles.
Mind you, I’m OK with both these things. Just keep them away from my kugel. In fact, the person who posted the article admitted that his mother tops hers with Frosted Flakes — but that he doesn’t like it. He also doesn’t like the raisins.
Gottlieb doesn’t care for them either, but “their place in history supersedes my taste buds,” she writes. I love her for this.
I sent the article to Gindin.
“We have to become friends with Laura Gottlieb,” she wrote to me. A thrilling prospect, but I am afraid. She might find my grandmother’s recipe anathema.
Minnie emigrated here as a teenager, by herself, from Czernowitz, a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire that is today the Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi. She landed at Ellis Island (where her name is now etched on the wall) and settled into a Brooklyn community of immigrants, many of whom were Italian.
I am so grateful, for Minnie’s noodle pudding recipe, which includes ricotta cheese, is the decadent, 10-pound love child born of kugel and Italian cheesecake. It also includes half-and-half.
“I think that would probably be better than mine,” says Gindin, who uses milk, along with farmer and cottage cheeses, specific brands even. “I love Italian cheesecake.”
But she won’t change her recipe. And she shouldn’t.
“I’m old-fashioned in some ways. It’s the recipe I know and use. This is just it.”
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Grandma Minnie’s Noodle Pudding (Kugel)
Serves a small army.
I wouldn’t change any of this recipe’s core, however Rona Gindin uses golden raisins in her kugel, which I think is neat. I may go half and half next time. She also scatters sliced almonds on the top. That sounds nice, too. If your kugel is finished, but the top hasn’t browned to where you like it, you can switch over to broil for a minute or so — but watch it closely and pull when it hits that perfect shade.
Ingredients
2 pounds wide egg noodles, cooked
2 pounds ricotta cheese
1 pound sour cream
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 cup half-and-half
5 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup raisins
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 stick unsalted butter
Cinnamon (for topping — but I’ve been known to throw 1/8 teaspoon into the mix, too)
Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cook and cool noodles. They don’t have to be ice cold. Drain well.
Place butter in large pan (something relatively deep, like a lasagna pan — will cook faster in something shallow) and put in oven to melt while mixing other ingredients. Keep an eye on it.
Mix all other ingredients in large bowl.
Remove pan from oven and pour everything in, combining mixture with melted butter. Top with cinnamon. Cover with foil.
Bake covered 20 minutes. Bake uncovered about 40 more. Done when butter knife inserted comes out mostly clean and top is brown and crunchy.
Allow to cool awhile so insides firm up.
