Recipes of the Weird or Adventures in Kugel and Slop

In spite of it being the thesis of this blog, I am continuously fascinated by how making my way through recipes my family has eaten and continues to eat, I stumble upon bits of history.  And sometimes history no one has thought to talk about for several years… because the food is as much a piece of the present, why question how it got to be tradition?

Indeed, the regularity of a few dishes makes me forget that it is odd we serve something… like noodle kugel at our Irish/French Canadian Catholic Christmas feast.  And Easter feast for that matter.  I think I’ve been aware it is a traditional Jewish dish for a while – maybe not always – but long enough to know that it isn’t… well… as logical as boiled dinner or meat pies.  But whatever, we do have a lot of varied dishes at each and every one of our holidays.  We have a lot of good cooks.  Cooks who like to venture outside of the comfort zone. 

My grandmother definitely set the bar for that one.  Last week when I made the dressing in her kitchen and was looking for the bread crumb grinder in all the drawers, I found a whole drawer of cookbooks in that pantry closet.  So many many cookbooks (in addition to the recipe cards I make my way through now).  Some were just binders of magazine clippings.  Things that may have been foreign to our heritage… but are now typical entries in the sweets category.  

But kugel?  There isn’t a Jewish cookbook in that drawer.  And, it is something that amused my cousin’s husband on his first Christmas feast… and provoked a conversation that inspired my December supper club theme.  That family dish you have every year but have no idea why or where on earth it comes from.

So I made noodle kugel… or as my grandmother’s recipe card says, Noodle Pudding (which is pretty much a translation of kugel).  This dish is not my grandmother’s recipe.  It came to us from my aunt… but has been around so long I forgot (or maybe never knew) the reason why.  A quick conversation with my mother today reminded me that my aunt was married to someone from a Lithuanian family… and the big mystery was solved without a lot of hoopla.

Anyway, it is definitely not a typical Irish or French dish.  It definitely has that Eastern European quality of lots of sour cream and butter.  My grandmother’s recipe card calls for Velveeta, but the idea of touching Velveeta makes me gag, so I substituted a package of cream cheese and half a container of ricotta.   My milk had also turned a little past a decent aroma, so I substituted almond milk.  It didn’t make the flavor suffer one bit.  These substitutions also didn’t really do much to make it healthier – because did I mention a whole STICK of butter.  

Noodle Pudding (Kugel)

½- ¾ lb egg noodles (one typical package)
1 16 oz. large curd cottage cheese
½ small package velveeta cheese (which I did not use.  Blech)
1 c. sour cream
¼ lb melted butter
Cook noodles as directed and slice or grate cheese and mix with other ingredients.  Pour into greased 9x13 pan.  Then mix 4 eggs (beaten), plus ½ c sugar, 1 ½ cups milk, 4 tsp vanilla.  Pour over first mixture.  Coat heavily with cinnamon and sugar.  Bake 1 ¼ hour in 350° oven.  Bake about 1 hour then shut off oven and leave in oven for 10-15 minutes.  Freezes well (also good cold)

Optional: Eliminate sugar, add more velveeta (really?  Gross)  for less dessert like taste.  Or add 1 box raisins to mixture.

This was a huge hit at the dinner table.  Not that I’m shocked, really.

And seeing that the theme of dinner was weird traditions, I thought I would take out a weird dessert. – something that we don’t have regularly, but is somewhat legendary.  There was an ill-fated attempt at one of my grandmother’s birthday parties a few years back.  I don’t remember thinking it all too appetizing.  But I figured I would challenge myself with a classic recipe of the 1950’s Brennan household, affectionately known as Slop.  

Sounds appealing, no?  Yeah, I pulled out the typed recipe card and laughed at myself for deciding to subject my guests to this after dinner concoction.  I mean… I’m the one who refused to use Velveeta, but sure, why not Fluff?

It is actually a pretty easy recipe.  Basically, you cook the rice, add the fluff and pineapple.  Let it chill out in the fridge.  Whip up some cream and add cherries.  It looks like rice pudding and the weirdness had a lot of hesitant first bites (myself included).  But, there were several second helpings… enough that the bowl was almost empty when I cleared all the dishes at evening’s end.  Go figure.  It was indeed delightful.

 

 Not really the best picture of the finished product, as the whipped cream decided to reflect the flash in the most blinding way, but it is actually kind of pretty with the cherries.  One could almost say festive for the holidays.