Using Your Noodle

Passport & Plate - Sweet & Savory Noodle Kugel

USA | Thursday, March 5, 2015 | 5 photos

Ingredients
1 lb. Package Extra Wide Egg Noodles
1 lb. (16 oz.) Cottage Cheese
1 lb. (16 oz.) Sour Cream
2 1/2 Cups Fresh Crushed Pineapple
4 Eggs
1/4 lb. (1 Stick) Butter
1/2 Cup Sugar
3 Pinches (about 1/4 tsp.) Ground Black Pepper
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon

How to prepare this recipe:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit
2. Cook noodles fully in salt water, drain and set aside in large bowl
3. Beat eggs, add cottage cheese and sour cream, mix well
4. Fold mixture into the noodles
5. Melt butter, pour about 3/4 of it into the mixture, set rest aside
6. Crush pineapple using either a food processor on a low setting or a bowl and a potato masher, add crushed pineapple to the mixture including any excess juice along with the sugar and pepper
7. Mix everything together for about 5 minutes
8. Pour mixture evenly into a greased 9x13 inch pan
9. Drizzle the remaining butter and sprinkle the cinnamon on top of the mixture
10. Bake for 60-75 minutes until top is browned
(Note: If you use a clear baking dish, you will know when the kugel is done because the boiling and bubbling below the top layer will stop)
Enjoy!

The story behind this recipe:
I have never met a person of Jewish descent who hasn't claimed that some family member of theirs makes the "best kugel." Mine, however, takes the cake (or the kugel...), and features a comical family story. Traditional "noodle pudding" recipes originated in Russia and other Western European countries. As the Nazis invaded Poland, my grandfather's parents were desperate to escape, and the only ship they could get on was headed to Cuba. My grandfather was one of less than 1,000 Cuban-born Jews and lived in the country until his family moved to the United States when he was 5, settling in Detroit, Michigan. He met my grandmother at a movie theatre where she was selling candy, and they fell in love and married. Throughout their marriage, my grandfather and grandmother constantly bickered about what kind of noodle kugel was actually best. My grandmother rooted for the sweet, sugary kind, substituting processed American ingredients like cottage cheese in for the things her mother used in Russia. My grandfather, however, insisted on something more savory. Finally, in preparation for a family gathering, as my grandmother was baking her signature sweet kugel, my grandfather snuck in 3 hefty pinches of ground black pepper. Somehow, the mixture of sweet and a little hint of savory kick was just what the recipe needed. Though the recipe is simple, and the ingredients uncomplicated, this dish is a staple in my family and represents a kind of yin and yang that is necessary both in love, and in food. I have had friends who do not like a single ingredient included in the recipe, fawn over hunks of the finished product. Though I am not religious anymore, this dish somehow connects me to my faith and my family's roots. When I eat a piece of kugel I taste my grandmother in her 1950s kitchen, my grandfather speaking Spanish and Yiddish as a young child, the difficulties of being an immigrant in America, and the love and compromise it took from them both to create a family.