Honey Roasted Fig and Walnut Noodle Kugel

honey roasted FIG & WALNUT noodle kugel // a jewish fall casserole

It's been a bit over 6 months since my last post, so I figured that the new year would be a good excuse to try this out again.  I've completely forgotten all my HTML coding tricks, and haven't touched a real camera or edited photos in forever, but copying and pasting should do for now.

Lucky for me I have a long weekend off work for Rosh Hashanah, so with a bit of extra time on my hands I tried out another new spin on sweet noodle kugel.  Check out previous years' Pumpkin Spice Noodle Kugel or Apple Spice Noodle Kugel if you want some other fun twists.  Since my Aunt Bean's original noodle kugel recipe is very sweet and cheesy, adding honey-roasted figs and walnuts seemed like a pretty fitting way to add a new twist for 5776.  Of course, goat cheese is a classic fig/walnut/honey combination, but the dish is simply rich enough already with two cheeses and egg custard.  But go ahead and give it a whirl if you love goat cheese.

As with previous years, I'll warn you once again that the base recipe (everything minus the figs & walnuts) of this kugel is already pretty non-traditional.  It's very sweet and cheesy, and could easily be mistaken for a dessert casserole.  Of course, the point is to ring in a sweet new year.  Basically, it will ruin all other kugels you may be more accustomed to since it is so amazing.

The last 6 months have been busy ones, but I'll spare you all the stories about summer travels and new school years for some later posts (hopefully).  I'm looking forward to trying and sharing lots of Colombian dishes!  

Cheesy Apple Spice Noodle Kugel

CHEESY APPLE SPICE noodle KUGEL // a jewish fall casserole

Better late than never. That's what they say. And, I guess, sometimes they're wrong.  

In this case, they're very right.

The Jewish High Holidays may have come and gone, but there's always room for kugel on your Thanksgiving table, no matter your class or creed.  My mission is to make kugel a seasonal dish for the masses, and I declare it "Kugel Season." (And it's kuh-guhl, not koogle).  There's really no better way to celebrate the coming of the fall chill, and the dusting off of your post-holiday meal sweatpants.  I believe last year I fully explained how nonsensical and genius this "casserole" is, but let's do a recap: 

Mac & Cheese 

+ 

Graham Cracker Crust Cheesecake 

= 

Amazing  

It's math.

Add to that formula the classic fall favorite, spiced apples, and you're going to be the Einstein of your holiday feasting. If you're just jumping on the pumpkin spiced everything bandwagon, you can check out last year's modification: Pumpkin Spice Noodle Kugel.  But, pumpkin spice is so 5774.

And, to be honest, I liked this apple spice version better than last year's pumpkin experiment.  If you're into apple pies that feature cheese, you're going to be into this.  Plus, I thought the apples did a great job of cutting the very rich and sweet cheesy noodle custard filling (whereas the pumpkin enhanced both).  Another modification to last year - and to my Aunt Bean's original recipe - was to cut out the center layer of graham cracker crust. I did this completely by accident, immediately thinking "YOM DISASTER 5775 IS GOING TO BE AWFUL THIS IS WORSE THAN THE FACT THAT I'M NOT EVEN TRYING TO FAST" but really preferred the end result.  It also cut back just a little on the immediate need for sweatpants after consuming.

May 5775 be the year of happy accidents, and many more kugels.  But, truly, if you're new to the kugel concept, or if you're just not from the South or Midwest, don't be turned off by the prospects of making this ten-pound dish of guilty pleasure.  Nothing rivals kugel, and you won't know it until you try it.  The point is to celebrate the sweetness of life from time to time, especially on holidays with family and friends.  

Pumpkin Spice Noodle Kugel

Noodle kugel is a strange and amazing dish.  I have no clue how this super-sweet casserole came to be a Jewish-American staple for all holidays (except Passover).  Like many Jewish culinary oddities, it is as sweet as a dessert, but we eat it as a side and have equally sweet desserts after the meal is over.  And, no one ever says, "I think I'll just have more kugel for dessert," either because there isn't any kugel left or because the family has already fought over who gets to bring the leftovers home to eat for breakfast the next day.

My family's kugel is probably more over-the-top than mainstream recipes.  If you do a search for noodle kugel, you'll see images of a casserole with browned, crispy noodles poking out of a custardy filling.  Chances are that filling is made from eggs, cottage cheese, and some butter.  What you'll notice right away about my aunt Bean's version is that it adds a thick, crunchy graham cracker crust that bakes into layers of both American and cream cheese.  Imagine a marriage between cheesecake and kugel.  I've had plenty of noodle kugels in my life, and this is hands down the best I've ever tasted.

Considering it's Thanksgivukkah, I upped the ante and made the custard filling pumpkin pie flavored.  I have no idea how my family will respond to the liberty I took adapting the recipe.  The taste is amazing, but I know I'll bring a second dish of the "traditional" recipe for those family members who have been looking forward to this kugel since Rosh Hashannah.  If you want my aunt Bean's traditional recipe, just leave out the pumpkin, nutmeg, and allspice.

Hasselback Sweet Potatoes with Apple Chutney

It seems that this weekend everyone in the food blogosphere had the same idea: hasselback sweet potatoes.  You know this is true when it comes up in a Buzzfeed post.   Well I can't blame everyone, seeing that fall is sort of upon us.  This recipe is fall flavor bomb with cranberries, walnuts, apples, maple syrup, and cinnamon.  

My motivation, which you'll trust was initially conjured up in my own mind, was in search of something to celebrate Rosh Hashanah.  In other words, a ridiculously sweet dish that features apples and honey, but still manages to use onions and garlic as base flavors.  Seeing that I'm not a big fan of tzimmis, the traditional vegetable dish that satisfies these requirements, I went looking for an alternative.  I wound up combining two ideas - one for an apple chutney and the other for hasselback sweet potatoes (thanks to Tea & Cake and My Recession Kitchen for the help).  I tried to keep it as healthy as possible, using no refined sugars and just a touch of butter (but you could eliminate that completely if you wanted to use oil and keep it vegan).  Of course, you could just make the apple chutney recipe below and use it for a slew of other recipes besides these sweet potatoes. 

Whether you're celebrating Rosh Hashanah this week or not, I hope the change of season brings you "sweet new year."  These hasselbacks should help.

salted caramel matzo bark

Growing up The Ten Commandments was, like, one of my favorite movies.  Passover was my favorite holiday.  These two facts are odd.  What's more odd (maybe) is that for most of my life I thought these two events went together.  

Wait, that is not odd at all!  Of course the The Ten Commandments is on the tube for Passover.  That seems really obvious to me.  All of my Easter-celebrating friends should be saying to themselves right now, "Crap, that is really confusing for a young Jewish child with a strange affinity for this old Charlton Heston-as-Moses classic and a holiday about plagues, blood, slavery, and depravation."

Passover Seder, 2013

I swear it was only about seven years ago that my Catholic grandmother told me that The Ten Commandments is broadcast every year for Easter, not Passover.  I think I was too shocked to have a theological conversation as to why, or, a cultural conversation as to why this seems done to intentionally confuse the small members of Tribe. 

So, yeah, I grew up in a multi-faith family with a much heavier leaning towards Judaism considering I'm a Hebrew school dropout whose favorite holiday is Passover.    However, as a historian of Western Civilization I have to know a damn lot about Christian theology.  Also, I spent a few years of college required to read the Old and New Testaments multiple times for my English degree (for all the biblical references in Western lit.), and I actually very much enjoyed going with my roommate to her evangelical Bible study group to talk about the text.  For me, that was purely an extension of my literary studies, but did I mention they were evangelicals?  No sweat, my first time being cornered with a serious three-hour conversion attempt by born-again evangelicals was when I was fifteen.  No joke, but story for another post, perhaps. 

Anyways, here's what I've learned from all that religious hubbub: 1) I may not be Christian, but Jesus is just alright with me and generally people of all faiths should be more Christ-like (progressive rebels who want to be bit poorer so that the poor are less poor and who love and accept all humans), 2) I still don't know a sound theological reason why the story of the Hebrews fleeing Egypt turned into a film epic should be shown for Easter. 

DVR set for next Saturday's airing of The Ten Commandments.  Happy Passover.