Wednesday, November 03, 2021
Kugel Yerushalmi (AKA
Yerushalmi Kugel or Jerusalem Kugel)*
is a strange dish for the uninitiated. It’s a kugel, but unlike a
crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside potato kugel, it’s not strictly
savory, and unlike a rich dairy noodle kugel, it’s not creamy and sweet with
raisins and/or fruit peeking out from among broad egg noodles. Those other
kugels were invented in Europe. But Kugel
Yerushalmi was born in Jerusalem.
From the Jewish
Exponent:
It all started in Lithuania. A wave of disciples of the Vilna Gaon arrived in the Holy Land in 1808, led by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Shklov. Although they first went to Tiberias, they later relocated to Tzfat, where they fostered warm relationships with the local Sephardic community. A second and third wave of students came to Israel in 1809, and purchased agricultural land.
But a plague broke out in 1812 in Tzfat, forcing many Jews to flee to Jerusalem. The refugees succeeded in renewing the Ashkenazi presence in Jerusalem after nearly 100 years of banishment by local Arabs. And they made Yerushalmi kugel.
They couldn't afford raisins, the story goes, so they browned sugar to make their kugels look dark. There is also a legend that local Jews of Polish descent preferred sweet kugels, while the Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews) opted for savory ones — hence the combination. I cannot vouch for the veracity of either of these stories.
Kugel Yerushalmi lore aside, it is a popular hobby these days to accuse Israeli Jews of stealing or
appropriating Arab or “Palestinian” food. Just how popular is this cute little
propaganda concept? I consulted Google. As it turns out, “stealing” is the
preferred term of those frantically searching Google for “facts” with which
they might demonize the Jews Zionists.
Here are the different search parameters I tried, with the approximate
number of search results yielded by each:
· *israeli appropriation of arab food* (6,360,000 results)
· *jews stealing arab food* (11,600,000 results)
· *israel stealing palestinian food* (12,200,000
results)
· *israel stealing arab food* (13,400,000 results)
· *israelis stealing arab food* (15,000,000
results)
Not that the accusations of nefarious Jewish food
thievery are true. An opinion piece for Haaretz
by Mor Altshuler, gives us the, er, skinny:
Couscous was known thousands of years ago as the “grain offering” that was sacrificed in the Temple in Jerusalem: “And when anyone brings a grain offering to the Lord, his offering shall be of fine flour [solet]; and he shall pour oil upon it, and put frankincense thereon” (Leviticus 2:1). Incidentally, frankincense was added to the recipe’s spices.
As for Palestinian freekeh (toasted green wheat), wheat and roast barley, they were all mentioned among the courtship customs of the Biblical Boaz, who gave roasted grain to Ruth the Moabite in the fields of Bethlehem. It was from their relationship that the House of David arose.
Nor is there any need to go back as far as the Bible. In southeastern Turkey, kubbeh, the glory of the Palestinian kitchen, is called “Jewish kofta” – that is, Jewish meatballs.
Jews invented kubbeh because it was their custom to eat meat on Shabbat, but it is religiously prohibited for them to slaughter animals or cook on that day. Before the refrigerator was invented, the solution was to wrap ground meat in dough and fry or bake it on Friday, so it wouldn’t spoil over Shabbat.
Similarly, eggplant and hummus, also ostensibly from the Palestinian kitchen, are mentioned in the records of the Spanish Inquisition as characteristic Jewish foods that could be used to identify people who formally converted to Christianity but secretly remained Jews. . . .
The greatest irony of all is olive oil, which has become the symbol of the Palestinian people. Olives are one of the seven species the Bible cites as acceptable offerings in the Temple, but they had a special status in the Bible because olive oil was used to anoint kings and priests and to light the menorah in the Temple. King Solomon paid with olive oil for the cedar trees he bought from King Hiram of Tyre to build the Temple (I Kings, 5:25).
Pliny the Elder wrote in the first century, in his book “Natural History,” that olives from the Land of Israel were beautiful and full of oil, and therefore they were imported to Rome (Nissim Krispil, “A Bag of Plants,” p. 169 in Hebrew). And there’s a hypothesis that the Roman occupiers uprooted the Jews’ olive trees to destroy their olive oil industry, which competed with their own.
In other words, the idea that we stole Arab food is total
crap. Facts and history aside, it’s a propaganda ploy, pure and simple. Except
not so pure. Really, really dirty. The part that makes me crazy is when the liars
propagandists say there’s no such thing as authentic Israeli food.
But back to our kugel. A couple of weeks ago, I got a
hankering for Kugel Yerushalmi. I
hadn’t made one in years. But making Kugel
Yerushalmi is like riding a bike. Once you learn how, you never forget.
Some background: During the 1980s, I tasted Kugel Yerushalmi for the first time, and
saw how everyone oohed and ahhed when it was brought out at a Kiddush. The look
and taste were intriguing, so I asked a neighbor to show me how to make it. I
jotted down her instructions in a tiny little notepad I had on me, and saved
that piece of paper for years.
(Two weeks ago, I finally typed it out properly. God forbid
my kids should someday have to inherit that tiny, oil-stained piece of paper of
a recipe.)
 |
| The original recipe on a teeny weeny piece of paper, saved for posterity |
I watched my neighbor make the kugel before braving it myself. Kugel Yerushalmi is made with very thin noodles mixed rapidly with a caramel and oil mixture that is ready only when on the verge of boiling over the pot and burning beyond repair. Which makes Kugel Yerushalmi a dangerous dish for the home cook to replicate. (I know someone who got third degree burns when the caramel splashed her as she was pouring it into the noodles on the day before her son’s bris, the reason she was making the kugel in the first place.)
Once the caramel and noodle mixture cools a bit, the cook
adds some beaten eggs and lots and lots of ground black pepper. (In fact, my
kids said I finally got it right when I used a full heaping tablespoon of
ground black pepper—some cooks double that amount.)
Maybe you thought that at this point, you slide the kugel
into the oven and an hour later, just like on the TV shows, a timer dings, and
it’s ready to serve. But a properly cooked Kugel
Yerushalmi is a deep, deep brown on the inside. If it isn’t the right color
on the inside, don’t eat it. Seriously. Just don’t. You can’t get that color
unless two factors are in play. 1) You have to cook the caramel way past when
you think it’s ready. 2) You have to bake the kugel very slow in a low oven,
and preferably overnight.
After looking on as my neighbor prepared this dish, I was
ready to make one myself. It came out great! My family loved it. I was psyched.
And as time went on, I got kind of small town famous for my kugel. At least on
our tiny settlement.
My kugel was so good that people were asking me if I would
sell it to them. Even the neighbor who taught me how to make it asked if I
would make it for her—mine came out better than hers, she said.
And so, a little cottage industry was born. I’d make a
humongous Kugel Yerushalmi every
week, using 7 pounds of noodles. I baked it overnight on Thursday, and on
Fridays, I’d sell it to my neighbors, weighing out the portions on a baby
scale. Sometimes, I’d even barter the kugel for services, for instance, in exchange
for yoga classes—what must have been a first in Kugel Yerushalmi history.
While I was making Kugel
Yerushalmi a couple of weeks ago, it came to me: I have never heard of an
Arab preparing, selling, eating, or claiming Kugel Yerushalmi as his own. Perhaps that will change after one of
them gets wind of this Jewish Jerusalem delicacy with its 19th
century roots. But for the meantime, it’s undeniable: Kugel Yerushalmi is a Jewish delicacy invented by Jews in
Jerusalem.
Kugel Yerushalmi is
ubiquitous at a Shabbos Kiddush, served with a pickle. But not just any pickle.
It has to be a pickle brined in vinegar.
No one eats those pickles at any other time; the Israeli
vinegar-brined pickles are terrible. For everyday eating, Israelis prefer
pickles brined in salt. A long vertical jiggly slice of a lukewarm
vinegar-brined pickle is nonetheless considered de rigueur as an accompaniment
to Kugel Yerushalmi. It adds a certain something.
(No, thank you. I take mine plain. But then I’m a purist.)
Kugel Yerushalmi
Yield: 12 or more
servings
Ingredients:
· 1 lb. (400 grams) thin soup noodles (lokshen)
· 1 tablespoon margarine
· ½ cup oil
· 1 ¼ cups sugar
· 2 eggs
· 1 teaspoon salt
· 2 teaspoons or up to 1 heaping tablespoon ground black pepper
Method:
1. Boil noodles in salted water for 4 minutes. Drain, place in a heat-proof mixing bowl, and toss with 1 tablespoon margarine.
2. In a medium-sized pot, combine the oil and the sugar. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. The mixture will bubble at the edges, then at the center, and will then foam up.
3. Here is where you need speed, strength and caution: Immediately remove the oil and sugar mixture from the heat, pour it over the noodles well away from you to avoid burns from the hot caramel, and working quickly, vigorously stir the mixture until no clumps remain.
4. The caramel residue in the pot will have already hardened. Not to worry. Beat the eggs in the pot with the fork and this will liquefy the caramel and mix it into the eggs. Add the eggs to the noodles. Any extra-stubborn caramel on your saucepan can be easily soaked away with water)
5. Add the salt and pepper (Jerusalemites like it hot! Some use as much as 2 tablespoons of pepper).
6. Pour the kugel mixture into a greased high, round, flat-topped metal mold as is traditional, or alternatively, a greased tube pan. Bake overnight at lowest oven setting, or if you prefer to cheat, for 3 hours at 300°F or until the top is crusty and brown, and a thin knife, inserted into the center of the kugel, comes out clean.
*Wikipedia erroneously
states that Kugel Yerushalmi is
sometimes known as “Galilean
kugel.” I asked around, and no one had ever heard the kugel referred to as
Galilean kugel. My friend Mark Kaplan even said, “I live in the Golan, right
next to the Galil... I've never heard it called Galilean Kugel.”
I looked at the footnotes for this Wikipedia entry, and somehow figured out that the reference is to a recipe for “Galilean Kugel with Bacon” in a Nancy Silverton cookbook called “Israel Eats.” Maybe she called it that to distinguish it from its kosher “cousin,” but it’s strictly Silverton’s own invention, and certainly not how anyone has ever referred to the real deal.
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