Kugel: its your great aunt Sadie bending over to kiss you and accidentally brushing you with her goiter.

What is Kugle? Well it can be many things, but essentially its is any incarnation of a casserole  associated with the vast repertoire of jewish comfort foods.  The definition is a little more specific than the one I just mentioned, but if its a casserole rolling out on shabbas and some kind old woman is politely telling you why their mother's old recipe is better, its probably a Kugel.  The debate begins with the fact that kugel can be savory or sweet and made with variety of ingredients as its foundation: carrots, potatoes, matzah, and zucchini to name a few. But as my personal preference and tradition would have it, kugle is most often sweet and made from noodles.  A sweet kugel is more like a noodle puding and is usually made with cottage cheese and egg to bind the noodles and make it creamy.  In addition to make the kugle sweet a fair amount of sugar and some type of fruit (often raisins) are added.  The recipe I am sharing with you is my grandmothers recipe.  The recipe is pretty standard, as it uses egg noodles as its base and what is now a common kugel sweetener crushed pineapple (I find it hard to believe my eastern european ancestors, or anyones for that matter, had much pineapple around).   This recipe also uses less butter than most which is a good thing... maybe.  So I encourage everyone to try this very easy recipe out so that now you can tell your jewish friends that not only do you know what kugel is, you can make it too.  How cool is that.

Oh and why is kugel like your Great Aunt Sadie's bending over to give you a kiss and accidentally brushing you with her goiter?  Its not, but heres why I said it. 

And some more Jewish humor: Old Jews Telling Jokes

Grandma's Kugel

Wet Ingredients:

5 tbs. melted butter

1 lg. carton small curd cottage cheese

1 can (aprox. 20 oz.) crushed pineapple

4 eggs

9 tbs. sugar

12 oz. med. egg noodles

1 tbs. sugar and cinnamon to sprinkle on top.

1. Boil water and prepare noodles

2.  Beat eggs and in large bowl mix in  butter, cottage cheese, pineapple, and sugar.

3.  Mix noodles with egg mixture (preferably while noodles are not fresh out of the boiling water so as to prevent curdling of  eggs)

4. Pour into casserole dish and sprinkle to with cinnamon and sugar to taste.  (Many people like a corn-flake/some type of crunch topping, as pictured above, which can easily be applied to this recipe, probably while slightly extending the cooking time)

5. Bake for 1 hr. at 350.

-let stand 5 min. 

Enjoy!