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This blog is for the purpose of all things related to the kitchen. This includes recipes, cool gadgets, and little anecdotes. Enjoy!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

And All God Said Was Don't Eat Bread!


In my family, Passover is always a big production. We have 25 guests relatives from out of town move into our house for 3 days. The food is never ending, and with my family there is never a dull quiet moment. Every year the same stories are retold, yet they never seem to get old. The same arguments and words are said at the Passover seder, and yet everyone still loves to hear them.

My mother cooks her heart out for this holiday. It is rare that we see her leave the kitchen. And after every meal everyone expresses how full they are and how they cannot fit another bite into their already bloated stomachs...yet a few hours later they are asking about the next meal.

Most would assume with all the dietary restrictions placed on us for these seven days it would be difficult to eat good food. On the contrary, we all say certain foods always come out so much better on Passover. We cannot explain it since the recipes are the same year round, and yet for some reason we all agree it tastes much better this time.

One of these foods is potato kugel. I make potato year round, it's my go to kugel for shabbat. Don't get me wrong, I am very proud of my potato kugel. I like to think of it as delicious. Nevertheless, I still know that when Passover comes around...all my potato kugels will be put to shame by this one. The most important trick I learned from my mother is to make sure to heat up the oil before pouring it into the mix. So I always put the oil in the pan first and put that in the oven for 15 minutes or so and add that in last, right before placing the whole kugel in the oven. I find it helps to really give the kugel a great golden brown look.

I will place a warning attached with this recipe. It seems to run in my family that we all have our faux pas with potato kugel. My mother has yet to live down this story and it is from before she was even married to my father. She was preparing a potato kugel for shabbat and made sure to add pepper to the kugel since she knew my father liked it. The kugel turned out to be inedible because of the copious amounts of pepper.

I too messed up one of my first potato kugels, however to the opposite extreme. I made it one shabbat and forgot to add any sort of pepper or salt. Needless to say, it was a very bland mixture of potatoes.

So I remind you to check the recipe twice before putting it in the oven!

Potato Kugel

1/2 C. oil
8 medium potatoes
2 onions chopped
1 tablespoon salt
Black pepper
2 1/2 tablespoons flour
5 eggs

Heat oil in 9 x 13 pan in oven. Peel and grate potatoes and onions. Mix in
rest of ingredients. Add hot oil and mix. Pour into pan and bake at 400 F
for about and hour or until brown on top.

Enjoy!

Happy Passover!

1 comment:

  1. Warning: this potato kugel does NOT rise...I've learned from experience

    ReplyDelete