In our mixed religion family, we celebrate the traditions of both Hanukkah and Christmas. Now that Hanukkah has started, last night we had our holiday dinner. I made brisket, potato latkes, noodle kugel and a green vegetable (cross between broccoli and cauliflower called brocoflower, just to have something different). Grace helped with all the cooking, especially the egg-cracking.
These are all things I have made before, but I have somehow mis-placed some of my recipes and have to keep asking my mom for particular recipes. I tried searching the internet for some of them , but I’ve found that when searching traditional, family recipes, every recipe is slighly different and not quite right.
I knew the brisket recipe, I had a cookbook recipe for the latkas, but I needed the proportions of the kugel. My mom gave me the ingredients from a recent kugel that she made, and even that was not quite right. As my mom has updated her recipes to be healthier, she tells me things like, I used 1/4 cup of Splenda, so you can use 1/4 cup of sugar. This was after I called her back and asked if she sweetened it with anything other than the apricot jam she told me to buy. This was not part of the traditional recipe. The kugel I grew up eating was loaded with sugar. That’s why it was so good.
In the end, Grace and I decided to use 1 cup of sugar and no apricot jam. We created a kugel, and a dinner, to remember.
