Culinary experiments for the gals

The life of a Rebbetzin, while always glamorous, is also filled with downtime. Opportunity must be made to knock, because it rarely gets to the door otherwise. Things must be done to hold back the ominous "Curse of the Trailing Spouse" (according to some members of the Sisterhood, if you start sitting around making handicrafts, you know you've lost the battle.)

I've made a few choices to steer myself away from the knitted samurai toilet cozies and the lacquered tzedakah-sake box combos. I've started running for one. And as soon as I can afford a new stick, I'm looking into the street hockey league I found out about.




But it's not all about being svelte enough to maintain my low cut Shavuos numbers. I've been sorting out the Shul's library. (Bad humor books in English, Hebrew, and Japanese!)  And now I've been asked to step up to a new and truly honored position.

Our Jewish Japanese Wives Club used to have regular cooking classes of Jewish favorites. Yes, yes, I can hear you now: Why would we ruin healthy light eating by frying it in oil and adding sour cream? Because we're Jewish and if we don't get heartburn on a regular basis, we go into shock. Even the converts.

And now, due to various folks sampling my wares, I've been asked to teach the class. Next Sunday will be the first session and quite a turn-out is expected. The requirements are that it has to be translatable to available Japanese ingredients and the class will be held in our Kashered Industrial Shul Kitchen, not my rather snug Rebbetzin kitchenette, so we have to follow the proper hard-to-find ingredients list.

The Rabbi is pretty hardcore about the kashrut aspects, but thankfully he makes a great taster, so he gets to eat the prep meals.

The first class will involve a kugel and a honey cake. Both are pretty easy, expandable, and like any good Jewish meal, can easily be frozen and taken out when "company comes over." (Because nothing says friendship like partially freezer burnt baked goods...just ask my bubbe!)

I'm actually not a huge fan of traditional luchsen kugel with the cottage cheese and raisins, so I decided my cabbage-noodle kugel would be good. I went through ingredients and it all seemed to check:

cabbage: check
garlic: check
oil: check
eggs: check
salt & pepper: check
broth: maybe an issue, but some dashi in water does the trick
poppy seeds: not as such, but toasted sesame seeds would work
egg noodles: ok, now we have a problem.

It seems Japan, the biggest Noodle Town there is, doesn't really have something similar. They could probably be found at the incredibly overpriced foreign supermarket, but that doesn't fit criteria of "easily available."
Ramen is too thin. Somen, ditto. Soba was suggested, but I think the flavor would overpower the rest of the dish. Kishimen is close to regular linguine, but not really egg noodle.

I tried two versions at once, Soba and Kishimen. (More work for the Rabbi, but he needs to get away from that Mishnah once in a while):

The results?

The soba version looks pretty, but as I had predicted, the buckwheat taste was too overpowering. And it got somewhat mushy.

The kishimen had a nice kugel finish. It absorbed all the good oily, garlicky stuff and kept it's shape as well. 

I thought we were all ready, but now the Rabbi (after eating much of both kugels) points out that neither of these noodles is kashrut, so the big kitchen may be off limits to them. As a Rebbetzin, I feel I have three options of response to this last minute decree:

1) Smack the Rabbi upside the head with the Le Crueset holding the leftovers

2) Run off in tears and start learning how to decoupage the light fixtures

3) Find yet another substitute

I know I'll be following the third option and holding the first option for some future Holiday Season. But if I ever start doing the second one, please come and put me out of my misery.