Amish Pasta Salad -- When Simple Noodles Taste Like Coming Home

Spring is showing up the way it does in Milwaukee — grudgingly, in fits and starts, like it's not sure it wants to commit. Forty-eight degrees on Monday. Snow on Wednesday. Fifty-five and sunny on Friday. The lake is still gray and angry, but the trees on Kinnickinnic Avenue have buds, and the guy at the corner bodega has started putting flowers outside, which in Bay View is basically a declaration of war against winter. I'm cooking every night now. Not because I have to — I could eat at the brewery, or grab something from the taqueria on Lincoln — but because I want to. Because something shifted after Babcia died, after those weeks of not being able to cook at all, and then cooking again and having the pierogi come out right for the first time. Something unlocked. I cook now the way I used to play hockey — with my whole body, without thinking too hard about it. This week I worked through three more of Babcia's recipe cards. The first was her potato pancakes — placki ziemniaczane. Simple enough: grated potatoes, onion, egg, flour, salt. Fry in oil until crispy. Serve with sour cream or applesauce. The trick, according to Babcia's handwriting (which gets harder to read the older the cards get), is to squeeze ALL the water out of the potatoes. She underlined ALL three times. I used a cheesecloth and wrung them like a dishrag. The first batch came out perfect — golden, crispy on the outside, tender inside. I ate six of them standing at the stove. The second card was for kluski — Polish egg noodles. Flour, eggs, salt, water. Roll thin, cut into strips, boil. Toss with butter and parsley. It sounds like nothing. It tastes like childhood. I made a big batch and brought them to Mom and Dad on Sunday. Mom put them in chicken soup and we ate it at the kitchen table and nobody said anything about the empty chair where Babcia used to sit, but we all looked at it. The third card I couldn't read. The ink has faded and Babcia's handwriting — always a mix of English and Polish — was particularly cryptic. Something about cabbage and vinegar and caraway seeds. I'm going to take it to Mrs. Wojcik at the Polish Center and see if she can decode it. Mrs. Wojcik is eighty-one and has been running pierogi classes since before I was born. She knew Babcia. She cried at the funeral. At the brewery, things are good. Marcus — the head brewer — has been letting me take more responsibility on the floor. This week I ran the mash schedule solo on Tuesday while he was in a meeting. Grain in, water temp, rest times, lautering — the whole thing. It went smooth. Marcus checked the gravity reading when he came back and just nodded, which from Marcus is a gold star. I've been thinking about what to brew next. The Helen's Wheat — the Polish honey wheat ale I started developing — is still in my head, but I haven't pitched it to Marcus yet. It feels too personal. Like naming your first painting after your dead grandmother. But that's exactly why I should do it, right? That's the whole point. Dad called on Thursday to tell me Babcia's house sold. The family who bought it has two kids and a dog. Dad said they seemed nice. I said that's good. We were both quiet for a while. "She'd like that," Dad said. "Kids in the house." Then he asked if I'd watched the Brewers opener and we talked about baseball for twenty minutes because that's what Kowalski men do when they're sad. I went to Danny's grave on the way home from the brewery on Friday. I don't always go on a schedule — sometimes I just end up there. I told him about Babcia's house selling. I told him about the potato pancakes. I told him I'm figuring things out. The cemetery was quiet. The grass is still brown. Spring is coming, though. Even in Milwaukee, spring always comes.

Making Babcia’s kluski drove something home that I already knew but needed to feel again: the simplest noodle dishes carry the most weight — just flour, eggs, water, and a little butter, and somehow it tastes like every Sunday of your childhood. This Amish Pasta Salad hits that same note for me, old-world sensibility, humble ingredients, the kind of dish that gets better the longer it sits in the fridge and the longer you let yourself sit with it. I brought a big bowl to Mom and Dad’s the week after the kluski, and we ate it at the same kitchen table, and it felt like exactly the right kind of ordinary. Some recipes don’t need to be complicated to do their job.

Amish Pasta Salad

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 25 min + 1 hr chilling | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 8 oz egg noodles (or elbow macaroni)
• 3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 cup celery, diced small
• 1/4 cup red onion, finely diced
• 1/4 cup sweet pickle relish
• 1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed (optional)
• 3/4 cup mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar
• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• Paprika, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

1. Cook the noodles. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook egg noodles according to package directions until just tender. Drain and rinse under cold running water until fully cooled. Shake off excess water and set aside.
2. Mix the dressing. In a large bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, white vinegar, yellow mustard, sugar, salt, and black pepper until smooth and well combined.
3. Combine. Add the cooled noodles, chopped eggs, celery, red onion, and sweet pickle relish to the dressing. Fold together gently until everything is evenly coated. Stir in the thawed peas if using.
4. Chill. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving. Two hours is better — the flavors deepen as it sits.
5. Taste and serve. Before serving, give it a stir and taste for seasoning, adding salt or a splash more vinegar if needed. Transfer to a serving dish and dust lightly with paprika if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 285 | Protein: 7g | Fat: 16g | Carbs: 29g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 375mg