Homemade Noodles

The last day of 2018. I am sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and the newspaper and the specific silence of an evening when the neighborhood has not yet started celebrating and the anticipation of midnight is still a few hours away. Marvin is asleep in his chair — he has always fallen asleep early on New Year's Eve, a habit I have teased him about for thirty-five years and will not tease him about again, because some things should have been held more gently and the teasing was never the point anyway. The point was that he was there, in the chair, and I was here, at the table, and we were the same room.

I want to say something true about this year. 2018 was the year we became a different family. We were always going to become a different family — the disease was always there, arriving on its own schedule regardless of our preferences — but it was this year that we learned what was coming, and learning is its own kind of rupture. September sits in the middle of the year like a fault line. Before September, and after.

I made kugel for New Year's Eve. Sweet noodle kugel, the kind with cream cheese and eggs and a little cinnamon-sugar on top, baked until the edges are golden and the center is custardy and it smells like every holiday meal I ever ate as a child in the Bronx. It is comfort food in the most literal sense: it comforts, not by solving anything, but by providing sweetness in a time when sweetness requires some effort to locate. I brought a slice to Marvin before he fell asleep and he said, "This is the good one." He remembered that I make two kinds of kugel, savory and sweet. He remembered which is the good one. He remembered the distinction. That is the kind of thing I am cataloguing now: the things remembered, added to a list I am keeping in my mind like a ledger.

2019 will be what it will be. I have survived every year that has come before this one. I have my classroom, my kitchen, my daughter who talks to me about Chekhov, my son who drives an hour to check on his father and pretends it's a casual visit. I have the kugel and the tea and the sleeping man in the chair. It is enough. It has to be enough. It is.

The kugel I made that night — the one Marvin called “the good one” — has always started here, with noodles made by hand, the way my mother made them in the Bronx and her mother before her. There is something grounding about working dough with your hands when the world feels uncertain; the flour and eggs do not know what year it is, and for a little while, neither do you. If you want to make the kugel, start with these — they are the reason it tastes like it does.

Prep Time: 30 min | Cook Time: 5 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
2 tablespoons water, or as needed
1 teaspoon olive oil or neutral oil

Instructions

Make the dough. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour and salt. Make a well in the center and crack in the eggs. Add the oil. Using a fork, beat the eggs gently, then begin drawing in the flour from the sides until a shaggy dough forms. Add water one teaspoon at a time only if the dough is too dry to come together.
Knead. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8–10 minutes until smooth and elastic. The dough should feel soft but not sticky. Form into a ball, wrap in plastic, and rest at room temperature for 20 minutes.
Roll out. Divide the dough into two portions. On a well-floured surface, roll each portion as thin as you can — about 1/8 inch or thinner. Dust generously with flour to prevent sticking.
Cut the noodles. Roll the flattened dough loosely like a jelly roll, then cut crosswise into strips 1/4 inch wide for kugel or finer for soup. Unroll and separate the noodles onto a floured surface or baking sheet. Let them dry for 10 minutes before cooking.
Cook. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the noodles and cook for 3–5 minutes until tender but with a slight chew. Fresh noodles cook quickly — taste at 3 minutes. Drain well before using in kugel or serving with butter.

Nutrition (per serving)

Homemade Noodles — The Foundation of Every Kugel Worth Remembering