I made a traditional kugel for Rosh Hashanah (above is a pic I made with regular raisins) but used pomegranate-flavored dried cranberries instead this year. Whereas I thought I was going to get extra points for using poms in a different way this year — plus pomegranates are a customary food of RH — I noticed when I took the plates back to the kitchen that everyone but me had picked them out. Okay! So unless your family likes the idea of it, it might be better to stick with golden or regular raisins. It was pretty, though:
Kugels can go sweet or savory. I think what people immediately associate with kugel are those wide egg noodles, but if I remember correctly, Joan Nathan has a recipe for Jerusalem kugel where she uses spaghetti noodles, caramel, and a bundt pan! Savory kugels, like carrot or potato, sometimes omit the noodles altogether and they turn into souffles somewhat. I like them best when they’re not particularly dense, and this recipe makes a sweet kugel that is very nice:
1 pound wide egg noodles
8 eggs
sugar: I’ve made this with 1/2 cup sugar and it’s nice, and I’ve used 2c. for very sweet, dessert-type
2 sticks butter, melted
16 oz. large curd cottage cheese
optional: raisins, cinnamon, vanilla, dried berries
Preheat the oven to 350*. Boil the noodles about 2/3 of the time on the package (you still want them to have some texture in the finished product), then drain. Mix together all ingredients, and add the noodles. Pour into a buttered casserole dish. Bake 50-60 minutes or until kugel is set and it has those lovely browned noodles on top.
Maybe next year instead of pomegranate-flavored cranberries, I’ll serve a cranberry cocktail and everyone will be verrry pleased with that! Me too!