Trip down my stomach's memory lane

Yesterday I was thinking about Passover and I decided to see if Manischewitz, the brand of kosher Jewish food in the US that my family always bought, had a website. They do, of course, and in looking at their products, I see things have become more modern in the past years. Besides the plain matzos and egg matzos that I remember, there are also now apple cinnamon, onion, and garlic flavours. Such choice! And gone are the orange and green boxes that I remember, they now come in white boxes with fancy photos and script on them.

Anyway, I clicked over to the recipes page and the first item there caught my attention: Noodle pudding. I was pretty sure I knew what it was, something I had had long ago that every once in awhile I'd be reminded of, but I had no idea what it was, all I remember was I liked it. I have no idea where I even had it, perhaps at the temple that my brother and I went to for a few years for Hebrew school on the weekend. So I did a bit more research online and it is what I remember, which in my mind is egg noodles baked in a custardy pudding. The Jewish name for this dish is kugel, which is usually sweet and made with noodles, but can take many forms, such as having matzo in it or potato. You can get more of an idea about the dish from this article.

I was so happy to have come across this after so many years of having flashbacks of a yummy noodle-y dish that only left me wondering if I was making the whole thing up. My family went to the Greek Festival in Portland a couple of times, and at the dinner there, there was a noodle dish that always set off the flashbacks (I don't know what the Greek dish was called). But the Greek recipe was much more savoury. (Interesting that in searching for the possible name of this Greek recipe, I find a site saying that in places in Greece it is traditional to make sweet noodle puddings. Maybe it's a Mediterranean thing.)

This solves the second food mystery from my childhood. I used to have similar sudden memories of a sweet crumbly thing that was in strawberry or chocolate flavours that made me think of something like freeze-dried ice cream. I can remember eating it at my grandparents apartment in New York when we visited them when I was about 7. Only a few years ago did I finally find out what it was: Helva, an Eastern Mediterranean candy made from tahini (crushed sesame seeds). It is very common in Turkey and handily there are tons of Turkish bakers in this city, so I promptly went out and got a chunk of some, which was pretty much as I remembered it.

Anyway, I've now armed myself with a couple of noodle pudding recipes which I will have to try out. I can't wait to see O's face when I describe to him what I'll be making. And if he doesn't like it, great, more for me. =)