The Puppet Men Cometh

In the next few weeks, I'll be cooking with people that I connected with over puppets.

Yes. Puppets.

One of my weird creative hobbies, I cut my stage teeth at the visual-arts focused company, Redmoon Theater in Chicago. Through shadow-, papier-mache-, rod-, hand-, found-, toy-, and even stuff-animal puppets, I have bonded with some of my closest friends, expanded my social network, and found a new community in New York. And, I swear, these people are some of the most inventive and normal I know. Well... maybe the latter is a bit of an overstatement.

So, what should you expect? Corned beef by John Ardolino, Drama of Works associate director, and a soup-based sauce by John Payne (and the subject of my first webisode - to be filmed by his bud and Puppetbox bandmate, Mark Annotto), former student of the London School of Puppetry. Surprises, I am sure, will abound.

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Raisin the Bar with Kugel: The Recipe

The best part about kugel is that it is served at dinner, but really tastes just like dessert. Just in time for Passover, too.

Ali Hart's Raisin Kugel
1 lb egg noodles
1/2 stick melted butter
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup raisins
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp salt
4 tbsp orange juice
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Set oven to 350 and grease a 9X13 baking dish.

Cook noodles according to package directions, drain in a colander. Run cold water over hot noodles to make sure they stop cooking. In a mixing bowl, whisk remaining ingredients (it will be runny). Pour mixture into prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes to one hour, or until top is just browned.

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Raisin the Bar with Kugel: The Finish

This is part two of Raisin the Bar with Kugel. For part one, click here.

While we relaxed between videos and in between conversations about relationships and exes that I could not possibly include here, Ali said "I'm trying to think about what I can tell you about this that would be interesting...Well I am Jewish, this is my one Jewish dish, and also my one dish." We laughed. Then, when I realized that that was the extent of her story, we laughed even more. "Man, I think I'm just really out of it!" Ali got up to check on the water. "What else can I tell you? Um, I like to buy the Pennsylvania Dutch egg noodles... for no reason." Maybe because of the doves on the logo? Ali's love for the Amish? Who can tell. Who can tell.

Ali picked up the lid. "The package says bring to a rapid boil. What's the difference between boiling and rapid boiling? I don't even know how to cook pasta, apparently." I peaked into the pot and assured her that it was time.


We gossiped some more and after a few minutes I asked, "So how long do you boil this for?" which induced a little bickering between us. Being old friends is just like being an old married couple.

"It doesn't say. I think just until they're ready." Ali told me.

"I don't think you'd want to boil them all the way they're totally ready. Because they'd get like mush."

"Wait, it says 'cook as directed.'"

"But I don't think you do that. You cook them until they're almost done."

"Well... then they'll get too crispy."

"They'll definitely become mush if you do it all the way."

"Uh uh!"

"All right. Well, we'll do it your way."

"If it says to do it as they they're supposed to be cooked. That's how you do it."

Boop, boop, boop. Saved by the cell.

Ali pulled out an extremely long, funny-looking pot holder that had two hand pockets on each end to use to pick up the large and steaming metal vessel.


"Everyone always makes fun of me for this, but it's my grandma's mitt. And also this is my giant grandma pot. Everything is grandma. Even the Jewish part." After she dumped the noodles into a colander, Ali turned on the water to ensure that they stopped cooking and then set the oven temperature to 350 degrees.


Ali tested the noodles with her hand to make sure that they were cool, then returned them to the pot. She added the egg mixture that she had blended earlier and stirred the ingredients together.


Once everything was well mixed, she dumped everything into the prepared baking dish...

...and placed it in the hot oven.


Yes, the baking pan was cool to the touch at this point, but apparently Ali uses every opportunity to utilize the grandma mitt.

The kugel had to bake for 45 minutes, so we checked out more videos, watched Saturday Night Live snippets, and messed around on Facebook. Finally, the oven alarm chimed and Ali went to the kitchen to remove her creation. "Make sure you bake the kugel on the middle rack, because if it's too high up or too low, the kugel will get too crispy," she said as she removed the pudding and placed it on the counter. Typically, one should eat kugel at room temperature, but I wanted some right then, so Ali cut off a generous piece for me.


Now, admittedly, I am a die-hard kugel lover, but Ali's kugel is particularly good. The texture created by the golden brown top and the moist center satisfied my desire for chewy and crunchy, while the rich, eggy, buttery custard that acts as a glue to hold the dish together was perfectly accented by a soupcon of cinnamon and nicely punctuated by juicy bursts of raisin sweetness. Simply delicious.

After we had had first and second helpings of the noodle delight, Ali packed me a tupperware of leftovers. It was gone by midnight.

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Raisin the Bar with Kugel: The Beginning

When I arrived to Ali Hart's Prospect Heights apartment, her door was ajar in anticipation of my entrance. Inside, her shared third-floor walk-up felt tropic due to an overactive radiator system. Ali, dressed in a thin T-shirt and jeans, was furiously texting as I crossed the threshold, and gave me a nasal "Hiiii" without looking up from her mid-1990s-sized phone (she insists she likes its bulk). Ali, a student of the Presidio School of Management and looking to one day enter into the world of sustainable (read "green") business development, is not much of a cook. Like she had both feet firmly planted in adulthood when she first learned how to boil pasta kind of a cook. Though, admittedly, she has come a long long way since I first met her when we were college freshman; back then she subsisted almost entirely on pizza and burgers. In fact, her food journey has been so well-traveled that she is now a vegetarian with a much expanded palate (though it still annoys me that she does not eat runny eggs. I mean come on! That's they way they should be done!).

Ali, a consummate texter, and also one of my dearest friends, spent our first minute or two together focused on her phone. Since we talk about every five minutes and since she knows just about everything I do from the breakfast that I have eaten to the subject of my recurring dreams when I was a kid (Steve Martin inviting me to his birthday party, if you want to know), I knew that Ali was capable of multitasking phone and kugel, so the "bloop bloop bloop" that sirened every so often to let her know that it was her turn in the conversation was hardly a distraction.

"So, Ali, what are you going to make me?" She set her phone down and walked over to the ingredients that she had splayed on her counter top. "I'm making you raisin Kugel!" Ali explained that she had been making the dish for about five years. "Is this your only specialty dish?" Ali laughingly responded, "Uh, yea. It's the only dish that I've tweaked to make better... I added orange juice to it, more raisins, and I think I may have added nutmeg or something..." Bloop, bloop, bloop.

After a quick text, she continued. "Sorry," Ali said as she set down her cell. "So, I put orange juice in because I was cooking from health books that had different kinds of sweeteners and that's why I tried orange juice." Bloop bloop bloop. Another interruption. "Do you want me to grease the pan while..." Bloop bloop bloop "...you're texting?" I asked, and picked up a stick of butter and began to rub the fat in a large Pyrex baking dish.

Ali cracked an egg into a small bowl, then dumped the gooey rawness into a larger mixing bowl and repeated the process three times. She told me that she learned the technique from her 6th grade home economics teacher, Mrs. Schmucker - just in case there was something "gross" inside the shell, one is saved from ruining a whole recipe. A good trick. Beating the eggs with a fork she said, "I also learned to make a scrunchi, and a jewelry box out of fabric... Wait." She stopped what she was doing. "I don't know why I'm doing this. You don't need to beat the eggs yet." (Later Ali told me that she "usually only make[s] scrambled eggs, so when I crack them, [beating them] is my MO") . Then she measured out sugar and spices added them to the bowl. On the stove she melted a 1/2 stick of butter.


"I didn't buy the organic raisins because they were too expensive, but don't say that on the blog because I'm supposed to be 'green' and all." Oh, whoops. I hope they don't fire her from green school for that one. As she measured and dumped the dried brown bits into the beaten eggs, Ali looked at me and asked, "So, the original recipe only called for, like, a third of a cup. It's raisin kugel! Why would you only put that little in it?"

Ali finished off the egg mixture with orange juice and vanilla, and then proclaimed that she was almost done.


"You don't have to boil the noodles before you put everything together? Wow!" I said. Ali looked at me and then let out an embarrassed giggle. "Oh shit. Fuck. I forgot about that. Ahhh! I'm so mad." We laughed. "Well, Ali, at least this will make for good blogging material."

After filling a large metal pot with water, we drank seltzer and watched some YouTubes while we waited for the water to boil.

Click here for part two of this story.

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I'm baaaack

After a torrid time at the ole office (there's a recession you know) that has forced me into longer hours (oh, the calamity!), things have normalized and posting will, once again, be a regular thing here at NYCookery. Expect to hear about kugel, corned beef, and more in the coming weeks!

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