Here we are at the threshold of another Pesach. even with all the changes COVID has wrought, culinarily there are certain things about the holiday you know you can count one; the preparation of vintage eier lokshen, egg noodles, being one of them.
I didn’t grow up with these home spun delectable golden coiled spirals. My mother was raised on them, in my grandmother, my Bubbie’s home.
Only later in life, as my grandmother was getting older, did I take the preparation of this uniquely Pesach food on, to pay homage to my grandmother’s customs. Of course, it didn’t hurt that they are addictively delicious. And a labor of love to prepare.
Back in Hungary, my grandmother prepared eier lokshen all year round, but here in America where noodles in a box on a supermarket shelf are available all year round, this task became reserved for the holiday, as they are leaven free, hence perfect for Pesach.
Before they become eier lokshen, smooth strands of silky egg noodles, they are crepes. That’s essentially what they are. You whip up eggs, slowly pouring in potato starch and water, with a touch of salt, ladling a drop at a time into piping hot crepe pans.
The first crepe is always a bit tentative, and often tears. By the second crepe, it looks pretty good. By the third crepe, you are already an expert, ladling, flipping and sliding out perfect crepes, the first of a round of maybe the next 50. You know they are done when, ever so slightly,a ruffled begins to form at the edges, and you have golden discs on one side, a slightly spotty design, and the other side beautifully smooth and a pale yellow beauty.
As a stack of these round crepes grows by the side of the stovetop (I admit some of the crepes don’t make it to the stack and are instead consumed by yours truly!), the sense of accomplishment and contentment grows too. Its a true patchka, a true fuss to prepare them, so you feel good inside, even perhaps a bit of pride, as you sense you are channeling your own grandmother’s expertise and art of bletlach, crepe, making.
How many foods does one get to play with in the process of preparing them? In this case, flipping a crepe is an actual part of the preparation, the whimsical being an integral part its production.
I usually have a couple of concurrent hot pans on the stove at once. One year, I was ambitious and tried it with four. That’s when I discovered the limits of my multi-tasking. I always also prepare some of the batter in a very large frying pan, yielding a huge, if a bit thicker, pale yellow piece whose finished product almost seems like butter colored fabric. As I hold the warm crepe Italian pizza dough style over my fist, underneath the draping crepe, it’s such a silky smooth feel, almost like the pliable grace of a curtain or a tablecloth.
That’s what those crepes are. Pliable. Once you have your crepe, it’s both foldable and rollable. You can fold it into a cone, fill it with strawberries and cream or pudding. You can shmear it with jam and sprinkled cinnamon, rolling it like a cigar. You can tightly roll and then slice the crepe thick or thin, depending on the style of noodle you want, angel hair or pappardelle style.
That’s the thing, from the same crepe, you can create both sweet or savory foods. Sweet cheese blintzes or savory potato, chicken or mushroom blintzes, egg noodles for a mock pasta dish, chicken soup noodles, or those French style desserts of crepes folded like fabric into quarters, drizzled with syrups.
For me, it’s become one of my Pesach nostalgic comfort foods. Its ingredients meet the new COVID criteria of “essentials,” as it is mostly made up of eggs, hence, eier lokshen, egg noodles.
More than anything, though, it’s one of those Pesach foods that enter your heart and remain lodged there forever as being part and parcel of your tradition and special family memories layered onto this holiday time that you carry with you from loved ones.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
