Potato Kugel

This past week, all of our 5th and 6th graders started each session by going up to the Oneg Room at 4 p.m., where our cooking teacher, Karen, was waiting to greet them with card tables set up for groups of 4. On each table were the ingredients for a delicious potato kugel.

As usual, Karen began the session by going through the recipe and giving suggestions for the best (and usually easiest) way to work with the ingredients.

As soon as she had finished, all the students quickly found a table to work at, and proceeded to grate the four large potatoes they found on each table. In many cases, their hands were too small to hold the large potatoes comfortably, but that didn't stop them!

The trickiest part was figuring out how to comfortably hold the grater with one hand while getting a good grasp around the potato with the other.

The idea was for the grated pieces of potato to fall onto the pieces of towel paper.

Some held the graters standing up, while others found it more comfortable to lay them flat on the table.

Lots and lots and lots of grating!

We had 45 minutes to prepare the recipe, and most of that time was spent grating!

At some point at each table, one student took a break from grating, and prepared the batter.

This involved combining all the other ingredients in the recipe, except for the potatoes, and mixing them together just enough to create a very loose batter. At this point, the smell of the chopped onions took over the entire Oneg Room - not a bad smell at all!

Finally, it was time to add the grated potatoes, but only after as much of the potato liquid as possible had been squeezed out using the paper towels - lots and lots of paper towels!

Then it was time to transfer the batter over to a square baking pan, using the spatula to smooth it out in the pan.

The spatula was also helpful in scraping out all the batter into the pan.

Karen baked the kugels for us in a convection oven for about half an hour, let it cool enough so she could cut each kugel into squares, then packed them all into plastic sandwich bags to distribute to all the students in the classrooms. There was so much kugel, that students and teachers in the 3rd and 4th grades were able to taste the delicious results as well.

This was the third of our seven scheduled cooking sessions for this year. We won't have time in December to prepare a Hanuka delight, so in a way, this grated potato kugel prepared the students for helping to make latkes at home for the holiday.

As always, I want to thank Karen for all the work she puts into making this class an enjoyable one (and tasty!) for us all. I can only imagine all the time she spends shopping for the ingredients, setting them out on the tables, overseeing the class, then cleaning up after we've all left for hafsaka (recess) and preparing the finished product for us to taste in our classrooms at the end of the session.
YASHER KO'ACH, KAREN!!!

Remember that we have a special "JQuest Does Shabbat" session this coming Saturday morning (regular first session time, from 9-11 a.m.). We'll be playing the Shekel Game in our Edot class, so stay tuned!