Where the hell is my shmaltz? Give me the schmaltz. How am I supposed to make kugel without the schmaltz? Hey, welcome to “Mythical Kitchen” where dreams become food. So my grandma recently turned a hundred years old and it’s a big accomplishment. Everyone clap for Granny, everyone clap for Granny. She made it. She beat World War II and the Great Depression. My God. And that’s very cool. And I was talking to her and she said, “Oh, Josh, I wish I would’ve taught you to cook more.” And that’s actually what she sounds like because she’s from South Africa. And she sounds like she’s auditioning to be, in the crown or something. And I was like, well, Granny, I actually have a cooking show. So I could teach people how to make one of your recipes. And she goes, what channel is it on? And I go, it’s not on TV. It’s on YouTube. She goes, what channel is YouTube? And I go, it’s. again, it’s not, it’s on the computer. She goes, I don’t have a computer. And I go, I know Granny that’s okay. And I try and show it to her on my phone. And she goes, this screen’s too small. And I go, eh, what are you gonna do? Any whom, I’m gonna teach you how to make my grandma’s kugel and tzimmes. This is like an old school, old country, Ashkenazi Jewish recipe. It’s mostly beef and prunes with potato pudding. I’m very excited for it. And now, I’m going to do a dramatic reading, of my grandma’s verbatim recipe that I wrote down to the Notes app on my phone. Fry an onion and a couple cloves of garlic slashed, you must slash them. Then take some beef. And at this point I interject, I say, Granny, what kind of a beef? And she says, a good piece, a good piece. And I say, Granny, you gotta be more specific. And she goes, rump steak. And I go, what’s a rump steak? And she goes, I don’t know. Cut it into cubes and fry it with onions until brown, brown. Add in a couple of carrots and thick slices, then put in 12 prunes and add enough water over to simmer until meat is tender. Then I asked her, hey, hey Granny, where’s the seasoning in all this? And she goes, salted pepper, salted pepper. I thought you cooked. I was like, watch it. Take eight potatoes and grate them with a nice big onion. It’s going to be a bit watery so put it in a terry cloth. And I say, what’s a terry cloth? Then she said, you know a terry cloth. It squeeze out a little water. Not all of it though. Add flour and a couple teaspoons of baking powder, and a lot of schmaltz. Which is rendered chicken fat, any good Jewish cook should know. Add meat to the bottom of your baking dish and potato kugel on top and bake it in the oven. And I ask for how long, and of course she says, until it’s done. So that is what we’re gonna be making today. But I’m also going to be making my own modern interpretation of this several hundreds years old, Ashkenazi grandma, boobola Jewish dish. If you wanna check out the steps, you got them right there. We got a full written recipe down in the description. Let’s get cooking, says Julia Child of “Mary Poppins” or Dame Judi Dench, pick one. All right. So we got all of the ingredients for the tzimmes. Which in Yiddish means, Trevor? I think it just means like thing or something. So we got all the ingredients, for this prune beef stew right here. I’m gonna get some oil heating in a pan. And then we got our garlic that has been slashed not diced, as she said. The accent’s gonna get more cartoonish as this goes along. So we’re gonna start browning off the garlic, and then we’re gonna brown the onions in there. And get ready for the meat. And I am gonna take this stew to my grandma. And she’s actually going to eat it and judge me on how well I’ve done and recreated her recipe, which I’m very excited about. If there’s anything you should be excited about, it is the judgment of a Jewish grandmother. My grandma’s family hails from Lithuania. That’s like the part of the Jewish diaspora that they came from. And they ended up in South Africa in like the late 1800’s. So all the Jewish dishes that I grew up eating were like, smoked herring, dressed in cream sauce, or like, chopped chicken livers. It’s basically like, anything that was cold and able to be grown near an icy river in Lithuania. So onions and garlic are nice and brown right here. Also, I get my love of prunes from my grandma. And it’s not just to aid in your pooping. No, no, no prunes, not just for old people pooping, also for young people. Just trying to get a nice little snack in there. And you might be asking, you’ve so eloquently explained what tzimmes is, what’s kugel? Kugel is a, it just means thing. It like originated in Germany. And it kind of means like a bread thing cooked in a big pot. I grew up in the most common form of kugel that most people know. It’s. This is not to get endorsement of Jewish food. It’s egg noodles, eggs, cottage cheese, cinnamon and raisins. And you bake all that together. And you get, like a nice raisiny mac and cheese. And I grew up in it. But, but, but, but, no, no, mac and cheese implies it’s creamy this is a brick. It’s a dense brick. And you cut it in the dense bricks. And the noodles burn a little bit, but then you got the raisins. Yeah, meat’s brown enough. It’s all gonna end up gray and covered in potato pudding. So we’re gonna add in, some of our prunes right here. I’m gonna toss in all these carrots. This is a, you know what? This is a spice. They made the best with what they had as any grandma will tell you. And now, we’re just gonna cover this with water. We’re gonna pop this in the oven. You could simmer it. What did Granny say? Did she mention anything? She said, cook it? She said, cook it. We’re gonna cook it. I’m gonna pop it in an oven at like 300 degrees, probably four hours until it’s tender. Or she would say, until it’s done. Let’s kugel up that tzimmes, shall we? I think it’s actually a Jewish sex slang. So we got the stew that’s been cooled right here. And we’re gonna dump it. Ooh, that’s nice in gelatins maybe we can’t dump it. I’m gonna give the stew a nice little Jimmy. There it is. This looks like, Dinty Moore canned beef stew. Which I grew up eating. That was my father’s signature recipe. It was he’d microwave a can of stew. And then he put it back in the can and eat it. All right. So we got, it’s nice. I don’t think all this is gonna fit in our nice little baking dish. But I wanna get some more goo in there. I wanna get some more of the goo ’cause that’s where all the prune liquid lies. If you see, you can hardly see any of the actual prunes that are in there. You’re mostly getting the dissolved prune goo. And I’m actually gonna save some extra stew to make my own version. ‘Cause I want to use the bones of my grandma’s recipe, not the bones of my actual grandma. There we go. Now we gotta make our potato kugel. And what we’re gonna do is we are going to shred all these potatoes and onions, using our food processor. Which I don’t think was invented when this recipe was invented. I imagine they’d use like a old branch. Just, hit him. There you go. Oh, a little quicker than a branch. Got some potatoes locked in there. That’s good. And gonna mash some more. Eh, modernity wins. I remember, I’ve been trying to ask my grandma like more questions about, you know, what was life like in 1928? I was like, Granny, what were you doing during World War II in South Africa? She’s like, working. What the hell do you think I was doing? I was like, listen, weren’t you like eight years old? She’s like, yes, I worked. I’m like, damn. All right, my bad. This is enough potatoes, how many we got in there? Can I stuff some onions in there? I’m gonna stuff some onions. A lot of people growing up really loved my grandma’s accent. ‘Cause they thought she sounded like a Disney princess, you know? And then she’s like, what the hell is Disney? But it would occasionally cause problems. ‘Cause once we went to the Basket Robbins, she tried to order strawberry milkshake. But the way she pronounces strawberry is like very drawn out in Victorian. She’s like, I want strawberry milkshake. It’s hard on the straw, little on the, berry. I want strawberry milkshake. And they were just like, ma’am, I don’t know what you want. It’s strawberry, strawberry. And they were just like, not having it. And so we just stormed out. I was like, Grandma, can I still have ice cream? And she’s just like, no. That a fun grandma story. She never cursed except when she would drive. Oh, my God, I just heard like the most vicious, just like British-South African, she’d throw in some like Yiddish curses in there, you know? Oh, man, it was incredible. Yeah, unadulterated swine. It was great. I was like, this rules. So we’re gonna ring out some water. That’s a nice potato juice. No, whoa! What? Now you’re squirmish? How many times have you seen me cook pork uterus on this show? That seems like enough. This is still a little wet. Still feel wet that sack is. So we’re just gonna kind of take this, here. I’m gonna dump those potato. We’ll use those potatoes later. We’ll boil that into a soup. This is what they did in the old country. You didn’t waste anything, okay. Literally, I was at my grandma’s house recently and she, you know, she’s a hundred, she’s done enough cooking in her life. And so, you know, she lives in like an assisted living facility. And she still has, the like nine Country Crock margarine containers from 1982, just for leftovers from like the assisted living dining hall. And I was like, this is a commitment to the grandma bit, Grandma. I respect it. So we’re adding some flour. We’re adding some eggs. This is kugel. Baking powder’s gonna give us some nice lightness. This is effectively like a lock and mixture. What you’re adding in there. Salt. Yeah, yeah. And then No! The curse of the grandma. We need more schmaltz. Where the hell is my schmaltz? Give me the schmaltz. How am I supposed to make kugel without the schmaltz? All right. So we’re gonna add that here. I’ll just use this to get it stirred up. Nice, eggy, potatoish schmaltzy mixture. I might just get in there dirty with my hands. Yeah, yeah. I’m trying to think of the things I remember my grandma making. ‘Cause she never made me this. Oh, she made me gefilte fish from scratch. Gefilte fish was, who don’t know, only thing I can call it is like a wet, cold, fish bread meatball. But, there’s a carrot. There’s a single carrot. In one and every eight gefilte fish nuggets you get a little carrot chunk. And then woo! That really sings. All right, cool. You got the kugel mixture. I’m gonna add this to the top of the stew. Really spread it out there. All right. It’s like a nice little hash brown bake. You know, this kind of, got some similarities to like the Mormon cuisines of the world. So I’m also gonna use the leftover kugel mixture, to create my modern interpretation. So we’re gonna pop this in the oven. Again, just cook it till it’s done. So we’ll keep an eye on it. So we’ve made the OG kugel and tzimmes recipe from circa, I don’t know, let’s call it 1685. But now we’re making my updated interpretation. That is inspired by a dish called, mole tater tots that I had at a gastropub in Long Beach from Chef Thomas Ortega. Really fantastic. So I’m making what I’m calling an Ashkenazi mole. We got some of the grandma stew boiling right here. And what I’m gonna do, is I’m gonna separate the liquid out from the beef. I’m gonna emulsify that liquid to some chilies and tomato pastes and I’ll bit of chocolate to kinda get the mole vibes. And then we’ll just see how it goes. Ow, ow, ow, ow. Oh, it burns, ow. Okay, okay, okay. That wasn’t the best choice of action. Well, we’re stringing the liquid and then I’m gonna blend that into a paste with chilies. And then, we’re gonna take a traditional kugel recipe. And we’re gonna turn that into tater tots. So let’s figure it out. I don’t know if my grandma’s gonna like this. She, you know, she’s gotten to a hundred and so she’s like, I wanna experience life more now. And she was like, I’ve never, Josh, I’ve never had sushi. I was like, Granny, I can take you to sushi right now. And she goes, is it really raw fish? I go, yeah, it’s kind of the point, of sushi most times. She goes, oh, then I don’t want it. I was like, ah, yeah. You almost got out there. You string out all the solids. We’re gonna put that in there. We’re gonna mash that eventually. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Ow, son of a All right. Got some liquid in there. We’re gonna blend up some guajillo chilies. And then we’re gonna add, a little bit of tomato paste. There we go, beautiful. And oh, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, little bit of dark chocolate. ‘Cause beef and prunes, there’s a dish called Manchamanteles, that’s like an original form of mole that’s got a fair amount of dried fruit in it. And chocolate and chili. So I’m kind of taking inspo from that. My grandma does love Taco Bell though, which is weird. It’s like unfitting of her character. But she loves the supreme crunch. And I try and tell her it’s called the Crunchwrap Supreme. And she’s like, what? And I’m like, Crunchwrap Supreme. And she goes, but that’s what I said, supreme crunch. I was like, fine, it’s a semantic difference. There we go. There we go. Blend out on high. All right. We got all the chilies and the chocolate blended in there. The prunes have fully dissolved and emulsified. Now, we’re gonna pop it, pop it in to the beef. There it is. And now we’re just gonna mash the beef up with a spoon. Yeah, there it is. All right. Now, we’re gonna make our cheddar cheese kugel tots. Now we’re gonna go ahead and mix the cheddar cheese, in with that kugel mixture. I got some extra flour, just in case the salt brings too much moisture. Yeah, hold on. Wait, I need some hand lube. Anytime you’re making tater tots, you wanna lube up your hands ’cause that way, it won’t stick when you drop them into the fryer. I’m just gonna kind of ball them up. Yeah. Looks nice. Some nice thick tots. I think Granny’s gonna love these here, thick tots. And end of the bath. Start frying these up. And then the goal is, we’re gonna top these with that stew. And then hit with a little queso fresco and some chives. And then Granny will finally be impressed with me. And she won’t go, when are you going back to school? And I go, Granny, what would I do with a political science degree? And she’s like, you could be a senator. And I was like, oh, that ship is sailed. I’ve said too many weird things on this show. Kugel tots are done. I’m gonna pull these out. They’re looking nice and brown, they look pretty tater toties. You see some of that cheese kind of caramelized, from the direct contact with oil, which is what I’m really excited about. What I think, if I know anything about grandma, is that she gets very excited about “Judge Judy,” and maybe about caramelized cheese. I really, truly, Judith Sheindlin, if you’re watching this, make my grandma’s life by coming and visiting her. Just move into her old folks home. Not to say that Judy Judge, you’re very, you know, . She doesn’t take any guff. That’s what my grandma loves about “Judge Judy.” She’s a straight shooter. She tells it like it is. It’s like, Granny is like her ’cause she yells at young people. All right. So we’re gonna arrange some of these tots here. Yeah. Yeah, that’s nice. Love that. And I’m gonna take some of this beef. We’ve like really braised the beef down. We’ve mixed it with all that blended chocolate, and the chilies. You see it’s nice and soupy. And we’re just gonna take some of that. And we’re just gonna like, pockets of it as if it were like, I don’t know, like a poutine with shredded meat on it. This little shredded beef juitine. I once made a dish called a cruchwrap juiprime, at a popup I was running, but I don’t look Jewish enough. And so I think a lot of people thought it was kind of weirdly, you know, I changed the name. I changed the name eventually but… All right, beautiful. And now, you can top it. Yeah. A little bit, crema going on top. It’s a spicy crema. There we go. Just, you know, little farts from the prunes. And then, gonna go. So chives all along the top. This is a nice, like $18 bar dish. You know what I mean? You know, dollars bars that my grandma frequent in a hundred, if I was a hundred, I’d just, I’d take so many risks. I’d just, I’d spend all my money on like, you know, a sports car. I’d just speed down the freeway. Well, no, ’cause that would, kill someone else. I’d go skydiving, without a parachute and just see if a superhero picks me up outta the sky. You know, finally prove they’re real. There you have it. We got a sharp, cheddar, kugel tots topped with our Ashkenazi mole, little bit of queso fresco, crema and chives. We got the two dishes side by side, my grandma’s and mine. And frankly, I think tastes peaked in 1942. Hey, you know what else peaked in 1942? Candy, Necco Wafers. Go over to Sporked.com and read a new article by Danny Palumbo. He’s one of the writers over there. Sporked Mythical’s new website that is devoted, to telling you what the best things to buy at the grocery store are. They’re doing taste tests. They’re doing hot takes, really fantastic stuff, honestly. ‘Cause I’m always like, what barbecue sauce do I buy? You no longer have to answer that question. Go over to Sporked, check it out. I’m gonna cut myself a nice corner piece. You always want the crispest corner of the kugel. That’s the lucky kugel corner. That’s where the phrase comes from, you know? You guys heard that? Lucky kugel? All right, cool. So there we go. Look at that. It’s like, it’s kind of like a shepherd’s pie, but with like some nice charred whole potatoes on top. I’m taking to my grandma’s first. See, the beef is nice and tender? All of that like stew liquid, that prune juice really steamed into the potatoes. I mean, it’s warm, it’s comforting. It taste, you taste all the carrots, the prunes and the onions. That’s doing a bulk of the flavor work. I love the onion, inside the kugel. If I’m being down honestly, if my grandma serve this to me, I would, I’d put a side of ketchup on it. You know, sometimes you go over to grandma’s house for dinner and like, food’s good, but, you gotta kind of ketchup it up a little bit. That’s what I do, which I don’t think is an indictment. I love ketchup. This is really tasty. And we topping more things with potato kugel. Or I’ll be bottoming more, with this potato kugel, let’s try it. That’s nice. Mine’s a little bit more crispy, a little bit more slurpy. Definitely a lot more spice going on in that. Again, this isn’t a competition. I didn’t mean to like frame this as like, I’m trying to beat my grandma, especially now she’s a hundred years old. Like, I waited for her to turn a hundred and just like, ah, granny, I got you. This is really fantastic. That said, it’s not my opinion who matters, it’s my grandma’s. Let’s go feed her. Granny, put on your eating shoal and your eating brooch. She loves shoals and brooches. All right. So I just got back from my grandma’s. The idea was, I was gonna take her the food. We were gonna film her and she was gonna judge it. But, she said she was tired and “Judge Judy” was on. She had to play bridge later. She didn’t wanna be on camera. I’m not gonna make a hundred-year-old woman do something she doesn’t wanna do. But, she let me set up an audio recording. So listen in on my grandma judging her original dish that I made. Okay, Granny, I have made your original kugel and tzimmes. We used a nice piece of beef, a rump steak, as you suggested. We have the carrots. We have a lot of prunes, which are my favorite. I get my love of prunes from you, in the sauce. And then we baked it with the potato kugel on top. Okay, I’m going to taste it and give you harsh judgment. I’m gonna tell you what’s lacking. Please tell me what’s lacking. No onion. There’s a lot of onion in there. In the kugel itself? In the kugel itself, did you put onion in it? We graded a lot of onion in and then we rung it out. It doesn’t taste very onion-y though, I agree. I taste it. Okay. I usually take some oil. What oil did we use? Vegetable. Vegetable. And I take a couple of teaspoons of telma chicken soup. And mix it in with the oil. So it tastes like chicken fat. That’s what we missed. Yeah, we didn’t put any of the soup base. And that’s what it needs. You didn’t tell me that in your original recipe, Granny. You didn’t remember. Otherwise, it’s delicious. But it needs that chicken fat. You need the chemicals from the soup. It’s delicious, Josh. You know, I can take the criticism. There weren’t enough onions, Granny, I totally get where you’re coming from. But, check out what she had to say about my new updated version of her dish. And then I have, this is my take on kugel and tzimmes. We have a braised short rib with what I’m calling an Ashkenazi mole. I put some chocolate in the prunes and I pureed it. Then stewed that down. You put chocolate? Chocolate. Chocolate, prunes and beef. It was inspired by a Mexican dish. And I’ve also turned the potato kugel into a form of tater tot. Into a what? A tater tot. It is my favorite potato preparation. This is with the chocolate? Yeah. That’s the chocolate prune beef, with my potato kugel dumplings. These paper towels serviettes. Do you taste any of the chocolate? It just blends in. Huh? The chocolate just blends in. M-hmm. It’s all very good, my darling. Thank you. Overall, on a scale of one to 10, final judgment. How is your original kugel and tzimmes, and how was my updated chocolate and beef version? It’s good if not better. Really? I’ll take it. You know, we had some hits, we had some misses, but I’m really freaking glad that I got to take my grandma’s recipe that she hasn’t had in a long, long time, not only feed it to her, but also show all of you how to make it. If you make the prune beef with potato kugel on top, please tag us. And thank y’all so much for stopping by the “Mythical Kitchen.” We got new episodes for you every week. We got new episodes of our podcast, “A Hotdog is a Sandwich,” every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcast. Hit us up on Instagram and TikTok at Mythical Kitchen with pictures of your mythical dishes under hashtag, dreams become food. Just like Aayush did. Aayush made coriander vegan bow for his family during the COVID-19 lockdown. Because all the restaurants closed and he couldn’t go out and wanted some fancy food. Aayush, those look incredible. Everyone be like Aayush. We’ll see you all next time. You’re too hot to handle and so is your bakeware. Get a Mythical Kitchen Oven Mitt, available now at Mythical.com.