Haluski

[Mosca]

Haluski, one of the traditional foods of church picnics! (At least here in NE PA!)

If you don't know: haluski is cabbage, onions, and noodles, in lots of butter. Although I suppose you can smoke it, I'm not sure it should be smoked. The whole idea is noodly buttery texture and cabbage/onions. It is supposed to be served alongside something garlicky, like kielbasa.

I made it a few years ago, but I put caraway seeds in it and Mrs Mosca didn't like that. But I think I'll give this one a try tomorrow, or maybe even tonight, because it is so bone simple. There are recipes out there that add bacon, ham, mustard, etc, but that's all kind of antithetical to the idea of haluski.

What I'm thinking is, proportions. Most recipes on the web, like at Allrecipes and Food.com, call for two onions to one head of cabbage. So, that's probably exactly right. And the butter, average, is one stick. Some try to go healthy with half a stick, but one stick seems right. However, everyone seems to kind of go sideways on the noodles... a pound, four ounces, one recipe even calls for 2 cups of dried noodles, which I'll be damned if you can get a consistent amount of noodles in a cup.

But what would a Polish American mom in the 1960s do, if she were preparing haluski for a family dinner? I'm thinking she would dump one bag of egg noodles into it. So, that's what I'm going to do. A bag of noodles, a cabbage, two onions, and a stick of butter. Salt and pepper that son of a gun, and I'll have haluski.

You can't screw this one up. Maybe burn the onions would do it, I guess. I'll post a pic later.

[Nate]

Haven't heard of this one before but sounds interesting... Anxious to see and hear the outcome and what changes (if any) you would make/recommend going forward.

Fricassee is one of the church fundraiser traditions for some of the churches (especially Catholic) in our area... A club I belong to was founded in 1888 has their own private park. We had a giant cooking shed that was unfortunately burnt, by way of an arsonist, that had giant kettles built into large brick pits with an automated, makeshift stirring system with wooden paddles that was used to make large quantities of Fricassee to sell.... Seems to be getting harder and harder to find some of these traditional dishes and gatherings... and the art of doing some these things sadly seems to be dying out. I try to pick up old church or community cookbooks when I can because occasionally you find some great nuggets in there of a cultural dish that a first, second, or third generation immigrant used to make.

[bbqoaf]

Sounds great, my Mom is from that area and the food of Eastern European origin is delicious. I'm thinking smoked chicken or sausage would be great with it.

[Mosca]

Grilled thighs, green beans.

[Mosca]

You want to sauté two onions and one cabbage in one stick of butter on medium to medium low. Sauté it until tit is starting to brown a little bit. In the meantime, prepare a bag of egg noodles. When the cabbage and onions are done, mix it all together, and add salt and pepper to taste.