Potato noodle casserole

Hello hive friends.
In my last post I went crazy with my spiralizer gadget that I dragged out of my closet. I made a spiralized veggie salad.

I am once again playing with my kitchen toy. For the first time I am using spiralized potato. I have never cooked anything that I have spiralized. In this case I will definitely cook it. After all, who wants to eat a raw potato?

This dish is inspired by the memory of a Jewish dish called "kugel". I was once married into a Jewish family, where I discovered traditional dishes eaten on holidays, such as Passover during a Sader dinner.

I really enjoyed these foods at the time. They consisted of such things as matza ball soup, brisket, gefilte fish, boiled egg dipped in salt water, tzimmes which was a meat stew with prunes, and a dish called "kugel".

There are different types of kugel of which noodle kugel is often traditional for these holidays. It's also often like a dessert. It can be sweet or savory. There is also potato kugel. I will not call my dish kugel for fear that a Jewish Bubby will be angry that it's vegan and it isn't her recipe. This will be the dish that plays the part of kugel.

For this I will noodlize a potato, making potoodles and with this, I will have both a potato and noodle "kugel" all in one.

Okay so if you want to make something like this, and you don't have a fun gadget like the spiralizer, you can do this the normal people's way. That would be, with a grater or a food processor.

I don't always peel my "taters", if they have a thin skin like this, but I wanted to this time.

The potatoes so far are one of the easiest things to krank in the machine.

"Et voila"!

It really is satisfying to have these long curly strands flowing from the gadget, as you krank from the other end.

Come on, admit you want one of these things. I wish one of these on every Hive cook.

For the regular grated ones, you must strain the water out with a colander or sieve. I did it with this as well. Not much liquid came from processing them this way. That was a real bonus. I would not bother with it next time.

Now comes the crazy part. Can I spiralize an onion? After trying I would not recommend it, unless you like to cry while cooking. I would be using a mandoline or the old fashion, cut with a knife, way.

I don't think, that a traditional dish of this type would have fresh herbs in it. I really don't know, but I needed to add more then an onion to this. I usually like a wide variety of spices, but not always. I have learned to appreciate many types of foods from different cultures, after growing up in Canada, which is one of the worlds biggest melting pots of diversity.

I also wanted the dish to have a bit of non brown and white ingredients in it along with adding extra flavor.

A traditional kugel always has eggs in it. With this dish I'm using something that I can't always get. I can only get this once in a while at one store down the street.

This is a rare find for me, so I bought everything left on the shelf (3 of them). Last time I bought one and never saw it again until the other day. This product is a plant based egg, that scrambles so much like egg, that you could almost fool someone. I don't know if it has any nutritional value but it's nice to have for certain things like this potato dish.

The base of the vegan egg, is mungbean. I've tried making it before but they have the secret processing method with other ingredients. Mine was not satisfactory.

Potato noodle casserole
900g potatoes
150g onion20g green onion
10g dill
20g parsley
150g plant based egg (Just Egg)
75g soy milk or other plant milk
30g oil
1/2 cup flour
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 Teaspoon garlic powder
Salt to taste

Adjust the item amounts as you like or add other ingredients. If you don't have the egg product you probably don't need it. Using this helps it have a more authentic texture. If you don't want to use wheat flour you can use potato starch.

If you are using real eggs you would probably use 3 to 5 which would provide quite a bit of moisture. I added soy milk for extra moisture. The vegan egg product can be quite dense after it cooks, so I wasn't sure if I should use too much. It worked out anyway with the amounts that I used.

After coating the noodles with most of the oil, I added the rest of the ingredients and tossed thoroughly.

I put parchement paper on a rectangle pan and oiled it first. The potato mixture was added to the pan. I didn't really know what temperature to choose because of how thin the strands of potato were. I just stuck to 350F and kept an eye on it. After around 20 minutes I turned it around and cooked until the potatoes were tender and then put them under the broiler for a few minutes to get golden brown.

This tasted so much like a European potato pancake which I enjoy. I realize that if someone didn't have an oven this could be fried in a pan like a potato pancake.

The noodle shape potatoes gives a texture that I like compared to the grated ones, but not that different. The plant based egg really worked nicely and I was really happy with the taste.