This recipe for Sauerkraut and Noodles from Cook Book: Favorite Recipes from Our Best Cooks (Mabie Grade School Parents, Mabie, West Virginia, 1975) seems like it might be missing something.
Granted, it does have ingredients not mentioned in the title, like apple and potatoes... but where are the noodles? Are the grated potatoes supposed to stand in for the noodles, like zucchini cut into strips becomes zoodles, or was the star ingredient accidentally left out even more thoroughly than Gretchen Guire, whose name had to be written in by hand? I'm so confused.... All I know is that this dish has to be served with a fork. (And I thought that final sentence might have been the one to bring in the noodles, but nope. It's just a reminder to use a fork!?)
So many questions. Why drop the grated potatoes in by teaspoons? There's nothing but their own starch to bind them together. Then the questions about the noodles. Are you supposed to just know to serve them with noodles based on the title. What if someone serves it with spaghetti noodles rather than egg noodles? Will the recipe still work right? Who will care after the carbohydrate induced coma that one will have after eating this anyway (especially if served with noodles).
ReplyDeleteThe dropping potatoes by teaspoons is probably because old cookbooks loved pointless steps that accomplished nothing. I can't find the post now, but I'm pretty sure early on in this blog's run I had a recipe that called for slicing cheese into slivers and aligning each sliver carefully over the tops of servings of meat in a casserole when it would have been much easier (and equally effective) to just grate some cheese and sprinkle it over the top.
DeleteDistracted typing! I didn't think of that. I'm used to typos, but didn't consider the possibility that someone just inserted a word for a starch without considering whether that was the one in the actual recipe.
ReplyDeleteIf you serve it with a spoon will it explode in your face? Or just bring along too much bacon grease and sauerkraut juice?
ReplyDeleteI think it will rip a hole in the space-time continuum if served with a spoon.
DeleteSince I like sauerkraut a lot more than anyone should, I fell for this one. And... well if you like kraut you'll love it. I guess the potato shreds stayed kind of noodle-y (I had expected them to completely break down into something like mashed spuds).
ReplyDeleteI know you will be surprised to find out that you can serve it with a spoon and no one but Gretchen Guire will notice anything amiss.