I’ve just published a new piece on my blog, a place where I continue my ongoing life project of excavating Jewish Vienna through its starchier artifacts. This time it is potato kugel, the humble and slightly stubborn casserole that has survived empires, pogroms, post-war amnesia, and the Viennese fixation on pastry refinement.
What began as an attempt to veganize a haimishe classic drifted into a meditation on architecture, memory, and the small domestic technologies that kept Jews alive long before Vienna learned to curate its nostalgia. The kugel insists on its own problematic solidity. It refuses to be lightened, modernized, or made visually appealing.
In a moment of contemporary guilt that was equal parts ethical necessity, Jewish calling, and basic concern for our arteries and for the long and healthy life we hope to share with our loved ones, I replaced the schmaltz with olive oil and the eggs with flaxseed. You might think this compromise says more about my own anxieties than about Jewish history. In fact, the opposite is true. This is Jewish authenticity in its most paradoxical form. It is the stubborn belief that tradition survives not by freezing itself in time but by mutating in ways that look suspicious to everyone, including ourselves, while remaining true to its core values.
The result is part recipe, part essay, and part minor act of resistance in a city that prefers its Jewishness behind glass. If you are interested in how a loaf pan full of grated potatoes can become a commentary on the Shoah, diaspora time, and the ethics of endurance, or if you simply want something crisp and comforting to eat, the post is up now.
As always, it is just me, cooking my way through questions that do not have answers, in a kitchen that never feels entirely empty of ghosts.
So don't miss this: copy / paste this link (or follow the link in the bio) https://jewishviennesefood.com/vegan-haimishe-potato-kugel/
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