Ear­li­er this week, Kat­ja Gold­man, Judy Bern­stein Bun­zl, and Lisa Rot­mil wrote about writ­ing a cook­book for the JCC Man­hat­tan and shared a recipe for lamb burg­ers. They are the authors of the new­ly pub­lished cook­book The Com­mu­ni­ty Table: Recipes and Sto­ries from the Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter in Man­hat­tan and Beyond and have been blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series.

“You want to cook nuck a whaattt?” There we were, three chefs in our favorite test kitchen think­ing about our pas­ta chap­ter when Kat­ja said she want­ed to make ​“Knuck-a-knuck.” Judy and I were baf­fled hav­ing nev­er heard of this spe­cif­ic Hun­gar­i­an del­i­ca­cy. Turns out she was refer­ring to a sim­ple home­made egg noo­dle that is cut into small pieces direct­ly over and into a pot of rolling water. Hmm. The descrip­tion sound­ed a lot like späet­zle, Judy (whose moth­er-in-law was Vien­nese) chimed in. I went back to my Bel­gian grand­moth­er who at the great age of 94 is still cook­ing and shop­ping dai­ly and she too con­firmed that these sim­ple egg noo­dles were a beloved sta­ple made sev­er­al times a week at home.

Kat­ja con­tin­ued to describe that ​“knuck-a-knuck” could be served at a dairy meal with farmer’s cheese or as a side to a good meat or chick­en dish to sop up all the sauce. She remem­bers the sto­ries of her cousins, uncles, aunts, all stop­ping in at her great-aunt’s house on the low­er east side of Man­hat­tan on Thurs­day nights. There they would eat ​“knuck-a-knuck,” share tales from the week and leave with hugs, fresh­ly baked chal­lahs, a bab­ka, and more ​“knuck-a-knuck” to serve on Fri­day night.

While Judy tried her best to get us to call them späet­zle with a prop­er Vien­nese pro­nun­ci­a­tion to that umlaut, I decid­ed to fig­ure out where ​“knuck-a-knuck” came from. I eas­i­ly dis­cov­ered that the Hun­gar­i­an word for ​“shh­paaeett­z­ly” (Bun­zl pro­nun­ci­a­tion) is nokedli – hence the ​“knuck-a-knuck.”

The only thing left to do was start cook­ing. We start­ed with Katja’s grandmother’s recipe. It was sim­ple enough – eggs, flour, kosher salt and water. Mix togeth­er ​“until it’s shiny.” Real­ly? Yup. Shiny and very stretchy. Kat­ja demon­strat­ed her grandmother’s process – she would dump the bat­ter onto a stan­dard din­ner plate and then spread a thin amount along the plate’s edge. Using a but­ter knife, she would cut tiny pieces of the bat­ter off the edge of the plate and flick them into the boil­ing pot of water below. So we set about it, get­ting all kinds of sizes of lit­tle puffed up deli­cious pas­ta mini dumplings. It was a plea­sure to see just how much they puffed up once they rose to the top of the pot and cooked for the allot­ted 20 min­utes. Grand­ma Regina’s final tricky tip: after each flick, dip your knife into the water in the pot, there­by keep­ing it clean and hot, so it eas­i­ly cut through the stretchy batter.

Of course we love to play with tra­di­tion and being that this is 2015 AP flour alone didn’t seem quite right to us. So we tried the bat­ter with half the amount whole-wheat flour and half the amount AP flour. The result – still ten­der but with more com­plex fla­vor and an obvi­ous boost on the healthy eat­ing scale. One last adap­ta­tion brought us back to those ​“shh­paaeett­z­ly.” For about $15 you can buy a späet­zle mak­er that sits atop your pot. Place some of the bat­ter into the well on top of the con­trap­tion and slow­ly slide it back and forth over the met­al grate attached below the well. Then, small pieces of the bat­ter will ele­gant­ly drop into the boil­ing water below. You con­trol the size of your pas­ta pieces based on how quick­ly or slow­ly you slide the well. That’s it. We still love the rough cut pieces, but the späet­zle mak­er uses a lot less wrist work and avoids dip­ping your hand into steam­ing hot water.

Knuck-a-knuck – a real win­ner. Go figure.

Recipe: Nokedli (Hun­gar­i­an Späetzle)

Serves 6 as a side

5 extra-large eggs
¼ cup water
1 tea­spoon kosher salt
1 cup unbleached all-pur­pose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour 

Bring a large pot of salt­ed water to a boil.

In a medi­um bowl, beat the eggs with a fork until smooth. Add the water and salt and beat to com­bine. Grad­u­al­ly beat in the flours ¼ cup at a time to make a soft, sticky dough. The dough will be very stretchy. If the dough is dull look­ing, con­tin­ue beat­ing until it shines. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes.

Spoon half the dough onto a din­ner plate. With a blunt knife, move some dough towards the edge of the plate and spread it until it is about ¼ inch thick. Use the knife to scrape tiny bits of the dough off and flick them into the pot of boil­ing water. Dip the knife blade fre­quent­ly into water to help the bat­ter slip off. The dough will grow as it cooks, so cut very small (about ¼‑inch) rec­tan­gu­lar pieces; this is just a guide­line, you can exper­i­ment with the size and shape until you find the ones that you like best. (Or use a very sim­ple inex­pen­sive spät­zle mak­er; they are easy to find online and at gourmet kitchen stores.) Make sure the water stays at a boil. 

After cut­ting in about half of the dough, cov­er the pot par­tial­ly and boil 10 to 20 min­utes, until ten­der through­out, depend­ing on the size you cut. Remove from the water with a slot­ted spoon, and drain in a colan­der. Repeat with remain­ing dough. Salt to taste.

Kat­ja Gold­man is known as the unof­fi­cial chal­lah teacher of the upper west side, hav­ing taught lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of men and women to bake chal­lah. She co-authored the Empire Kosher Chick­en Cook­book: 225 Easy and Ele­gant Recipes for Poul­try and Great Side Dish­es.

Lisa Rot­mil has a Ph.D in Art His­to­ry from The Insti­tute of Fine Arts, New York Uni­ver­si­ty. She has worked at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the Brook­lyn Muse­um, and the Jew­ish The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary of Amer­i­ca. She is an avid cook and has an inter­est in design.

Hav­ing stud­ied cook­ing in Milan, Lon­don, New York and any­where she found her­self, Judy Bern­stein Bun­zl’s inter­ests in all three voca­tions came togeth­er with the pub­li­ca­tion of this cookbook.

Relat­ed Content:

• At Oma’s Table: More than 100 Recipes and Remem­brances from a Jew­ish Fam­i­ly’s Kitchen by Doris Schechter
• Arthur Schwartz’s Jew­ish Home Cook­ing: Yid­dish Recipes Revis­it­ed by Arthur Schwartz
• Ency­clo­pe­dia of Jew­ish Food by Gil Marks