Noodles With Cottage Cheese Is Elyssa Heller’s Midnight Meal
Shared by Elyssa Heller
Recipe Roots: Chicago > Evanston, Illinois > New York City
Ten years into her career working on supply chain operations in the food space, Elyssa Heller had what she calls a “millennial life crisis.” Unsure what she wanted to do with her life, she thought about where she was happiest: on her family’s regular trips to Barnum & Bagel, a circus-themed deli and appetizing restaurant in suburban Chicago near where Elyssa grew up. “That was my happy place,” she says. “If I could spend all my time in the deli, that would make me happy.”
So, she started baking bagels and selling them out of Paulie Gee’s, a pizzeria in Brooklyn. In time, she opened two places of her own, Edith's Sandwich Counter and Edith’s Eatery & Grocery, named for her great-aunt Edith who owned a deli before Elyssa was born. Elyssa and her team serve Ashkenazi favorites like hot pastrami on rye and LEOs (lox, eggs, and onions) on bagels, alongside dishes from other parts of the Jewish Diaspora like Yemenite malawach and challah toast with harissa butter.
Growing up, Elyssa says she didn’t know about Jewish culture and food beyond her own American Ashkenazi traditions, like kugel and the brisket with Heinz Chili Sauce her family ate on the holidays. When she went to college in Canada, she met Jews from other communities. “Seeing it in practice was so eye opening,” Elyssa explains. Through friends, she was introduced to different culinary traditions from across the Diaspora. “It was so much more colorful than I realized,” she adds.
Edith’s has offered her a path to explore these traditions and delve deeper into her own family recipes like kugel, which she riffs on, serving a leek and potato version over the holidays and a dessert kugel this fall. Elyssa also recently discovered the Jewish roots of one of her family’s signature dishes: noodles with cottage cheese. When she was little, her mother made it often, but Elyssa never thought about its origins. Earlier this year, she learned both her mother and grandmother had grown up on the dish that’s called lokshen mit kaese in Yiddish. Across three generations of women, “That’s the one thing we all seem to have eaten,” Elyssa says.
She’s updated the dish adding lots of black pepper like the Roman classic cacio e pepe. After a long day at the restaurant, it’s what she makes at midnight when she’s ravenous. “It’s kind of the only thing I ever have in the fridge,” Elyssa says.
Cottage Cheese and Noodles à la Cacio e Pepe
Known as lokshen mit kaese in Yiddish, noodles with cottage cheese is a staple Ashkenazi recipe. There are savory versions made with caramelized onions and sweeter ones with sugar and cinnamon. Traditionally, it’s made with homemade egg noodles, but many families make it with packaged ones for a quick meal. This recipe from Edith’s Elyssa Heller borrows from cacio e pepe, a classic Roman dish made with lots of freshly ground black pepper. Elyssa likes to make her own pasta from scratch, feel free to use store bought fresh pasta or dried pasta. If using store bought pasta skip steps #3 and #4 of the recipe.
Makes: 10-12 servings
Total Time: 1 hour inactive + 1 hour active
Ingredients
For the peppercorn vinegar:
3 tablespoons freshly cracked peppercorns
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 ⅓ cups white wine vinegar
For the whipped cottage cheese:
2 cups cottage cheese
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
For the pasta:
3 ¼ cup “00” flour
1 teaspoon salt, plus more for the pasta water
10 egg yolks
3 large eggs
2 tablespoons olive oil
Chives for garnish
Preparation
Make the vinegar reduction: Place all the ingredients into a small saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Immediately reduce the heat to medium low and cook the mixture on a simmer and allow the vinegar to reduce and thicken, about 12 minutes. Pour the ingredients through a fine mesh sieve into a heatproof bowl.
Make the whipped cottage cheese: Place cottage cheese in a food processor and blend until smooth, about 1 minute. Slowly pour in the olive oil while the processor is on and continue blending for 2-4 minutes. The cottage cheese should be fluffy and light. Place the cottage cheese mixture into a bowl, cover, and set the mixture in the refrigerator.
Make the pasta dough: Place the eggs, egg yolks and olive oil into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment. Mix on low to combine. Add the “00” flour and salt to the bowl and mix on low until the mixture forms a dough. Increase the speed to medium and continue mixing until a smooth dough is formed, about 8 minutes. Once the dough is formed, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and let the dough rest for a minimum of 1 hour at room temperature (the dough can be made and refrigerated a day in advance).
Shape the pasta: After the dough has rested, unwrap the dough and cut it into two equal pieces. Working with one piece of dough, roll it out with a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface, just thin enough to go through the pasta machine. Run the dough through the pasta machine, starting at the thickest setting and reducing the setting after each pass of dough until the dough is about ⅛ inch thin and nearly translucent. Once your pasta is rolled out to your thickness of liking, cut it into 10-12 inch long sheets. Add the linguine or fettuccine cutter attachment to the pasta machine and pass the dough through, creating strands of linguine or fettuccine pasta. You can also cut the pasta by hand, lightly flour each sheet of pasta, roll it up crosswise and cut ¼ inch pieces of pasta crosswise. Lightly toss the pasta to detach the pieces of dough.
Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to a boil over high heat. In a large bowl, mix the whipped cottage cheese, peppercorn vinegar and ¼ teaspoon of freshly cracked pepper until combined. Drop the pasta into the boiling water and cook for 1 minute. Reserve ½ cup of the pasta water and then drain the pasta in a colander. Toss the pasta in a large bowl with the cottage cheese/vinegar mixture along with some pasta water to loosen the sauce.
Serve immediately with fresh chives and parmesan cheese.
