Yesterday I decided to attempt something I never thought I would ever do. My childhood naivete made me think I would never have to do it. That she would always be there to make them for me every time I came to visit. Despite all the hours of intensive labour to make them and how she vowed she would quit doing it if I said I was visiting my Grandma she would break out some secret 4L ice cream bucket of noodles she had stashed some place. They are my absolute favourite. And yesterday I took a giant leap into adulthood and I made them myself.
She had tried to explain how to make them to me before. "It's easy" she would say and then proceed to describe a process that involved unbelievable amounts of eggs and lard and would require a bedsheet as a prop. "You need 12 eggs...." really she always lost me at the 12 eggs because that seemed like such a ridiculous number to use in one recipe. When I would finally snap back in I would hear "then you roll out the dough very thin and lay it on a bedsheet and put it on your bed to dry". All I could imagine was Keith coming to bed exhausted one night with a bed full of rolled-out dough. In fact, when I told him I was going to attempt this his immediate response was "where will I sleep tonight?"
So I set to work. My mom and my aunt didn't have a recipe because my grandmother had written it down the way she told it in oration, from some muscle-memory which words escaped. The recipe my aunt had didn't have flour in it which is an essential ingredient so I looked online for the kielke recipe in the Mennonite Girls Can Cook website (the second one that comes up if you google it not the first). It seemed more manageable as it only called for 2 eggs.
The dough was easy enough and I was patient and let it sit in a plastic ziploc (since I had no saran wrap). It was then time to roll it out and I couldn't find my rolling pin. Usually this is when we send Em into the kitchen cause she magically finds things like rolling pins and corkscrews and all sorts of things we can't seem to find but despite valiant searching we couldn't find it. So I used the only thing found in abundant supply in my kitchen with a spherical shape - a wine bottle. My grandmother would have exasperatedly spanked my behind for that but it made me smile. In case anyone was wondering wine bottles don't do a particularly good job of rolling out dough - stick to the rolling pins.
I cut up the dough into little pieces and boiled it for the suggested few minutes (since it's fresh it doesn't take a long time. I was a bit nervous because I've had some other kielke before and it hasn't really tasted like my Grandma's noodles. I was prepared for disappointment. I made a little tester pot and after the first bite and the subsequent tears I am very happy to report they turned out as close to hers as I could have dreamed of. I made the sauce of grease, grease and more grease (cream, butter, bacon and fried onions) and we had a delicious Mennonite feast. Just like Karen Brown and I used to say "Our ancestors are rejoicing..."
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