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Friday January 26, 2007

Kosher kugel-maker getting handiwork on tables everywhere

by dan pine
staff writer

To look at Jennifer Schilling’s kugels, neatly packaged in little plastic trays, one would never guess each weighs a ton.

That’s because a Schilling kosher kugel is as dense as neutron star, filled with roasted carrots, cherries and pineapple, or raisins and walnuts, perhaps lemon ricotta or maybe caramel apple.

Schilling counts on the dominant kugel gene found in Jewish DNA to carry her business to great heights. She launched her company, My Bubbe’s Table, last year and now she’s actively marketing her line of kugels and MochiCake dessert squares to stores like Whole Foods, Martha & Bros. and Peets Coffee, especially at holiday time.

Each kugel serves 6 to 8 people and sells for $15.99. Schilling’s kitchen and products are certified by Vaad Hakashrus of Northern California.

A lifelong chef, Schilling happily serves up sample slices of her wares, but woe unto he who tries to warm her kugel in a microwave.

“No!” she cries, throwing herself like a Secret Service agent between the kugel and the microwave. “Use a toaster oven or a gas oven only!”

That’s the only hint of control freak one is likely to find in Schilling. Otherwise the San Francisco transplant is a galloping gourmet, merrily talking up her business, her kugel and Jewish cuisine in general.

She didn’t choose lightly the name of her company. The “bubbe” of My Bubbe’s Table hovers over Schilling whenever she bakes (that’s every day, 160 kugels a week).

“How did I get into this?” she asks rhetorically. “It’s simple: my grandma, Olga Friedman from Czechoslovakia. These are my variations on Olga’s recipes. Everyone does the cottage cheese and raisin kugel. I did that and added more. More butter, more cream. Nothing about what I do is low-cal.”

Schilling remembers fondly traveling with her family from her Chico home down to L.A. where her grandparents lived. There, Olga would teach her granddaughter the secrets of Jewish cooking.

“She’d kick everyone out of the kitchen,” recalls Schilling, “but she would let me in. She taught me her chicken soup recipe. Her charoset was amazing. Everyone else did the usual apples and wine. But she would use dates, apricots, pears and ginger.”

In the years since then, Schilling has moved around, from Los Angeles to Olympia, Wash., to Santa Rosa. She and her husband of 20 years, Robert, started other food-related businesses before, including an organic sauerkraut company and a Jewish catering service.

“Food is art and craft,” she says. “It involves all of the senses. There’s something very alive about it. Judaism is breathing in the moment, and with food, not only do you enjoy it but so do others.”

She had developed her kugel recipes over the years, and though they were well received, she hadn’t considered hanging out her shingle until she met Irving Greisman of Irving’s Challah fame. Greisman had turned his knack for bread making into a successful Bay Area business.

“He has this philosophy of bringing more kosher foods to people,” adds Schilling. “When we approached Whole Foods, they were excited because they see the value of serving the Jewish community.”

Of course, to paraphrase the immortal New York City rye bread ad campaign of the 1960s, you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy a My Bubbe’s Table kugel.

But it helps.

“I want luscious,” says Schilling. “I think Olga would be pleased that I go for taste and richness.”

For Schilling, part of the pleasure of catering (which she still does for private parties and synagogues like Congregation Beth Ami in Santa Rosa) is getting immediate feedback, seeing diners enjoy her handiwork. She won’t exactly get that as her kugels fly off the shelves. But she has baked for plenty of people over the years, and almost always received praise.

But one compliment among all kugel kudos, she says, rises above the others.

“I would make kugels in my catering,” notes Schilling, “and the highest compliment was: ‘This is almost as good as mine.’”

For more information about My Bubbe’s Table European-style kosher kugels, call (415) 290-2475 or visit www.MyBubbesTable.com.

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