Sweet Noodles for Shavuot: Lokshen with Honey, Cream, and Poppy Seeds

You all know I have a thing for poppy seeds by now. I put them in hamantaschen, I put them in oatmeal, I put them in my cabbage varnishkes—and those are just the recipes I’ve blogged so far (#putapoppyseedonit).

So you can imagine how jazzed I was to encounter a new way to eat my favorite calcium powerhouses—did you know that just one teaspoon of poppy seeds has 40 milligrams of calcium, or 4% of the recommended daily allowance?

These lokshen—Yiddish for noodles—are served in a sweet sauce of honey, cream, and poppy seeds, the likes of which I’d never encountered prior to spotting it in Robert Sternberg’s excellent Yiddish Cuisine.

Noodles probably originated in China, spreading west along the Silk Road to Central Asia and Persia, where they were initially called lakhsha (slippery). While the term eventually fell out of use, except as the name of a specific Persian noodle dish, it passed into other languages—including Yiddish.

The first known mention of noodles (or, more accurately, proto-noodles) in a non-Chinese source comes in the Jerusalem Talmud, dating to around 350 CE, where pasta was referred to as itriya and iytree. These words may derive from the Greek itrion, referring to a honey sesame wafer used in religious rites, or the Farsi itriyah, meaning string. The Babylonian Talmud refers to a boiled dough called rihata, which is etymologically related to the modern Persian word for noodles, reshteh.

It wasn’t until the Middle Ages when Middle Eastern cooks began adding eggs to their noodle dough. Egg noodles have the benefit of holding their shape better when dried and not becoming soggy after cooling. They also discovered around the same time that using high-protein durum flour makes noodles that dry well without the addition of eggs, and is easier to manipulate into different shapes.

But we’re straying a bit from the topic of lokshen (which is made out of white bread flour and egg, not semolina flour like Italian pasta) now, so suffice it to say that noodles spread from the Middle East to Spain and Sicily during the Arab conquest, and then to the rest of Italy and from there further north into Europe, probably reaching the Rhineland (aka Ashkenaz, in what is now eastern France and western Germany) around the fifteenth century.

This old-school  Ashkenazi recipe, hailing from Poland, is kind of like a sweet alfredo. Noodles are coated in a rich, creamy sauce, with a nice hit of earthy, nutty poppy seed and a little sweetness from the honey—or a lot, depending on how much you use: the original recipe calls for ½ cup; I opted for ¼, since I generally don’t like my food so sweet. It is usually served as a dairy entrée, but it can also be served as a side or dessert. The way I made it, with ¼ cup, I think it could do well as a side or main; with ½ cup, I think it would be more dessert-like.

I used dried noodles due to time constraints, but I would love to try making my own lokshen someday. If you’re up to the challenge, check out this recipe.

This recipe is slightly adapted from Yiddish Cuisine.

Lokshen with Honey, Cream, and Poppy Seeds (Lokshen mit Honig und Mohn)

Serves 6 to 8 as a side or dessert or 4 as an entrée

1 lb. fresh lokshen, or dried wide or medium egg noodles

2 tbsp. Unsalted butter

¼–½ cup honey

¼ cup poppy seeds, ground or whole

1 cup heavy or whipping cream

In a large stockpot, bring a full pot of cold water to a rapid boil over high heat. Add the lokshen and cook until tender but firm. This will only take a few minutes for fresh lokshen; for dried, follow the instructions on the package. When the lokshen have finished cooking, drain in a colander.

In a large sauté pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the honey and poppy seeds and mix together well,  then reduce the heat to low and stir in the cream. Do not let the cream come to a rapid boil, or it will curdle. Just heat it slowly until just below boiling.

When the cream is heated, add the lokshen to the sauté pan and heat through, mixing thoroughly until ingredients are well incorporated. Serve immediately on individual serving plates.

Sources: Encyclopedia of Jewish Food (Gil Marks, 2010); Yiddish Cuisine: A Gourmet Approach to Jewish Cooking (Robert Sternberg, 1993)

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