The grinding of onions for Elaine Luschas’ family’s traditional Lithuanian recipe can make you cry.
In the kitchen of her Columbia County home, Luschas tears up for another reason. This happens as she explains why, after all these decades, she still prepares kugelis once or twice a year.
“Why?” she says, pausing to collect herself. “I guess you just feel closer to your family. Your family's not here anymore. You remember all of those things that you did when you were a child."
If the name kugelis sounds alien, keep in mind Americans used to call immigrants aliens.
Elaine Luschas, 73, and her husband, Alvin Luschas, 74, descended from Lithuanian aliens, who brought their food traditions with them as they settled and did the hard work of growing the United States.
Elaine is the daughter of Leo and Adeline (Swirsky) Mack and granddaughter of Joseph and Josephine (Burba) Swirsky. Josephine arrived in the U.S. from Lithuania in 1899. Joseph was in the U.S. by 1888, though when he arrived is unknown.
Elaine’s mother, the youngest of four children, was the only one who finished high school. Two aunts, like many women, worked in dress and shirt factories in Mahanoy City, where the family settled.
Joseph Swirsky toiled as a coal miner, and died of black lung in 1927, like many before and after him. She inherited a treasured possession of his.
“And I got my grandfather's wicker rocking chair that my aunt Helen said he would always sit by the coal stove in the kitchen,” Elaine says. “And he died in that rocking chair.”
Alvin Luschas, who introduces himself as Al, is the son of Alphonse and Mary Luschas and grandson of John and Agnes (Rainis) Luschas. John arrived in the U.S. in 1905.
The Luschases, who live in North Centre Township near Berwick, grew up in Mahanoy City in Schuylkill County. Many Lithuanians, Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans emigrated there more than a century ago.
“Yeah, my grandfather worked in the mines. My uncle worked in the mines. My father worked in the mines,” Al says.
Not Al. He became a lawyer.
“Although I worked in a nitroglycerin factory and she worked there,” he said.
“I made blasting caps,” Elaine says.
Lithuanian immigrants brought kugelis and other native recipes here, often stored only in their memories.
Al, who is half Slovak, grew up with kugelis. Elaine did not, but their daughter, Carol, 42, researched various kugelis recipes and synthesized her own. That’s the version they make nowadays.
After crossing the ocean more than a century ago, kugelis remains basically a pie baked out of potatoes, a vegetable not so alien to other Americans any more.
“It actually came to the country (Lithuania) relatively late in the 18th century, but it's became a very popular vegetable,” Carol says. “It's like a Lithuanian second bread, so to speak.”
Any potato-based Eastern European dish usually starts with a well-peeled potato. On this day, Al Luschas serves as chief potato peeler.
He strips five pounds in less than 10 minutes.
“These are pretty easy potatoes, but this still takes some time,” he says. “Keep an eye on that bacon, Carol.”
Across the kitchen, Carol Luschas fries diced bacon and onions on a gas stove for a topping called spirgucias. Bacon fat pops and crackles in the gaps between bacon and onion in the metal skillet.
Al finishes by peeling four onions. Now, it’s time to grind up the potatoes and onion.
“The machine that we use to grind everything up is from Lithuania,” he says. “And we can get complete -- with regard to the grinding -- in five minutes. That would take maybe 45 minutes without that machine.”
On this day, they bake kugelis for friends.
“Did you tell him about putting the cigar in?” Al says with a smile, an unwrapped cigar in his right hand.
With her mother’s collection of wicker baskets hanging from the kitchen ceiling, Carol Luschas feeds potatoes and onions into a grinder imported from Lithuania.
“I don’t have a system, but it doesn’t really matter because it’s all going to get mixed together,” Carol says, barely audible over the grinding.
After adding milk, eggs, salt and pepper, the mix is poured into 9 by 13-inch glass pans. Elaine Luschas sets the oven at 400 degrees.
An hour later, the kugelis it's done. Once more, a tradition endures in food.
“It’s a very unique culture,” Carol says.
During a Russian language course in college, Carol says, the professor asked students about their family traditions at Christmas and Easter.
“Kids couldn't answer it. They had no traditions,” Carol says. “It was kind of sad. I felt like an alien, so to speak.”
Kugelis, aka Bulviu Plokstainis su Spirgucias (Potato Pie with Bacon Topping)
Ingredients
1 lb. Thick Sliced Bacon (Chopped)
4 onions
12 oz. Whole milk
5 lbs. potatoes peeled
8 eggs, well beaten
1 c. flour
2 tbsp. Canola oil
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1. In a skillet, sauté bacon until crisp.
2. Grate potato and onion in a large bowl.
3. Add bacon with fat and the remaining ingredients/seasonings to the potato mixture and mix to combine.
4. Pour into greased 9X13 greased pan.
5. Bake at 400 F. For at least 1 hr until toothpick is clean.
6. While kugelis is baking make the bacon topping.
7. Let rest for 10 minutes before cutting into squares.
8. Serve hot with lots of sour cream and plenty of Spirguciais (Fried bacon topping.)
Spirguciais (bacon and onion topping)
1 lb. Thick Cut bacon
2 Onions
1 stick butter
1. In a skillet sauté bacon until partially crisp.
2. Add diced onion to bacon mixture and continue to fry until onion soft and golden.
3. Serve along side the Kugelis.
Skanaus! Bon appetit!
