Barbara Glazer knew something was missing.
She had prepared a kugel for Rosh Hashanah, and the recipe wasn’t quite right. It was a test run, as Glazer was preparing to enter a kugel cook-off at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun in River Hills, where she is a member.
Glazer said she has a passion for food and cooking. She had learned about food design and recipe development while working for two major processed food companies.
As she began preparing for the cook-off, Glazer concocted a savory kugel – a baked casserole – with vegetables including mushrooms, onions, garlic and spinach. She mixed in cottage cheese and topped it with parmesan.
“It just was good, but it wasn’t elevated at all,” Glazer said. “It just didn’t have a punch.”
She kept working at it.
Glazer was one of 25 people to enter a homemade kugel in the Reform synagogue’s contest. The event, held Oct. 20, was at least the third kugel cook-off at CEEBJ, according to executive director Andrew Appel.
The congregation has been working to increase its programming centered around CEEBJ’s kitchen, Appel wrote in an email. The return of the kugel cook-off is one example.
This year’s event had a star-studded boost: The judging panel included one of the most recognizable names in Milwaukee’s food scene. Dan Jacobs, co-owner of Milwaukee restaurants DanDan and EsterEv and a 2024 runner-up on the Bravo television show “Top Chef,” was a celebrity judge.
Glazer said Jacobs’ participation was an added incentive for her to enter the contest. Before presenting her creation for Jacobs and the other judges, Glazer iterated until she settled on her eventual entry.
For Yom Kippur, she developed another kugel that drew on Italian flavors – parmesan and oregano, for example. She also revisited the recipe she made for Rosh Hashanah, but she made some tweaks.
On her next go-around, Glazer added in sun-dried tomatoes, sour cream and goat cheese.
“We all looked at each other, and we’re like, ‘Oh yeah. This is good,’” Glazer said.
The roughly 130 attendees and the judges of the cook-off concurred. Glazer entered that version of her kugel – dubbed Garden Delight Kugel with the assistance of ChatGPT – in the contest, and she took home two prizes. She received the first-place award from the judges and also was the people’s choice winner.
“I was really overwhelmed,” Glazer said. “I was not expecting that. There were a lot of delicious kugels in the competition.”
Glazer said Jacobs told her that he knew her kugel would be good when he walked past the dish and could smell the pesto, which Glazer cooked from scratch using ingredients from her garden.
She walked away from the contest with a photo of herself alongside Jacobs – wearing his iconic blue glasses – and two plaques, each featuring a spatula.
Glazer said her favorite memory from the day was looking at her phone to see a text message from her son with four broom emojis, symbolizing how she swept the competition.
“It was so fun to think about and talk about and attend, and certainly (to) win was the icing on the cake,” Glazer said. “But just participating in the whole event was a fun, fun experience.”
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