Glingel is the humblest of dishes, a Jewish egg foo young that has fallen on hard times. None of my cookbooks offer a recipe and my google search was fruitless.. Even my Hungarian next door neighbor, didn’t know what it was. But Glingel deserves another chance. Not only does it feed body and soul, it also solves one of the most vexing problems in Jewish life—what to do with the soup chicken after Shabbos has ended.

I’ve actually heard people, not Bill Gates types but ordinary folks who take the bus and shop at Rami Levi confessing that they throw the bird out—in to the trash, every week. That’s a lot of wasted chicken.

Perhaps one can argue that are offering supper to the cats but if they are really worried about animals they should volunteer at the animal shelter..

To our ancestors throwing out good food was anathema, and a sin and last I checked, the Halacha hasn’t changed. That means we have got to be resourceful, to use our Yiddishe kops to come up with ways to recycle our leftovers into our bodies..

With generous helpings of garlic and freshly ground black pepper, a gingel is gives revives that tired, waterlogged fowl. It’s not amazing. I’m not going to lie and say that glingel is every bit as good as lasagna or rib roast but it’s okay, filling and healthy and in our time and money strapped times it’s a good dish to know because it involves so little of each.

Here’s how to do it.

1. Separate the chicken meat from the bones until you have two cups of chicken meat. You do this with your fingers. This is fairly mindless work. It’s also relaxing in a weird sort of way, the way that glueing glitter or unraveling large knots from children’s sneakers can sometimes be relaxing. You can do it while you’re returning phone calls or listening to a child practice his kometz aleph aws.

Discard any skin or fat.. It is critical that the glingel be completely denuded of bones or cartilage—which makes this a good dish to serve to very young children.

If you are really cheap or are on an exceedingly tight budget you can even remove the meat from the necks. My mother says that that’s what the housewives did in Europe. Once you’ve collected a good sized pile of chicken flesh then shred it with a knife or processor until it achieves the texture of chopped meat.

2. Mince several cloves of garlic to microscopic size—use as many as you want. Four to six is a good number and saute them in oil (the old timers used schamltz) If you’re dieting replace most of the oil with olive oil spray. It’s non aerosole and healthier and less combustible than Pam.

3. Beat three to four eggs lightly with a fork.

4. Combine eggs with chicken and fry together in the hot garlicky oil. Add salt and pepper to taste. As everyone knows boiled chicken is one of the blandest foods in existence so you’ll need a lot of each.

Serve over fresh bread with a large green salad . Or you can combine it with leftover noodles or rice. Tomato sauce or salsa is a nice addition.

Last night I prepared glingl for the family. At first my kids refused to touch it which sent my spirits crashing down into the dumps. What kind of food writer am I ? I bet that never happens to Susie Fishbein.

But then my thirteen year old son surprised me by stuffing several tablespoons into a humous smeared pita, added fresh cucumber slices, and shifka, Israeli pickled peppers and a smear of ketchup He gobbled it down as did his brothers..

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