Food & Dining

• Food:  Latkes for Chanukah

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Latkes for Chanukah ...

Just try to get a Jewish cook to give you the recipe for Potato Latkes, the fried potato pancakes made traditionally on Chanukah. ...

"Grate some potatoes." 
"How many?"
 "Enough." 
"Anything else?"
"Onions ... eggs." 
"What holds it together?"
"Well, of course ... matzoh meal."

Of course. ...

Clearly, some people are born already knowing how to make these prepare-for-hours-eat-in-minutes treats. And if you’re not, forget it -- following a recipe in a cookbook is useless; you’ll never get what your mother used to make.

You’re going to have to learn the hard way ... burnt ones, ones that weigh 7 pounds each ... oily ones, bland ones ... You'll just have to experiment until Fortune shines on you like the light of a Chanukah candle and you get IT.

And IT?  IT is like true love:  You’ll know IT when you find IT ... your very own latke recipe, which, of course, you can then not tell anyone for years to come.

But you need a place to start. So here’s the basics.

Ingredients (to be taken with a grain of salt)

2-3 medium potatoes
1 large onion
1 large egg, beaten
2 tbs matzoh meal
oil
salt

This will serve 3-4 people (or one teenager) as a side dish. If it’s your main meal, increase the amount of ingredients  dramatically.  {How much? ... Enough.}  But remember, they’re good cold, and the leftovers heat up nicely in the oven. So don't be bashful.  And besides, how do you know you made enough unless your loved ones are groaning in pain?

1. First, coarsely grate the potatoes. Jewish grandmothers believe that it doesn’t count if you don’t bleed, but a food processor works very well if you have one.

2. Then grate the onions. 

3. Then drain the liquid. You can put the onions & potatoes in a colander and press down with a plate. It’s going to be hard work. (That will make your grandmother feel better about the food processor.) 

4. Add eggs. 

5. Mix.

6. Add flour or matzoh meal (which you can usually buy at the supermarket).

7. Take out all the frying pans in the house and coat them with about a ½ inch of oil (olive oil if you have any hope of living until next Chanukah).

8. Spoon the mix onto hot oil and fry until brown ...

9. Flip with spatula and brown the other side.

10. Drain.

11. Salt to taste then serve ... or put them on a cookie sheet and into the oven at 350 if you need to keep them warm. 

The brown, flip, brown part sounds easy, but that’s cruelly deceptive. No one can teach you this part; you have to find your way yourself. 

The latkes should be crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. The whole reason they’re made on Chanukah is because they’re cooked in oil, to symbolize the sanctified oil, which burned in the Temple for eight days even though there was only enough oil for one day.  So if you’re thinking health food for the holidays, this is not IT.  Traditionally, they’re served with applesauce, and, if you’re not serving meat, with some sour cream. 

Chanukah celebrates a miracle, and it encourages us to have faith that what may seem impossible, perhaps is not.  Sometimes miracles happen. 

... This is good to remember if you're a novice at making latkes.

Happy Chanukah

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