Hi, I'm really bad at starting out diaries, blogs, and other time-continuous forms of writing - so I'm going to skip the complex preamble and just dive in. All the context you should need is that I am a 21-year-old woman, currently living and working in Seattle, usually attending college in Iowa, with a number of diverse talents and interests. Now, on to the interesting stuff!
So one of my hobbies is food art. I say food art, because just cooking is boring. I've only had to cook recently, since as a kid my mom took care of food, and in college the dining hall handles those sorts of things. That made it really clear to me why my mom always said she hated the question "What's for dinner?"...She hated it because food takes time, and money, and it is generally a nuisance to come up with solutions that are reasonable in terms of effort and cost.
This blog certainly won't answer all your questions, and the recipes on here will vary in terms of how expensive or labor-intensive they are. But in my humble estimation, most of them are quite good, and I will endeavor to make it clear how to achieve success (as well as indicating how tough or time-consuming a given recipe is).
For starters, let's look at the latkes I prepared last week as a tribute to the 50% of my cultural heritage that's Jewish. Latkes are: tasty, crispy and labor-intensive. Latkes are not: fast, easy or health food. That being said...here's how to make the dish displayed above.
Green Onion Latkes for Two with Applesauce and Herbed Sour Creams (labor intensive, about 2 hours total time)
For the latkes, you will need:
2 white potatoes
2 Yukon Gold potatoes
1 Mayan onion
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons matzoh meal
0.5 teaspoons salt
0.25 teaspoons black pepper
2 green onions, chopped
Canola oil for frying
For the sauces, you will need:
Applesauce
Sour cream
Fresh dill
Fresh chives
Fresh thyme
For the garnish, you will need:
1 Gala apple, finely sliced
In terms of equipment, you'll need:
Food processor
Sharp knives
Cutting boards
Frying pan
Box grater
Pot for boiling
To begin, make sure you've got everything. Next, put a pot of lightly salted water on the stove to boil. Put plates in your warming drawer.
While the water is coming to a boil, chop up your green onions. Put them aside.
Next, chop up your onion.
When the water is boiling, drop in your potatoes. Boil them for about 20 minutes, until tender.
Put the onion in your food processor until you have a nice onion puree. Put this into a cheesecloth or clean kitchen towel, and wring out the liquid. Put the onion into a bowl. Mix with 1 tablespoon of matzoh meal.
When the potatoes are tender, cool them briefly in a water bath. Then, take the two white potatoes and cut them into chunks. Put the chunks into the food processor and puree until smooth. Add this to the onion-and-matzoh mix.
Take the Yukon Golds and grate them into a bowl using the box grater. You want to be grating nice solid threads, so you'll get those delightful crispy potato threads around the edges of your latkes when you fry them. Add the grated Yukon Golds to the onion-potato-and-matzoh mixture.
Put this into a cheesecloth or clean towel and wring out the excess liquid, just like you did earlier with the onions. This will prevent your latkes from being mushy or slimy. When you're satisfied with how much fluid you've extracted, return the mixture to the bowl.
Add to the bowl the rest of the matzoh meal, the eggs, the pepper, the salt, and the chopped green onions. Mix everything up.
Now, make your sauces. Clean out your food processor. Drop a half-cup or so of sour cream into it. Chop up a few chives, add them, and blend it up. Taste; if you're satisfied, spoon into a ramekin or small bowl and set aside. If not, add more chives to taste, then set aside once you're happy. Clean out the food processor.
Repeat this operation using dill; then again for the thyme.
Slice the Gala apple into fine fans, as shown in the photo.
Now we're ready to fry! Put a plate with a paper towel on it within convenient reach of your stove. Pour some canola oil into a fry pan and heat it up. Scoop up about a quarter to half cup scoops of the latke batter, press them flat between your palms, and drop them into the oil. You'll probably be able to fit 3 or 4 at once into your pan. Cook them until they are showing crispy golden brown around the edges (1-3 minutes, depending how hot your oil is). When you see that golden brown, turn them over and fry for 1-2 minutes more, then spatula them out onto the paper-towel-lined plate. Put another paper towel on top of the latkes, and repeat the operation until you are out of batter.
Pull the plates out of the warming drawer. Quickly lay a fan of apple slices on each plate. Then, drop a tablespoon or so of each herbed sour cream onto the plate and garnish with the herb represented in that dollop. Put a dollop of plain sour cream on either end of the line of herbed sour creams. Spoon applesauce onto the plate in decorative pattern, and put three or four latkes on each plate. Serve hot.
Bon apetit!
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