Thanksgiving Memories

Thanksgiving. A day of gratitude. The day that signals the official start of the holiday season. A holiday marked by traditio and symbolism. For many of us, it’s a chance to spend time with our families and be thankful for each other and for the bounty that is laid before us at our dining room tables.

And for most of us, this holiday has become very much about food. Food and lots of it. And that, as Martha Stewart would say, is “a good thing.” Nowhere are family food traditions more evident than at our collective Thanksgiving celebrations. Perhaps for this reason, Thanksgiving always makes me nostalgic; I fondly recall large gatherings with family members who have long since passed, in homes that are no longer standing or at least, no longer occupied by the familiar and the familial.

As a child, our Thanksgivings were almost always spent in the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch country, in a little slate-mining town nestled in the hills of central Pennsylvania. Slating ton (aptly named) is, even today, pure small-town America.

The drive to Slatington from our home in Philadelphia always seemed interminable. The stretch of the Pennsylvania turnpike that goes north out of Philadelphia hadn't been built yet, and most of the trip was on four-lane roads with trafficnlights everynfew miles As we got closer to Slatington, the four lanes became two, then twisting country roads through small hamlets of modest homes, a fire house, a single grocer and a gas station. A fine old brick church and its ancient graveyard marked the point at which we knew we were only minutes away from our destination.

My aunt and uncle lived in a big (or so it seemed to me as a small child) old stone home on Main Street. (No, I’m not making that up.) The Kern homestead sat at the corner of Main and Kern Street (I’m not making this up, either) and is forever seared in my memory. It was a deep, narrow, two-story affair, originally built with an outhouse. The outhouse became a tool-shed when the home was eventually modernized to include a single bathroom on the second floor, above the kitchen at the rear of the house. With a single staircase at the front of the house, a trip from the kitchen to the loo entailed climbing a long, wooden staircase and a trek down a long, narrow upstairs hallway paved with well-worn rag rugs over ancient wood flooring…and no small measure of planning ahead. As a little girl, I am sure there were several occasions on which I barely made it.

On the ground floor, one had to walk through the dining room and the living room to get from the kitchen to the staircase, which was off the “parlor”, a formal living room that faced the street and opened onto a lovely, covered porch. There was a sofa in that room. They called it a “davenport.”

The kitchen was just large enough to eat in, but clearly not laid out with cooking in mind. Lovely, thick quarter-sawn oak cabinets, darkened with the patina of age, went nearly to the 14 foot ceilings, making cooking a bit of a physical challenge for my petite aunt Pauline. The sink was “all of a piece,” as the Pennsylvania Dutch would say, a one-piece sink/counter/backsplash carved from a solid slab of slate.

Pauline eased her cooking woes by fueling herself with my uncle Stummy’s infamous whiskey sours while preparing Thanksgiving dinner. The Dutch have a curious habit of giving everyone nicknames, especially the men. Stummy’s real name was Stuart, and he actually had a friend whose nickname was “Johnny Chicken Shit”. As for the whisky sours, I suspect they contained more whisky than sour. (For true Dutch-country authenticity, pronounce it “whiskeysahrs.” Imagine the movie “Fargo,” and sing the last syllable as three distinct notes. “Whisky sah ah ars”, accent on the second “ah”. Perfect.)

There was a porch on the side of the house, as well, with doors to both the dining room and the kitchen. I loved that porch. Unlike the front porch, which was covered and shady, the side porch was open and warmed by the pale autumn sun in the afternoon. The back yard hosted a clothes line and a big patch of rhubarb. There was a narrow alley and then a huge, tree-covered mountain. (In hindsight it was more of a hill, and we were young adolescents before we gathered the nerve to climb it. By then it didn’t seem nearly as big.) My sister and I would spend hours on the porches and in the yard, enjoying the smell of leaves burning somewhere nearby and the crisp, fall air, while we waited an eternity (and worked up huge appetites) for the mid-afternoon meal.

Pennsylvania Dutch meals are always a celebration of plenty (read: gluttony). My mother always said that her great uncles ate until they were full, pushdc their chairs away from the table, loosendc their belts a notch, and bellied up to the table again for another round. It’s not hard to imagine that a Pennsylvania Dutch Thanksgiving is a veritable feast of traditional, regional food.

A favorite side dish in the Dutch country is the locally produced and naturally sweet “Cope’s Corn”. Made for over 100 years by the John Cope company, Cope’s Corn is dried, roasted sweet corn. (www.copefoods.com) Reconstituted, it has a caramel color and flavor that is unlike anything else. Served either stewed, creamed or in a corn pudding, it was a staple at all of our Thanksgiving meals. Shortly after my husband and I started dating, I brought it to one of his family Thanksgiving celebrations and now his family asks for it, as well.

There were all the usual Thanksgiving trimmings: several kinds stuffing, which the Dutch call “dressing”, including my late grandmother’s chestnut stuffing which my husband now requests each November; sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and the like. And there were cranberries and molded Jell-o salads.

But one dish that was unique to our feast was my aunt’s “hot lettuce” salad. The lettuce isn’t actually hot; it’s simply iceberg lettuce dressed with a warm, sweet and sour dressing made of sweetened, condensed milk and vinegar, liberally accented with soft—not crisp—cooked bacon. It’s better than it sounds, trust me!

Pauline and my grandmother were also known for their creamed pearl onions. This was long before these little gems were available pre-peeled in your grocer’s freezer, so it was no small feat bringing them to the table. It took an hour or more to peel enough onions for a crowd and prepare them for braising and a healthy dose of heavy cream. And on more than one occasion, perhaps because there were too many dishes to serve—or too many whiskey “sahrs” consumed--Pauline made the onions and forgot to serve them. “Oh, goodness, Stummy,” she’d laugh, “I forgot the pearl onions!” It was a testament to her good nature (or good whiskey) that she found this oversight amusing despite all the effort she had put into them.

Dessert is a specialty of the Pennsylvania Dutch. The German settlers in this part of the country have been credited with inventing the two-crust fruit pie as we now know it. (I know this is true because Alton Brown said so.) And while “Shoofly” pie is a tradition among the Amish, it is less popular among the secular inhabitants of the region. However, mincemeat pie is a favorite and was something I always looked forward to at Thanksgiving. My grandmother always made the mince pies—her crusts were legendary—and Pauline did the pumpkin pie. My mother often made mincemeat cake; three layers, a mile high and slathered with cream cheese frosting. I wish I still had the recipe.

My cousin Jeff was in the Slatington High School marching band, and there was always a football game on Thanksgiving day. I remember Jeff coming in an hour before dinner was served, dressed in has band uniform and his cheeks rosy from the crisp fall air. After dinner, my cousin Jane and my father would play the piano while the women cleaned up the dishes (by hand) and the men fell asleep in front of a football game. The Kerns had cable TV back when it was cooler to have an antenna.

Pauline always sent home a care package of leftover turkey and my grandmother’s yeasty dinner rolls. There was no better sandwich than leftover turkey and real mayonnaise on an “Edna roll.”

It would be dark by the time we headed home, mom at the wheel. Bundled up in a blanket in the back seat of our station wagon, my sister and I were usually asleep by the time we reached the old brick church on the outskirts of town…with visions of turkey sandwiches dancing in our heads.

This Blog

If you're new here, I hope you'll be so kind as to follow my blog. I've been remiss in posting of late, but I promise that will change.

Autumn is always a time of change, and in keeping with that, there are lots of changes in my life, new recipes in my kitchen, new events to train for...and always plenty of sarcasm to go around.

Be sure to scroll down and check out the archive for lots of earlier articles about my favorite topics: food and fitness.

Hope you'll read...and comment.

Sara

I used to be a Superhero

For the better part of my adult life, I was "that woman"...the one who earned a pretty nice salary while juggling a demanding career, a marriage, a house and two kids.

It's hard to remember how I managed that. Sure, I have an abundance of energy, I always have. My sister and I were instilled with a strong work ethic by our hard-working, successful parents, particularly our mother. And I am fortunate enough to have a husband who was always willing to chip in with cooking, cleaning and kid duty, particularly when my job called me out of town--which was often.

In addition to my full-time job, I also taught fitness classes a few days a week, and with my daily commute to/from home/work/gym, my schedule was pretty packed. It was sort of a point of pride for me...the ability to juggle all this stuff. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Supermom! Watch me bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan...then throw a Martha Stewart-worthy dinner party for 10 friends on the weekend with not so much as a hair out of place. I sewed my daughter's first holiday outfit because the ones in the store weren't elegant enough, and my kids rooms had curtains and dust ruffles that I made myself.

I remember my mother-in-law calling me Supermom. I'm pretty sure she didn't intend it to be a compliment, but I chose to take it that way. It would have been a compliment coming from my own mother.

Some days I felt like I should don a cape over my trendy "I'm a cool advertising chick" clothes before I climbed into my car for my morning commute to my kick-ass office. I'd imagine it flapping behind me as I strode confidently into my office, heels clicking. Other days I'd come home, exhausted from a long day of dealing with clients and deadlines, and wonder who was going to make dinner if I couldn't muster the strength. My house was always a mess and I was usually weeks behind on laundry. But I put those short-comings in the "don't sweat the small stuff" category and focused on being as good a mom as I could manage and always feeding my family home-cooked meals.

And although I loved my cape, I secretly envied my friends who had managed to migrate to "work at home" or part-time careers so they could have more time for themselves and their families. And I looked down my nose at the moms who stayed home every day; the trim MILFs who stood at the bus stop in their tennis dresses or gym togs, then spent the rest of the day at the health club, shopping and lunching with their friends. I could never be "one of those women". Indeed, I reveled in the challenges of my demanding life and took great pride in my juggling skills. It made me a Superhero. Those other women were mere mortals in cute yoga pants with their husband's gold cards.

But now I'm almost an empty nester; one is off at college and the other is a 16 year old who probably still needs his mommy but does a really good job of acting the independent teenaged chick magnet. The kids are still demanding, but now they're depleting the dollars in the bank account not the hours in the day.

I'm struggling to start my own business after a heart-breaking layoff last year from a job I loved. So I now have that "flexible schedule" I always wanted when the kids were young...and more time on my hands than I know what to do with. My crazy schedule and lack of free time had forced me to abandon a lot of my hobbies out of necessity, and so I find my "free time" is spent...well, I'm not really sure what I do with it, other than spend too much of it on Facebook.

And my house is really clean.

When I imagined this stage of my life, I always hoped I'd be doing exactly what I'm doing right now; running my own qualitative research consultancy. When business is good, I travel a lot; not something I could do when the kids were little. But I always assumed I'd ease into it; have time to build my client base before being forced to try to get the business off the ground because I had lost my primary income. In a perfect world, I would have planned for this with a little more operating cash to whether the inevitable dry spells that all small businesses experience.

I took over our fourth bedroom and turned it into a beautiful home office. The allure of "working from home" can be powerful. But the reality is I have lost the stimulation of an uber-cool office with pool tables, impromptu Friday afternoon happy hours in Cubeville and daily interaction with 1,000 interesting, young, creative people every day, and replaced it with the quiet companionship of a furry feline and 750 Facebook friends who think I'm swell. That wasn't something I anticipated, and I don't feel all that "super" sitting in my home office in a pair of flats.

My business is going to take off...I can feel it. I'm good at what I do and more importantly, I love what I do. But there's nothing more ego-crushing than a job loss, even when you know it was a purely economic decision. A year later, I'm (mostly) over that part.

But I miss my cool clothes. I miss my heels. I miss all those ridiculously young, painfully cool people I worked with.

Most of all, I miss my cape.

Mixed Food Metaphors

Mixed metaphors drive me crazy. "She can't hold a torch to you." and "It's not rocket surgery" are two of my favorites. "She's not the brightest bulb in the shed." You get the idea.

The only thing that makes me crazier is mixed food metaphors, a.k.a. Fusion Cuisine. I'm talking Kimchi Weiner-schnitzel and Tex-Mex Curry and other culinary crimes committed against the American public.

While I applaud that our collective palate has grown adventurous enough to warrant this sort of experimentation on the part of some pretty talented chefs, most of the time it's more "miss" than "hit" when multiple cuisines are mixed, particulary at the hands of an amateur.

So color-me-skeptical at the idea of "edamame hummus."

Edamame is the staple of sushi bars, and is, in fact, the lowly the soy bean. Boiled in salted water, dusted with sea salt and eaten from the shell like peanuts (to which they are a close relative) at sushi bars all over the world. They are the essence of the flavor element "umame" and are healthy litttle green gems, loaded with protein. And they are darn tasty with a saketini. (Then again, isn't everything?)

Hummus is now so ubiquitous it's almost become an American food. Middle-Eastern in origin, hummus is traditionally made with chick peas. A luscious puree of chick peas, tahini (sesame paste), olive oil and lots of fresh lemon juice, hummus graces menus and kitchen tables all over America. And although many liberties are taken with the word "hummus", you can't just puree a bunch of beans and call it hummus. Hummus means chick peas. Anything else is just bean puree.

So I more than a little curious last evening when confronted with a bowl of green puree and a few pita chips as part of an appetizer we ordered at a local "Asian fusion" lounge owned by a prominent group of Chaldean (Catholic Iraqis) restaurateurs.

After scooping up some of this mystery puree on the chips, I eventually abandoned the chips and just went at it with my chopsticks. It was rich and creamy...I knew right away it was some sort of edamame puree. I passed it to my husband. "Edamame," he said. Yup. It was. It was also sublime.

"Oh my God," I said to the waitress, "this stuff is addictive!"

"Oh, I know! The edamame hummus, it's insane, isn't it??"

Ah, edamame hummus. But of course, it made perfect sense. A Japanese fusion restaurant owned by Chaldeans. Well, if anyone could pull that off, I guess they could!

"Does it have chick peas and edamame?" I asked. No, the waitress informed me, just edamame and olive oil and lemon. Hmmm. As I scooped up the last bits from the bowl with my chopsticks and momentarily contemplated licking the bowl, I decided not to argue the semantics of calling it "hummus".

Instead, I immediately googled some recipes and planned my dinner around some of that lovely green puree.

(Recipe to come.)

Ambition in a Cup

Repost
Originally posted August, 2007

Life can be pretty hectic. Like many of us, I rely on a daily dose (or two) of caffeine to keep me going. As a culture, we are incredibly reliant on legal drugs; alcohol, nicotine, caffeine. That's not intended as crticism, for I have, at one time or another, used all of those drugs myself. In fact, at the moment I am sipping one...a hot espresso served in a teeny lusterware cup I bought at an antique shop.

I have an espresso maker; it's not one of those gorgeous brushed metal units I lust for at Starbucks and Williams-Sonoma each time I go in. But it is a pump-driven Krups unit that I bought when I was pregnant with my son; when I gave up the other two legal drugs but was allowed by my doctor to keep coffee on my short list of uncontrollable substances. I figured being able to make myself cappucino would be a nice treat and make me feel less deprived; a "fancy" coffee after dinner was hardly a worthy substitute for wine with dinner, but at least it felt like a little indugence.

It's been years since I've used the machine; it's been sitting on a high shelf in my laundry room, with my deep fryer. That's where I keep the appliances are rarely used but don't warrant a trip to the graveyard (a large metal shelving unit in my basement that holds 3 or 4 difference ice cream makers, a fondue pot, an old toaster oven and some "Made in Taiwan" chopping device that never really worked properly.) Items retired to the graveyard only resurface when the Purple Heart calls with their monthly request for donations.

But necessity is the mother of resurrection, and I was out of coffee filters.

So down it came. I ground some of my usual coffee to a powder and packed the little tray in the machine. It took a long time for the machine to heat up and even longer for it to produce steam. For a few minutes, I thought it was broken, but now I think perhaps it was on strike. I think I might consider a labor disruption of some sort had I been made to spend 5 years in the laundry room.

Eventually I heard that satisfying hissing sound and the first few drops of deep brown richness began to drip into my cup. It smelled fantastic.

A reasonable substitute for my usual morning drip? Absolutely. Great espresso? Not by a long shot (sorry, no pun intended). Sadly, it was a little thin and my regular-roast coffee didn't give it that great "bite" that is the hallmark of really good espresso.

I became a woman on a mission. Off to the store I went for some real Italian roast beans, regular and decaf. I spent the better part of Saturday morning figuring out the perfect grind, the right amount of "packing" of the grinds into the basket and the proper length of time for each pull. My daughter's friends, the teenage caffeine junkies, were more than happy to help me critique each shot, and when I finally nailed it; a perfectly black shot of coffee essence topped with a beautiful tan coating of gorgeous "crema", we pronounced our experiment a success.

I have since purchased a box of coffee filters, but I haven't even turned on the coffee pot. My husband's morning drip coffee has been replaced by "cafe Americano"; espresso diluted with hot boiling water. My evening wine is now a decaf with a twist of orange. I found the long-lost foaming attachment at the back of the "junk drawer" (every kitchen has at least one of those) and made making perfect foam my next project.

My espresso maker now occupies a place of honor on the counter next to my coffee pot; they are both black and silver and I like how natural they look together. I can't help but wonder, though...how long before the coffee maker ends up in the laundry room?

The espresso maker is winking its "ready" light. It could be my imagination, but I swear it is smiling. Make it a doppio.

Jewish Penicillin

It is quite possible that there is no other food more authentic to the American Jewish experience than matzoh ball soup. Merely saying the words conjures images of “bubbe” (the Yiddish term for grandmother) standing over a simmering pot of chicken broth.

I often meet non-Jews who have heard of matzoh ball soup but never experienced it. Indeed, they confess, they are puzzled by how a cracker can be made into a ball, and why in G-d’s name it would be served in soup. Those of us who grew up with it never really thought much about the incongruity of this notion because we understand the role of matzoh in our collective Jewish history and culture.

Matzoh is most closely linked to Passover, one of the most important holidays on the Hebrew calendar. The holiday comes from the story of Exodus, wherein the bible says that God inflicted ten plagues upon the Egyptians before Pharaoh would release the Israelites, who he had been holding in slavery. The tenth plague was the killing of firstborn sons, however, the Israelites were instructed to mark their homes with the blood of a spring lamb, and upon seeing this, the spirit of the Lord “passed over” these homes and their sons were spared.

So how does Matzoh fit in here? The story goes that when Pharaoh freed the Israelites they left in such a hurry that they could not wait for bread to rise. As they traveled through the dessert with the unleavened dough in their knapsacks, the desert sun baked the dough into hard, flat bread now called matzoh.

In observance of the Jew’s suffering in the desert* and their exodus from slavery in Egypt, no leavened bread is eaten during Passover, and Matzoh is the primary symbol of the holiday.

Jews are nothing if not resourceful, however, and modern Jewish cooks have found a thousand ways to make Passover’s lack of baked goods tolerable, including making matzoh into cakes and other goodies that pretty closely resemble leavened products.

This usually requires lots of eggs, even more egg whites and a whole lot of luck. As any cook knows, soufflé-type baked goods are notoriously challenging and unpredictable. To complicate matters further, no flour can be used; only matzoh meal (ground matzoh) or matzoh cake meal (finely ground matzoh).

Which brings us back to matzoh balls. Since noodles are out of the question during Passover (as are dumplings), Eastern European Jews needed something to put in chicken soup. Hence, the mixture of matzoh meal, melted shortening (usually margarine, but more authentically, chicken fat) and eggs, formed into balls, poached in water, then cooked in chicken stock.

I’m sure you are wondering why I’m bringing up matzoh ball soup during the “Festival of Lights” (Hanukkah) instead of Passover. I actually made the soup about 10 days ago, at the behest of my son. Like most good Jewish boys, he has his mamma wrapped around his little finger, and when he came down with a nasty cold just a few days before his birthday, I asked him what he wanted to eat.

“Matzoh ball soup,” he said, without hesitation.

Generations of Jewish mothers have prescribed chicken soup (Jewish penicillin) for colds, a home remedy that has been passed from mother to daughter over centuries. Turns out they were right; scientists have identified an enzyme in chicken broth that has been proven to relieve congestion. Lesson here? “You should listen to your muthah!!”

I could have gone to the deli and picked up an order of soup in a cardboard container, and it would have been tasty. After all, making it is time consuming. But my maternal instincts kicked in, and off to the store I went for the basic ingredients.

The soup is always best made with home-made chicken stock, but with a sick boy at home, I didn’t have time to stew a chicken or two (or better yet, the bones of a roasted chicken) so I used organic chicken broth instead.

The ingredients for the matzoh balls. Matzoh meal, eggs, rendered chicken fat, chicken broth/stock.

The recipe calls for seasoning the matzoh meal with just salt and pepper, but I always add parsley flakes, some shallot salt (from Penzey’s, it’s fantastic), a pinch or two each of marjoram, thyme, and rubbed sage and lots of freshly ground black and white pepper. Matzoh balls shouldn’t be spicy – Jewish food seldom is, and this is comfort food, after all – but I’ve eaten enough flavorless matzoh balls to know that some herbs and spices can make a big difference.

This is the chicken fat (also known as “schmaltz” but that’s covered in another blog) in its solid state at room temp...

and melted and ready to be mixed with the eggs and matzoh meal....

Mixing the eggs, water, maztoh meal, chicken fat and seasonings.

The mixture then rests in the refrigerator.

There is great debate (but of course) among Jewish cooks as to whether the matzoh balls should be firm and chewy, or soft and fluffy. My family was always of the “soft and fluffy” school of matzoh balls, so although the recipe calls for resting the dough for 30 minutes, I give it a full hour, often more. This is really what determines the texture; how much time the matzoh meal has to absorb the liquid in the mixture.

After the allotted time, use wet hands to shape the dough into 1” balls. I make mine a little bigger than that since the dough is a little fluffier after resting for over an hour.

The shaped balls are then carefully dropped into gently boiling water, making sure they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan before they float to the top.

They simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes, until they are fluffy and have increased in size by about 1/3 or more.

A bowl of finished matzo balls (foreground),

and more waiting for their turn in the stockpot (background).

While the matzoh balls are cooking, I cut up some carrots and celery and put it in a large saucepan with the chicken broth. By the time the matzoh balls were finished, the celery and carrots were tender and had given the packaged broth a sweet, freshly-made flavor.




Comfort…

…and joy.

(Oy! That hair!)

A Shiksa's Guide to Making Latkes

A Shiksa’s Guide to Latkes

Hanukkah--the holiday with as many spellings as Liz Taylor has last names--is late this year, falling right on top of that other holiday (you know, the one with the guy in the red suit).

Although this holiday has less religious significance than many other Jewish holidays it is, arguably, the most fun. We have spinning dreydels, chocolate coins wrapped in silver and gold, candles to light, gifts to open and, most importantly, pounds and pounds of potatoes and onions to shred and fry. And who doesn’t love a holiday that entails spending hours over skillets of hot canola?

So in order to prepare us all for this festive occasion, I thought I would share the proper technique for making latkes, with special instructions for the novice latke maker and any shiksas* among us who might find themselves in the unfortunate position of hosting this year’s festivities.



--------------------

Latkes: Preparation, Recipe and Serving Method

Here is a recipe for real Jewish Latkes; the kind that stink up your house for weeks (especially if you make 90 of them for your family Hanukkah party and leave the next day for two weeks in Boca).

Just ten easy steps.

Preparation:

1) Argue for months (beginning around Rosh Hashana) over who is making the latkes this year. When you are chosen, casually mention under your breath that yours are better, anyway.

2) Phone all of the other people involved (namely those who weren't chosen to make latkes and a few of your unsuspecting shiksa girlfriends) and whine until they agree to come over to help you. (Your shiksa friends will only fall for this once, so choose wisely.)

3) Cover your stove and other work surfaces to protect them from hot oil (foil works well). In fact, draping your entire kitchen in Reynolds Wrap and having a Hazmat team at the ready would not be overkill. (Those guys that cleaned up after the BP spill in the gulf would be perfect.)

4) Put on your oldest "schmatta" (an old rag of an outfit) because the smell will never leave your clothing. Never. Ever. Trust me. Please.

5) Prepare, Prepare, Prepare: Open all the windows in the kitchen and turn on the exhaust fan. Close all bedroom doors and put rolled towels underneath. Turn off the furnace so the smell isn't circulated through the house. Buy an extra furnace filter to install after the holiday. Find the fire extinguisher and place it within easy reach, even though you have no idea how to use it.

6) Fill several skillets with about 1/2 inch of oil, tisk-tisking as to "oy, so much fat!" the entire time and loudly debating the merits of sunflower/corn/canola oil with your latke-making partners and insisting that your choice of oil (whichever it is) is best, even if you used something different last year.

7) Call your mother or grandmother 6 times while you are mixing the batter to make sure you have the proportions right and then cry until she comes over to help you. (Special note for shiksas: under NO circumstances call your Jewish mother-in-law for advice; this would be admitting weakness and it’s all down hill from there.)

8) Loudly yell "oy!" each time a tiny splatter of grease touches your skin and complain that your back hurts after the 3rd batch. (If you'd stand up straight like I told you, you wouldn't have this problem.) Take a motrin. At this point, those of us with shiksa blood begin drinking heavily. I find sparkling wine goes nicely with latke making, although grain alcohol straight from the bottle will do in a pinch. And surely it's no coincidence that "vodka" is probably the only word the rhymes with "latke".

9) Repeat until all potatoes are fried and your kitchen, clothing, hair and the family dog smell like a White Castle restaurant at 2 am. (Only a shiksa would know from that smell.)


I'm pretty sure every single latke cook learned to make these crispy delights as a result of having been suckered into helping someone else make them and that no real recipe for them exists.

Now, pay attention because I'm only telling you this once.


10) This is really just one step...be sure to read it all the way through; I wouldn't want you to be the subject of gossip in the locker room at the JCC next week.

RECIPE:

Large russet potatoes (many pounds)
medium yellow onions (about a 1 to 5 ratio to potatoes)
eggs (a dozen or more)
matzo meal or flour (many handfuls)
salt (pinches per batch)
pepper (smidgens per batch)
oil (more than you can imagine)

a) shred or grate potatoes and put in a bowl of cold water until all potatoes are shredded

b) grate onions and put in a separate bowl (a gas mask is helpful here)

c) beat a bunch of eggs and season them with salt and pepper

Then, using a separate large bowl

d) pull about four or five big handfuls of shredded potatoes from the water and squeeze the moisture back into the bowl of potatoes and water until they are pretty dry (alternately you can squeeze in cheesecloth) and dump into in the separate bowl

e) add a handful of or so of onion to the bowl

f) add a small handful of flour or matzo meal until the potatoes are lightly coated, mixing with your hands

g) add enough egg to well moisten the potatoes; the mixture should be wet but not soupy

h) at this point experienced latke makers will take some of the potato starch that has settled to the bottom of the bowl of potatoes and water and stir this into the mixture, as well

i) fill your palm with some of the potato mixture and pat it to compress it onto a large spoon or spatula; slide it gently into a skill containing about 1/2 inch of hot (375) oil...cook until browned on one side; turn over and brown on the other side.

j) drain on paper towels, transfer to baking sheets lined with brown paper (from grocery bags works great) and set aside. Reheat in a hot oven when ready to serve. Once they are cooled you can freeze them and use a paper bag lined cookie sheets to reheat. They reheat really well.

Serving Method:

9) Fill two platters with hot latkes; repeat as needed. It is best for the latke chef to plan to remain standing for the duration of the meal.

10) Serve with sugar free apple sauce and low fat sour cream and act puzzled when your gentile guests find the incongruity of this amusing.

Happy Hannukah...Chanukah...whatever.

* unsuspecting Gentile woman


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