This one isn’t at all healthy but…
Who doesn’t like a fried potato once in a while? Potato Latkes are traditionally part of Hanukkah Celebrations. They are a great treat – basically they are grated and fried potatoes served with either Sour Cream or Apple Sauce – the great battle over which is best splits families and has raged on probably for over 5000 years.
I’m a rebel, this year I made Potato Latkes for the first time for my family and some friends and I served it with Sour Cream and Apple Butter – I make apple butter every year and was going to post the link to the recipe here but alas I haven’t done a post about that! Crazy. Will add next week…
Fried potatoes, sour cream, apple butter… It was amazing.
How did this whole thing come about you ask?
It’s actually kinda cute and funny. I invited a friend and her family over last Sunday. My plan was to decorate the house for Christmas and make latkes as it was the first night of Hanukkah – Technically we are Christian but my Dad is Jewish and I love the traditions and fun of all cultures really so more to celebrate and experience for me is always a blast.
The friends I invited over are Jewish and at first the mom (one of my closest friends) said they were really too busy – you know how it gets: homework, swimming, birthday party – it was one of those kinds of days. But her 13 year old daughter thought it would be fun so our Christmukkah party tradition was born!
None of them had ever decorated a tree before so all four of them gleefully decorated the tree and put out my Christmas Village while I attempted to make latkes for the very first time (I am GREAT at eating latkes but had never ever attempted to make them before).
Didn’t they do an awesome job?
Ok, Ok already here is the recipe
This recipe for potato latkes came from a patient of mine who got it from the Hadasah Wizo cookbook The Kineret Cookbook (hope I am spelling all of that right) – I modified it just a bit because that’s what I do
Ingredients
Feeds 7 people… (it makes a whole mess of latkes!)
5 lb bag of white potatoes peeled
6 eggs
1 onion finely chopped
a bit of salt to taste
3 teaspoons baking powder
6 tablespoons matzah meal (or flour or breadcrumbs I think would work)
lots and lots of vegetable oil.
Instructions
Grate potatoes on large grating section (I used a food processor which made this super easy) and squeeze out as much water as you can – I lay all the potatoes on paper towel to absorb as much as possible. In a separate bowl beat eggs well and mix in all other ingredients then mix with the potatoes and mix well with your hands. Cover the mixture well with saran wrap and put in fridge until you are ready to use. Please use it on the same day. The benefit of this is that more water comes out of the potatoes.
When ready make small pancake sized handfuls of potato and put 4-8 at a time on a plate (squeeze out extra water when you are doing this). Drop these into very hot oil and fry on each side until golden brown – about 5 minutes.
Place on cookie sheets in oven to keep warm and then just before serving blot off extra oil. Serve with Sour Cream and Apple Sauce or Apple Butter.
I hope you try this one – it was great and we made such a lovely new tradition with it this weekend!
Now, someone tell me how I can get my friends back over to put away all the Christmas Decorations in January…