Tuesday, December 20, 2011

latkes

Wow, was this fun!

After our story work wrapping up our Torah unit today, we sat down together to the read the picture book Grandma's Latkes, by Malka Drucker, illustrated by Eve Chwast. In the book the grandmother teaches her granddaughter how to make latkes for their Hanukkah party, and while they cook, she also tells her the Hanukkah story. The book ends with the recipe for her latkes, so of course we had to make some right away!



We first grated 3 large potatoes (Zoo Boy, above) and one small onion (J to the left). Then we added 2 beaten eggs, 2 tablespoons of flour, 1 teaspoon of salt, and a pinch of pepper. We stirred it all together and let it sit for 10 minutes to thicken, then poured off the extra fluid (there was quite a bit, our potatoes were juicy!).







Then we heated up some vegetable oil in a frying pan and put the mixture in by the rounded tablespoon. The boys commented again and again how much fun it was to cook these -- I've clearly been negligent in the cooking department with them lately. I'm going to have to make a point to carve out some schedule time in the spring to make sure we include some cooking on a regular basis. I just haven't felt up to it this fall, what with the constant nausea and retching and all....


Our latkes frying away in their oil. The recipe made an alarming number of them, actually, I suspect our chickens are going to be enjoying latkes for a bit....







The boys were game to try them, but neither they nor I were particularly impressed by them. We'll sample them again tonight when we do our little Hanukkah celebration, with some apple sauce and sour cream, maybe we'll be more keen on them then.



2 comments:

foxbrooken said...

As I thought about it, I wondered if you used potatoes bred for boiling (moist or juicy potatoes) as opposed to potatoes bred for frying (higher
starch content like russets). Boiling spuds aren't very tasty when fried. I wonder if that could explain why you weren't impressed with the Latkes.

Harvest Moon Farm said...

Oh, maybe, I don't know much about potatoes, just knew I didn't want the nice little reds I usually use (which, in retrospect, probably would have tasted better to me....). These were those great big Idaho white potatatoes, I'm not sure what their primary purpose is (other than baking them and stuffing them with all sorts of yummy things, LOL).