Latkes. I am talking about latkes, but I didn’t want to pass up such a mad good chance for some killer alliteration. You understand.
Yesterday some people expressed a wish to have my latke recipe, and being the obliging and benevolent soul that I am, I acquiesced. Am acquiescing. Whatever. Here it is!
6 large potatoes
2 large onions
1 ½ tablespoons of flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of salt
¼ teaspoon of pepper
½ teaspoon of baking powder
This is a flexible recipe. Last night I double-and-a-halfed it to 15 potatoes and about 4 and a half onions, because I fucking love onions. I like an oniony latke. To me this is the secret to latke deliciousness. However, the quantity of onion you like in your latke is up to you. The salt and pepper is also to taste, I think we ended up putting a bit more of each into ours last night as well.
STEPS:
Wash and peel the potatoes. This step sucks, sorry.
You’re going to want to grate them. You can do this by hand if you do not possess a food processor but boy howdy do I ever not recommend it. If you DO use a food processor, I extremely extremely recommend getting a grater blade to use instead of the regular one, as the regular one will just pulp the potatoes and that will fuck up the ESSENTIAL LATKE TEXTURE. However, if you cannot grate them by hand and do not have access to a grater blade for your food processor it’s not TERRIBLE to just use the regular blade. No one will come to your house and harm you or anything.
Press the extra liquid out of the potatoes!!!!! If your batter is too liquidy your latkes will not hold together well. This step ALSO sucks, sorry. If you have an overenthusiastic 16 year old stepbrother to boss around I highly recommend getting him to do it. My other ~trick of the trade~ regarding “"Hanukkah water”“, as Ari calls it, is to use a SLOTTED SPOON to dollop the batter into the oil, as you can then drain the extra liquid out of each spoonful just beforehand.
The onions you can pulp up, who cares about the onions. (You’re gonna wanna food process these pretty hard imo but if you cannot, again, grating them by hand is ok!!!)
Put potato gratings, onion pulp, flour, eggs, salt, pepper, and baking powder in a big ol’ bowl and mix that shit all up.
Get deep pans and heat them over the stove, or use an electric skillet, either way. Fill about ¼th of an inch with vegetable oil (BEFORE YOU HEAT THEM UP JUST TO BE OVERLY CLEAR. DO NOT PUT THE OIL IN AFTER THEY ARE HOT. LOOK. I REALIZE THIS IS OBVIOUS BUT IT PAYS TO MAKE SURE) (Heating the pans is an imprecise science as every burner/skillet is different, but I usually do pretty high. On our old electric skillet we used the next-to-highest setting, and on our electric stovetop last night I had them on 6 (on a scale from 1-9).
When the oil is hot, dollop spoonfuls of batter into it (roughly ¼th of a cup, but I just eyeball it). If you are using a regularish sized pan you should be able to fit 2 or 3 latkes in it at a time.
The trick I use for telling if a latke is ready to flip is twofold. One, look at the edges. They should be golden brown before you even consider it. Two, nudge the latke gently with your spatula. If it kind of “floats” across the bottom of the pan without any resistance, it’s safe to lift the edge and check if the bottom is brown.
Flip yer dang latkes!!!!!!!!
NOTE: See all those floating brown crunchy bits? Remove them from the oil with a spoon or spatula before they burn and flavor the oil with burning. Put them on a paper towel to cool and then EAT THEM THEY’RE DELICIOUS AND YOU HAVE RIGHTFULLY EARNED THEM AS THE LATKE COOK
Once they’re brown on both sides, take ‘em out of the oil!!! The ideal way to serve latkes is as they come out, which unfortunately means that you, the cook, will be standing around in an unfortunate apron avoiding splatters of scalding oil while everyone else enjoys themselves, but there are some sacrifices you have to make. If you are unable or unwilling to do this, it is OK to put the latkes in the oven to stay warm until everyone’s ready to eat, although they will be SLIGHTLY less crispy if you do this. Layer them on a big metal oven tray with paper towel in between each layer and set the oven to 250 F or so.
NOTES: This recipe probably serves about 3 or 4 people, I’d say? For reference, last night I more than doubled the recipe and we had 5 people and a ton of leftover latkes, with everyone eating probably between 3 and 5 latkes each. Regarding leftovers: This morning I put 4 of ‘em in our toaster oven on a sheet of tin foil and toasted them on the highest setting and then ate them and they were delicious. Slightly soggy, but delicious. You can also do this in the oven or even re-fry them if you’re feeling ambitious. I have never tried the microwave and it sounds vaguely sacrilegious to me but considering that I like my latkes with ketchup on them I am not in an overly great position to remark on that.
SPEAKING OF TOPPINGS! Applesauce and sour cream obviously are the staples but hey, look. Listen. Ketchup is REALLY good, alright, look, just try it, the Jew Police are not going to kick your door in if you do, I promise. Another note regarding toppings: If you use the quantity of onions that I am advocating, putting powdered sugar on these particular pancakes will probably not be that rewarding, but 1. you are free to try and 2. SOME SACRIFICES MUST BE MADE IN THE NAME OF ONION.
Last note for those of you who have never latke’d before. Your entire house/condo/tiny studio apartment/regular apartment/bullet trailer/mansion WILL smell of latke so strongly you cannot even believe it. It will smell this way for days. YOU, also, and everything you own and love, will smell of latke. You will come home from work or school or whatever the next day, after a long day of having the Jews you know sidle up to you and take a big whiff of your hair or coat and knowingly announce what you had for dinner last night, and be BOWLED OVER by how much your home smells of latke. This 1. will dissipate in a couple of days and 2. is part of the experience. ENJOY!!!!!!!
sometimes i forget that you can beat skyrim. like, there’s an ending?? you don’t keep making enchanted jewelry for your followers forever??? ive completely lost the plot. im a soup witch now
Y’know Lamb’s Quarter? A common weed throughout the continental US, tolerant of a wide variety of soil conditions including the nutrient-poor and compacted soils common in cities, to the point where it thrives in empty lots?
These plants are close relatives, and produce extremely similar seeds. Lamb’s quarter could easily be grown across the US, in people’s backyard and community gardens, as a low-cost and local alternative to quinoa with no sketchy geopolitical impacts. You literally don’t have to nurture it at all, it’s a goddamn weed, it’ll be fine. Put it where your lawn was, it’ll probably grow better than the grass did. AND you can eat the leaves – they taste almost exactly like spinach.
This just… drives home, again, that a huge part of the appeal of “superfoods” is the sense of the exotic. For whatever nutritional benefits quinoa does have, the marketing strategy is still driven by an undercurrent of orientalism. You too could eat this food, grown laboriously by farmers in the remote Andes mountains! You too could grow strong on the staple crop that has sustained them for centuries! And, y’know, destroy that stable food system in the process. Or you could eat this near-identical plant you found in your backyard.
What makes this even weirder and more frustrating, to quote my commentary on an older post about growing your own quinoa and amaranth? Growing native North American species instead is really not a new idea. Native people have already domesticated and grown these crops extensively, for thousands of years.
Another good option there, if you’re in North America: a native species very similar to quinoa, which will grow well in a much wider variety of climates, from Mexico to Northern Canada. People still grow it in Mexico, and it has been cultivated from the Eastern Agricultural Complex to the Rockies, and beyond. You grow it like the closely related quinoa, but it will literally grow like a weed in such a wide variety of climates. And doesn’t have the potential to turn into an invasive weed like quinoa could. Because it’s probably already growing in the vicinity. In fact, if you are living in an area where it used to be grown extensively, most of the wild plants of it now are probably actually an old larger-seeded domesticated variety. It was that common a crop in many places.
You can easily do a search for seed sources. There are also a number of native North American amaranth species which have a long history of cultivation and domestication in a lot of regions, so you might also want to check those out instead for similar reasons. There is likely at least one native species that will grow better in your area, without the risk of becoming invasive. While being every bit as good to eat as the types imported from South America.
The low value placed on and resulting poor common knowledge about many, many indigenous North American crops has helped drive the destructive demand for nearly identical “exotic” foods from South America. We don’t have to continue these patterns.
Although lamb’s quarter leaves should be cooked or eaten sparingly raw because they are toxic if consumed in large quantities raw.
Good addition, thanks. A little more info. The concern there is oxalic acid, like with spinach and a number of other greens. Cooking will break it down.
(That link is specifically referring to Chenopodium album and not C. berlandieri, but other species are similar. Including quinoa.)
Warning: Do not try this at home unless you were born with super Slavic knee strength
THE GUY AT THE END
Ahahah it’s not just knee strength you need, friend. It’s thighs, ass, ankles, calves, you need everything from your waist down to be horrifyingly fit and toned for this.
Also core strength. So include the waist. Everything from the nipples down.
Don’t forget absurd back flexibility
“Ballet is a really hard dance to master.”
Slavic dancing: “Hold my beer.”
My thighs are burning just watching.
this video just laughed at me for being out of shape.
I had a friend growing up that was from Slovakia or Ukraine, I don’t remember which. I knew him from kindergarten to 2nd grade. And since there wasn’t a large enough slavic community for this kind of dancing, he did competitive ballet. He would constantly complain that it wasn’t hard enough. Guys, its competitive ballet, one of the hardest sports you can be in as a young person. Those C-jumps the guys were doing? In american ballet or dance you usually only get your chest to where you head was. They have their bellybutton or hips where their head was. That’s fucking nuts with out running or a pre jump. This kind of dancing was constantly going on at their house. I would like to point out that’s insane. His mom and dad dance almost every day. Not as high since age. But still.
I’m sorry but this is unrealistic human animation, these people are just Bethesda glitches.
My dad worked for Norfolk Southern when I was in high school. I remember taking milkshakes out for him and his crewmates once when they were stopped on the track in a nearby town for a few hours.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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