Latkes

[magid]

Last year, I was gifted with a food processor, and it came with a bag of potatoes, a bag of onions, and a jar of applesauce. This year I made good on the present, making latkes for the first time. This meant figuring out the which disk shreds, and how to feed potatoes and onions in properly (many kudos to the one who figured it out; I hadn't known how that part worked before). Once they were shredded, a recipe was consulted for amount of starch to add, which is when I found out that I had added "too much" onion. Of course, there's no such thing (for my onion-eating friends, anyway).

First batch: three large Yukon Gold potatoes, two medium-small onions, a couple of eggs, some flour, salt and pepper.
Second batch: a medium sweet potato, two medium-small onions, salt, pepper, cayenne, fermented black beans, and eggs.
Third batch: three Yukon Gold potatoes, two small onions, a bunch of scallions sliced up, salt, pepper, eggs.

Amazingly, the latkes mostly didn't stick to the cast iron griddle (potatoes always stick to my cast iron skillet). I was also surprised to manage to get to people's latke limit far sooner than I would've anticipated. I still have lots of ideas of what to put in other batches! (Bell peppers with sweet potato, sauteed spinach and mushroom with white potato, apple with either, lavender and rosemary with white potato, cranberries with sweet potato, etc.)

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In other kitchen notes: I finally finished making the candied peel I'd started before Shabbat. I boiled the sugar syrup down until it was mostly gone, then put the peel on wax paper to cool/dry some. I'd chopped it up fine, since I'm planning to put it in cake, not dip it in chocolate, and I decided not to try to get pieces individually. Instead, I have two cylinders of wax paper rolled up with peel inside.

Also towards the fruitcake goal: I bought a Bundt pan. The recipe I'm thinking of using specifically enjoins using foil pans, which is what I normally use (far too much, I suppose, but it's easier than storing and cleaning baking pans, which take up a lot of space). There weren't many options at Tag's, and I didn't want the non-stick one that might give off fumes, so I bought the heavier-duty silicone fluted cake pan. It's flexible! I can put it in the freezer! I feel so space age.

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

Sorry I missed them, they sound yummy! I often put turnips in my potato latkes.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Turnips? Hm... The ones I get from CSAs seem always to be the Hakurei turnips, which aren't as dense as the other, larger kinds. Do you think they'd work?

Growing up, we pretty much never had turnips, because one parent would only eat them raw, and the other parent would only eat them cooked. So I don't have a lot of turnip experience.

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

I use the purple top ones from the regular supermarket. Bigger ones, typically, because the smaller ones are better in raw or lightly-cooked things, but I don't think it matters. I like the mix of texture with the potatoes. I would avoid those big waxy rutabegas because they never seem to get cooked.

I never had turnips growing up and I don't recall the first time I cooked them, but I did learn to enjoy turnip cake at dim sum some many years ago.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I've never had dim sum, hence my current inability with neeps (other than mashed, once in a while).

[bitty.livejournal.com]

Dim subtraction, OTOH, is totally kosher.

[arfur]

Otherwise known as Dim Takeaway (or perhaps, for those of us who speak American, Dim Take-Out?)

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

I like putting apple, yam, and cornmeal into my latkes.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I'd never think to add cornmeal, but it sounds good. (Now I need a batch of people to experiment on :-)