I boasted the evening before to a friend who was staying for the weekend that I would be able to make 300 latkas for $10. This, however, was predicated on my shopping in Chinatown. This, however, did not happen -- I woke up too late, the weather sucked, and it turns out (as my roommate informed me later in the day) that the 21st was actually a Chinese holiday for the winter solstice. In any case, I resigned myself to shopping nearby --- probably a good thing in retrospect. Rather than buying 20 lbs or potato, 5 lbs sweet potato, 10 lbs onion, 5 lbs zucchini, 6 lbs carrots as I had planned, I about halved everything.
If I have any strengths in cooking, they certainly do not include calculating how much food raw ingredients will yield. I expected company at 6pm, so at about 4pm I began, with the help of my weekend guest, to peel and grate potatoes. I don't have a food processor, so everything was done by hand on a box grater. To keep the potatoes from discoloring, I kept them pre and post grating, soaked in water. When it was time to grate the onion I donned a pair of ski goggles and went to town on the bulbs. (I'm going to try to post a photo of this).
By 5:15 or so the first batch of latka mixture was ready for frying. To keep the potato and onion together I added flour and oats, plus a few beaten eggs (and pepper for flavor). No salt touched the latkas until they were fried, dried and ready to eat. I've heard this keeps them crunchier. When it came to frying the latkas I am of the three castiron school of thought. So, despite the three skillets not exactly fitting on my stove, I managed to have three pans going at the same time, allowing about 15 laktas to cook in any given moment.
For the next two hours or so I fried. At some point people began to come and between flipping of the latkas I tried to be friendly. I had determined that I should keep count of the number of latkas I made, but somewhere after 5 I lost count. My best guess is that I made about 150 of them --- some with a mix of potato and sweet potato, others just straight up potato.
Since I was afraid that there wouldn't be enough food (I'm a little crazy --- I didn't use half of the stuff I bought, so how could there not be enough food??) I had defrosted about 20 blintzs which I made a few weeks back (see the post). These fried up very nicely and went out with the latkas.
The latkas went over really well. Many of my friends had never had them before and enjoyed their oily goodness. What surprised me the most was how well the blintzs went over. This has prompted two conclusions -- first is that I will have shavous party in May, and second is that I really should try to apply for that NYU top chef competition and use blintzs as my breakfast dish.
Other lessons to learn
1. Four containers of sour cream is too much for any number of people. In fact, one container is probably too much.
2. Three jars of apple sauce (50 ounces each) is also too much.
3. Two castiron pans is probably enough to fry latkas.
4. One day a year for making latkas is probably enough.
Well... that last one might be wrong. In fact, I did it again today (though much scaled down) at my brother's house near Albany. We had latkas, this time cooked on an enameled castiron. The flavor and consistency was just as good. However, the feeling of having contributed positively to the seasoning of a castiron pan was just not there when cooking on enamel.
Returning to the end of my night (last night), as my last guests we leaving, I realized that I still had 6 peeled potatoes soaking in water, plus many cheese ends, and a bunch of vegis which would certainly go bad while I was away this week. The only conclusion which seemed reasonable was, at 1 in the morning, to make a kugel. Oh, I forgot, there were also about 15 latkas left over, which formed a wonderful base for the kugel. Now I am starting to realize why latkas and blintzs are relegated to special holidays while kugels are an everyday food --- its much easier to make. And while it was cooking, somehow, with a last bit of strength, I cleaned the kitchen!
[Gross-out warning]
As a last remark to this remarkably long post, my two swollen fingers should be accounted for. One was a simple mistake in opening a wine bottle. The second was a lesson to all who make latkas via box grating potatoes --- keep your finger nails short. I thankful, and unwittingly had heeded my present advice, or else things would have turned out much worse. In grating, my finger slipped and my nail got caught in the potato, driving a wedge of the potato under my nail. Pain ensued, but thankful, due to my diligent hygiene of cutting my finger nails, my nail was short enough that it did not break on account of this. Whew.
