Latkas and Blintzs

By the end of the night I had two swollen fingers, a sink full of potato peels, a kugel made from left over cheese, latkas and vegis, and many new stains on my pants and shirt. But on the upside the Giants won... and my Hanukkah party had been successful.
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.

Ravioli or my hands ache

Yesterday was a roller coaster of culinary emotion. I awoke eager to go to the William Sonoma knife demonstration with my roommate. We got there only to discover that what his coworker who invited him there really meant by 12:30pm was 11:00am. Bummed out about this we went to Wholefoods to grab a bite (I abstained having just recently eaten some of my dal stew) where I was blown away by the quantity of prepared food available. Arriving home an hour later I settled into watching the Giants trounce Seattle. I started the game late, so my DVR let me skip through commercials and timeouts. Perhaps it was missing the knife demo, or maybe it was the lack of witty banter by NFL announcers (fast-forwarded over) but when 4:30 rolled around I had an empty feeling in my stomach. The solution: make homemade pasta. This seemed like a good idea since just two hours earlier I had impulsively purchased a block of Pecirino Romano cheese at the East Village Cheese Shop.
The first steps in making fresh pasta are pretty easy. You take about two cups of flour and put it on a counter top in a pile. Sprinkle some salt on the flour and then make a well in the center. Into the well place two (jumbo) eggs. The well is supposed to contain the eggs. Of course my eggs just toppled the well and I needed to rush to save them. Work the eggs into the flour by hand. At first this will seem futile and everything will either be dry or sticky. Eventually the egg gets worked into the dough and after much kneading you end up with a solid piece of dough. The dough should really be dry, or else the pasta won't come out right. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. This lets any gradient in moistness resolve itself in the dough.
Now comes the laborious part! Cut a small chunk -- like 1/5th of the dough -- and roll out flat. I don't have a pasta maker, so if you do, perhaps this part isn't as long and painful. When you've flattened out the piece as much as possible (use some flour to keep it from sticking), cut long thin strips. Each strip needs to be rolled out to make it thin enough to cook. When I did this I got about 40 pieces of pasta this way, each about 1/3rd of an inch wide and really thin. I let these dry out on a hanging rack (you want the air to circulate) and then cooked them for a few minutes in boiling water. On top of this I put some of the grated romano cheese and ample pepper, plus a little olive oil and called this Cacio E Pepe.
I was pretty content at this point --- the food had taken a little over an hour to make, but I was full and it had been yummy. Quickly, though, I realized that I had a significant amount of pasta dough in remaining in the fridge. I hate to waste, so I knew I needed to do something with it. The feeling I had was like when you decide your going to clean, you take everything out of the closets and move everything around, and then get sick of cleaning but realize that you can't leave everything scattered around the house. Well, perhaps I was obsessing a little, because I could have just thrown the baseball size ball of dough out the window and been done, but I didn't.
Instead I decided to make Ravioli. First step was to get filling. I went to the corner store to get Ricotta. Yet after seeing their packaged "fresh pasta" for 8$ I got the hell out of there. It was too depressing to see, for sale, something which probably tasted as good as the stuff I made and wouldn't require me to spent the rest of my evening working on. I went to the supermarket and, without much thinking, also bought three pears and a butternut squash, plus the ricotta and a tub of yogurt. I made two fillings for the Raviolis.
The first was a traditional filling. I cooked diced onion and garlic and then added a thing of frozen spinach. Once cooked I added in some fresh basil and other Italian spices and finally a tub of ricotta cheese and an ample amount of the Romano cheese. I put this aside.
Meanwhile, on my favorite cast iron I cook the butternut squash (cubed) and added to it some chopped rosemary and sage (yes mom - I found a use for the sage you gave me). I also added in some garlic here. When cooked I put this into a glass bowl and covered. Then, in my same pan I browned walnuts. To the bowl of squash I added two diced pears, and when the walnuts had gotten nicely cooked, I added them too. This all got nice and mashed, and then a few heaping spoonfuls of yogurt and some Romano. Everything received some salt too.
Looking at these two things of fillings I knew I had made too much. Oh well!
The prospect of rolling the raviolli shells had been looming for a while and finally I began the process of flattening small chunks, applying more flour, cutting into smaller chunks and finally flattening to paper thin pieces. Optimally I wanted pieces roughly 3" wide and 5" long. This seldom happened. I dried these out and once I had a few, I started to fill. I Wet the boundary of the pasta shell and then filled it with one of the two choices. Then I carefully folded everything together and hoped the shell would hold. Generally it did. I repeated this around 50 times before I had exhausted the dough. Using methods advanced mathematical theories on sphere packing I found enough room in my over packed freeze to chill these creations.
Washing dishes was a pleasure now, knowing that I didn't need to worry about pasta dough anymore.
The clock read past 11pm when I emerged from the kitchen, flour covered and hands aching. Even today, as I type, I grimace every time I need to hit the lower keys on the keyboard. Never had I rolled dough for so long as I did yesterday. Enjoyable - Yes, Worth it - Probably not. I haven't taste the creation yet, so who knows...
One side note: The initial creation of Cacio E Pepe comes from the eponymous restaurant three blocks north of my apartment. In retrospect I may have been better off going there, paying the 16 dollars, and then spending 6 hours begging for change on the street.
Post note: I had some of the Ravioli's tonight for dinner. They were good, but not worth 6 hours.

Cast Iron

I gave my sister a cast iron pan I have spent the past year seasoning and building up with a nice layer of fat. I'm going to pick up a new one and start the process over again later. Its really a fun process. I can't use a pan with a preseasoned coating since it is generally composed of lard or other animal fats. So I get a completely fresh piece of cast iron and scourer it clean. To prevent rusting you need to immediately dry and put on heat. Then I melt some Crisco down and apply to every surface of the pan. Once coated, I put into the oven and bake into the iron for an hour or two (until I get sick of the smell). I let it cool and level out the surface if there are any heavy deposits. For the first few months its important to use a fair amount of fat when cooking, and to avoid eggs or pancakes. Once the surface gets smooth and a little thicker, go crazy. Things I think that are good to cook on cast iron are: Any egg dish, any bread or dough based dish, vegi's without much water content, dumplings, latkas, crepes, nuts, tofu, meat ( in a meat pan), fish. Things not to cook are: anything with high water content when cooked (like Zuchini if over cooked), anything acidic (including tomatos), anything that is too saucy. When it comes to cleaning a cast iron I err on the side of not cleaning. I try not to (unless really necessary) use any water or soap. In fact, I generally just wipe clean and put a drop of oil on before storing. Its important to store in a dry place without anything on it. If you take care of the cast iron, its a completely joy to cook with.

Perfect Tofu for stirfry

Here is the way I like preparing Tofu to accompany a stirfry. Cut a block of tofu into 16 pieces of like 2.5" x 2.5" x .5". Press the tofu to drain excess water for like 30 minutes. Then mix together soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, orange juice, honey, diced scallions and diced ginger. Put the tofu into this mixture, adding orange juice so as to cover all the tofu. Leave for 30 minutes or more to absorb flavor. When ready to cook take a large cast iron, well seasoned, skillet and put enough oil to just cover the bottom. Transfer tofu to a cutting board and remove pieces of scallion and ginger. Then cut tofu pieces in half. In two shifts put the tofu into the pan and cook until browned on each side and slightly crunchy. One extra thing which makes the tofu really nice and crunchy is to brush some honey on to each side before cooking. This will really make it good.
When done put on a paper towel and let cool. Don't immediately add to a dish, but rather store separately.