My Food is Like Your Food

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Over the past nine months, since our world changed in mid-March, I have made some new friends through my workplace. Even though I haven’t seen any of them face-to-face, and I only met a few of them recently, I have shared many personal, emotional and hilarious moments with them. The WhatsApp-based conversations are highlights of my day and centre around many topics. One common theme is food. What are you eating? What did you cook or bake? Do you have a photo of what you just ate? Oh my gosh I ate so much and just gained another 5 pounds. We are from ethnically diverse backgrounds, and I have enjoyed learning about food and culinary delicacies from around the world.

This week it was my turn to share recipes, stories and of course, photos. While I wouldn’t call myself anything close to a professional chef or baker, I’d say I’m rather experienced. I love to cook creative dishes for my family, and no matter how busy my day is at work (most days are!), I cook a full dinner every night of the week. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, on Saturday night I tell my kids to fend for themselves and send them to forage in the fridge and freezer. I need a night off.

But I digress.

Latkes

Besides making these new and wonderful friendships, I have learned so much about food from around the world and how many of our dishes are quite similar. While the names and select local ingredients may differ, they have a lot in common.

Since it’s the holiday of Chanukah this week, let’s start with the important, and I’d say, famous latke. I have been using the same recipe for 22 years, that my mother sent me back in 1998 when I lived in France. It’s simple, clear and I believe makes the best latkes around. Message me if you want the recipe! But back to the latke. What is it? Well, basically it’s a shredded fried potato. A delicacy like the latke exists in every culture where potatoes are grown locally.  Consider Swiss potato roti, even Polish potato pierogi. How about the American hash brown?

Cook a potato in oil, and what could be wrong?

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Look at the golden brown of these latkes. They taste as good as they look!

Sufganiyot

Staying on the Chanukah theme, I also make donuts at this time of year, and only this time of year. For the rest of the year, as my workplace friends know, I rely on Krispy Kreme. The donut traditionally made (and of course consumed in large quantities!) are called, in Hebrew, Sufganiyot. This traditional donut is yeast-based, fried (of course) and filled with a jelly flavour of your choice.  Making a successful sufganiyah is a bit more complex than a latke, but it’s worth it.

While I’m not an expert on food from around the world, I’d have to say that many cultures have some kind of sweet, fried doughy dessert. Take the Mexican churro, the French beignet, and I just read about the Youtiao in China and Sfenj in northern Africa. I’m looking forward to asking my workplace WhatsApp group what donut-like delicacies they often consume (besides Krispy Kreme, of course).

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You can see them here, at many steps of the process.

 

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This photo was taken moments after these sufganioyot were fried. Hot, fresh and so tasty.

Challah

Moving on to bread. I remember back in March and April, besides toilet paper, which definitely was #1 in everyone’s list of must-haves, flour and yeast were hard to find. Securing a bag of flour was harder than finding a diamond in a coal mine. Everyone was suddenly a baker and attempted to make all kinds of recipes. A day didn’t go by when I didn’t see someone posting a photo on social media of their latest loaf of bread.

I come from a family of bread bakers. Again, we are not professional, but we do enjoy baking our own bread. Our specialty: Challah. Like latkes, the word “challah” is well known in society. What makes it unique is that a traditional challah is made with eggs and is often braided. Hence its other name, which is on the label at many grocery stores, “twisted egg bread.” Bread of some kind is in every culture, even if it’s not necessarily a loaf like challah. Consider pita, or a baguette, focaccia, or chapati.

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This the challah that I made this Friday.

Since I’ve been working exclusively from home, I bake a fresh challah every Friday. And I’ve been teaching my WhatsApp friends how to pronounce this difficult word. The “ch” at the beginning of the word is not pronounced like the “ch” in “chicken” or “chocolate.” And you can’t get away with calling it Hallah. You have to dig deep, into the back of your throat for that unique pronunciation of the “ch.” My friends have been excellent students and practice often.

I have consumed many latkes, sufganiyot and challah in the past 48 hours, and I am confident that I will continue to do so over the coming days. I admit, I should have been a nice friend and delivered some of these goodies (or offered curbside pick-up?) to my new workplace friends (it would have been kind to them, and to my stomach and thighs). Well, the holiday of Chanukah is not over yet (it has 8 crazy nights!), and my Friday challah happens every week. You never know, a special delivery may just happen soon.

No matter what or how you celebrate, Happy Holidays! And may your food dreams, whatever they are, come true.  

17 Potatoes Makes 95 Latkes

latkes

I have seen dozens of posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram the last few days that have featured groups of people standing in front of a lit nine-branch menorah, wishing me a Happy Chanukah. Those are all nice photos, as we celebrate our festival of lights. But for me, it’s the festival of oil. Or fried oil to be more exact. Okay, for me it’s all about my latkes.

I don’t often boast like this, but I think I make the best latkes. For those of you who don’t know what latkes are (first of all, shame on you), I will briefly explain. The essence of the latke is the story of the great miracle that is at the heart of the story of Chanukah. The quick version goes back over 2,100 years ago, when a small but brave group of Jews living in Jerusalem, led by the Maccabees, defeated the Syrian forces, led by King Antiochus IV. As they cleaned up their desecrated temple, the Jews found only enough oil to light the lamps for one night.

But a great miracle happened, and the oil lasted for 8 nights! So, while there is much to celebrate during the holiday of Chanukah, we always remember the oil. And what better way to celebrate oil then to heat a ton of it up in a fry pan and cook some delectable food?

Take a potato, shred it (with a hand shredder of course), mix in eggs, onion, a bit of flour, baking powder, salt and pepper, and you have the ingredients of a latke. Or in my case, 17 potatoes, and you get 95 latkes. I take latke-making very seriously, and a big reason for why mine are so good is that I have the spirit and strength of my grandmothers with me as I cook.

First of all, I wear my Nanny’s apron. It’s not gorgeous, but it protects me from oil splatters and keeps me relatively clean. Second, I use my Bubby’s electric fry pan, which is definitely older than I am. Maybe it’s built-in grime from decades ago is what makes my latkes extra tasty.

I jumped into my annual latke-making on Tuesday night, the first night of Chanukah. With my range hood fan set to high and electric fry pan powered up, I got to work. My parents, uncle, children and husband were on hand to test and taste, and we ate through a few dozen latkes in no time.

Yesterday I brought in a bunch of latkes from the Tuesday night batch to work. I enjoyed watching my colleagues dive in. For one person, it was her first ever latke. She timidly asked me, with her latke on her plate, what exactly is a latke, and I proudly explained. Then she tasted it and was hooked. I really felt like a proud mother at that moment, when I saw my colleague enjoy her first latke. It made my day.

So, you ask, what makes MY latke so good? Well, I think it’s many things. Good, quality potatoes (I like Yukon Gold), parboil the potatoes and hand shred them. Gently mix the batter of course. Piping hot oil in my Bubby’s electric fry pan of course. And I form my potato mixture into a slightly flattened ball. I immerse the latkes in hot oil just long enough so that they are golden brown and crispy on the outside but perfectly soft on the inside.

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Beautiful Yukon gold potatoes

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The shredded potato mixture is ready to jump into the fry pan – note newspaper set up to protect my countertops from the flying grease.

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Don’t the latkes look happy in there?

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Look at that bubbling oil. Scrumptious.

Is your mouth watering now? Are you craving a hot, greasy, crispy one right now? I’d share a few more from my batch, but I only have a few left. We can’t stop eating them!

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Close up of the golden crispy latkes

And while I admit that I was more focused on my latkes than my family on Tuesday night, and took many more photos of my kitchen than my children, I did snap a family selfie last night, on the second night of the holiday. What would Chanukah be without a photo of children and a lit Chanukiah? And latkes of course!

Happy Chanukah!

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Yes our token sweet family with the lit Chanukah photo. We had to do it.