an open cupboard

No, that’s not a typo. Hamantaschen is a hybrid Hebrew-Yiddish-Persian word referring to cookies traditionally eaten by Ashkenazi Jews on the holiday of Purim. The holiday commemorates a particular, yet familiar, refrain in Jewish history: they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!

The longer version of the story involves the credulous yet powerful King Ahasuerus, his courageous Jewish wife Esther and the king’s evil, power-hungry prime minister Haman.

Read more at Examiner.com…

Now that Chanukah is over, and those who eat them have presumably had more than their fill of latkes, I’m very late or perhaps one year early in offering up some tips for the perfect pancake. Perhaps small potato pancakes dolloped with crème fraîche and topped with salted salmon roe and chives are just the right appetizer for a New Year’s Eve party? Or not, if your body still remembers stuffing itself silly with the things just a couple of weeks ago. Either way, these notes will eventually come in handy.

My tips on latke making technique, in order to form a more perfect pancake:

• Oil: Having experimented with different oils and fats, I’ve found that the cleanest burning oils with the highest smoking point are grape seed, sunflower and safflower oils. This year I used cold-pressed grape seed oil, a very viscous oil that smells of grapes and a little like chardonnay. Goose schmaltz might be tasty, but I haven’t used it to cook latkes. Other animal fats have proven unsatisfactory, as has clarified butter. Whatever oil you use, be sure it has a relatively high smoking point. An oil with a high smoking point can be heated to a given temperature–say, 425°F–without smoking. Here’s a useful chart that lists cooking oils in order of smoking points.
• Potatoes: Choose a starchy potato with a relatively low moisture content, such as the reliable Russet or Idaho potato. Soggy latke batter will yield soggy pancakes. Similarly, low moisture, high-starch batter will produce a more crispy cake.
• Grating or processing: Does an authentic latke require bloody knuckles, or will the modern ease of a food processor suffice? Ask any latke enthusiast and you’ll likely get a thirty minute lecture on the topic. Having tried both methods, I prefer the texture of hand grated potato pancakes to that of processed. My favorite grater is the Kyocera julienne slicer, a ceramic mandolin that retails at around twenty five US dollars. The julienne mandolin produces thinly grated potato strings that cook quickly without remaining raw in the middle. They crisp up nicely as well. But I’m no pedant, nor a glutton for torture. If you’re cooking for twenty, by all means, use a food processor.
• Getting the potatoes to stick together: I’m a purist. I like my latkes without any eggs. Why ruin the crunch of a good latke with fluffy eggs? Serve them on the side if you like, but there’s really no need to include eggs in your latkes. The trick to latkes that stick together without falling apart is, once again, low moisture and high starch content. After grating your potatoes and onion, squeeze out as much liquid as possible by placing the batter in a fine mesh sieve over a large bowl. Squeeze and knead out the liquid through the sieve, but retain the water in the bowl. By the time you’ve squeezed out all the liquid and seasoned your potato mixture, you should have a thick layer of potato starch sediment at the bottom of your bowl. Carefully pour off the water, but keep the sediment. Use a spoon to scoop up some of the potato starch and mix it back into your potato mixture. The dampened starch binds the potato and onion like glue, and the starchy coating helps the pancakes brown and crisp in the pan. As you form the pancakes, keep squeezing out liquid. Mix in more potato starch if the batter looks raggedy.
• Preventing discoloration: Alternately grate the potato and onion. Mix the batter between gratings. The onion juices prevent the potatoes from turning odd shades of gray. You can also add a small pinch of baking soda to do the same.
• Seasoning: I use about 1 heaping teaspoon of sea salt per 2 pounds of potatoes, and one medium or large onion. I use as much freshly ground white pepper as I feel like grinding in before my arm wants to fall off. If you’d like to put green stuff in your latkes, dill goes very nicely. But salt and pepper alone is classic and lovely.
• Forming the pancakes: This is a bit tricky. You want to squeeze the batter before it hits the pan, as a last ditch effort to eliminate moisture and encourage potato cohesion. But you don’t want your latkes to be heavy and leaden, like your Aunt Mildred’s wayward matza balls. I like to flatten the pancake as much as possible after squeezing, then loosen it a bit so that it isn’t heavy. Don’t worry about creating a perfectly round latke. A more rustic pancake with unkempt potato hairs looks homier and boasts the coveted crisp, lacy edges.
• Frying: A cast-iron pan is your naturally non-stick friend. It heats up slowly, but retains heat very well. Add more oil to the pan than you think you’ll need. You don’t want to deep fry your pancakes, but you don’t want the oil to be too shallow either. The pan should be at a constant medium-high heat. The oil is hot enough when it bubbles continually at the edges of your pancakes, it’s too hot when it begins to smoke. Monitor the oil and move the dial up or down to keep the pan at the right heat. Place the tip of each pancake in the pan using a spatula, then gently slide out the spatula so that the batter rests in the pan. This gradual slide into the oil does two things: the cool batter doesn’t lower the temperature of the hot oil and you’re less likely to sustain burns by inadvertently splashing yourself with very hot oil. Everybody wins.
• Spacing the pancakes: The refrain I always heard from my dad whenever I helped him in the kitchen–don’t crowd the pan. Once more for emphasis, this time in all caps: DON’T CROWD THE PAN. Your pan should be large enough to fry as many latkes as you want to fry at once. To put it another way, only fry as many latkes as will comfortably fit in whatever size pan you use. In other words, the oil in the pan should stay hot enough to bubble and brown the edges of your pancakes. If your latkes start steaming, looking soggy or limp, or absorbing vast quantities of oil without browning, you’ve crowded the pan. Keep some space around each pancake. How much space and how many pancakes? When in doubt, just cook fewer latkes at a time. Alternatively, keep two pans going on two different burners.
• Browning and crisping: A good, crisp latke just happens. No amount of checking, flipping, checking again will make your pancake brown faster. In fact, potchkeing with your pancakes will almost certainly guarantee a soft, wimpy latke. How will you know when it’s time to turn them over? They’ll be a medium-brown color around the edges. If a pancake is browned around the edges except for one area, you’ve got a cool spot on your burner. Gently turn the latke so that the soft edge is in the hotter area. When that part browns, carefully turn over the pancake. If the latke is merely golden and you want a little more browning, you can turn it over again after the flip side has browned.
• Apple sauce: This traditional latke topping is very easy to prepare. Core and coarsely chop a few apples and place them in a pot. Squeeze over some lemon juice and add a little water. Heat on a low flame until it looks like apple sauce. Cool, serve. Really, that’s it. The apples reduce to about half their volume. If you’re serving a large crowd, chop as many apples as it takes to fill a medium to large pot. Conversely, for a small dinner, fill a small to medium pot with chopped apples. I don’t bother peeling the apples. You can remove the peels by pressing the resulting apple sauce through a large-holed sieve. The peel remains behind while the sauce goes right through. No need for sweetener, homemade apple sauce is quite nice on its own. Use a variety of tart and sweet apples for a more nuanced flavor. Season with a bit of ground cloves, cardamom, allspice and cinnamon, if you like.
• Avoiding fried potato smells: Open a window and keep the fan on above your stovetop. There’s nothing worse than old fried potato smell, except perhaps old cabbage smell.

And remember, the first farkakte latke goes to the cook.

We’re moving (yay!). Our tiny little junior 1 bedroom apartment is currently decorated in moving box brown. Everywhere you look there are stacks of cardboard boxes, most of which contain kitchen items. But the tedium of packing our possessions is alleviated by the pleasure of throwing out things we no longer need, and imagining how our new space will look once everything is in place. Never underestimate the value of cabinet space, especially when you’ve got nine boxes labeled “KITCHEN.”

As I’ve been packing up our dry goods and kitchenware, I’ve come up with a few ideas about how to make packing up your kitchen that much easier:

• Spice racks with bars on the front—to keep the spices from falling out—can probably be packed “as is.” Take the fully stocked spice rack off the wall and place it standing up in a box. If you place other items around it tightly, it probably won’t move much and nothing will fall out or break.
• If possible, keep one frying pan unpacked so you can fry an egg or cook some sausages. If you’re driving to your new location, you can take the pan with you to use in the new kitchen before everything’s unpacked. Takeout is certainly an option, but it’s always nice to be able to reheat leftovers or fry an egg in the morning. Sometimes eating out of a box can get a little old.
• Speaking of leftovers, if you have any stoneware dishes or plates, these are perfect for reheating food under the broiler and then serving. There’s always the microwave, but eh… somehow to me, microwaved food never tastes quite right.
• To minimize the need for restaurant takeout, cook a little extra food for dinner and reserve the leftovers for tomorrow’s breakfast or lunch. You can even do this a week in advance, assuming you have sufficient freezer space. When the move is a few days away and you’ve packed up all your kitchenware, you can defrost the frozen meals under the broiler or in the microwave.
• A small tin baking pan—the kind that comes with an oven or toaster oven—can be used as a makeshift pan cover. This comes in handy if you want to quickly defrost some food (without using the microwave), or cook dinner just a little bit faster.
• If you have any old plastic food storage containers, the tops can be used as makeshift plates. I discovered this when I prepared an afternoon snack of tangelo slices and nuts, forgetting that our two remaining dishes were dirty. The little round Tupperware top I found made a decent small plate when used upside down.
• Milk bottles with caps can be used to store all manner of items. I used them in the kitchen to store grains and beans, and in the bathroom to store ear swabs and cotton balls. I think they look kind of cute, in a retro, Donna Reed kind of way. You can wrap them in newspaper and pack them, or put a bunch of them in a box, placing yogurt container tops between them so they don’t knock against each other.
• If you buy your yogurt in ceramic crocks, keep the crocks and use them as glasses. This way you can pack your proper glasses and use the crocks instead without worrying if they’ll break. (To be honest, I use them as drinking glasses even when we aren’t packing. They work well for both hot and cold liquids and again, I think they’re cute.)

For tips on organizing your new kitchen, check out the video wisdom of the fabulous Brini Maxwell.

I’ve been to a few of Shuna’s cooking classes, and they’ve all been fun and enriching. Shuna has an intuitive, visceral understanding of the foods she works with, which she attempts to convey to her students. More than just teaching how to make pavlova, Shuna teaches students why egg whites behave the way they do and how to tell when poached rhubarb is ready by the way it looks and sounds. A class with Shuna is always a full sensory experience—be ready to taste, smell, and touch ingredients. Similarly, the end of the class heralds a feast of all the sweets prepared during class, and then some.

Aside from its tasty end, my favorite part of Shuna’s classes is listening to her always fascinating discussions on fruit, eggs, sugar. Just the other day I found myself quoting some of Shuna’s strawberry facts to a friend visiting from abroad. It seems I learned a thing or two.

[Click the photo to watch the seasonal fruit class slideshow.]

Click here for my write-up of Shuna’s pie dough class.