Fun Playing With Food: Fun Playing With Latkes, 2019 Edition

This is our second consecutive winter in Destin, Florida. Our cute apartment has a recently renovated kitchen. Despite the learning curve on the smoothtop electric stove, I enjoy cooking here and have some marvelous local ingredients to work with. This week, the Fort Walton Beach Farmers' Market provided the raw materials for some fabulous potato latkes (or pancakes) - the traditional food of Hanukkah. I make them the same way as my mother did (before MS took her from the hand grater to the blender). But with neither a box grater nor our trusty Cuisinart and it's cheese grating wheel to process the onions and potatoes, what do do?

I never travel when I might be cooking with taking my "Boat Motor Box." It's a plastic box holding a Braun immersion blender with a plethora of accessories. The item attached to the handle at 12 o'clock that is hiding behind the carafe is a whisk.

Though it's about 20 years old, I never figured out until last winter here in Destin that the center cup-like thing and the small blade to the left of it are for grating! So - here are the works for latke making!

Start by beating a fresh Farmers' Market egg using the long food processor blade in the carafe.

Remove beaten egg to the workbowl, and insert that strange colander-looking thing into the carafe. The blade with the little notches on the side fits right in (it doesn't fit into any of the other parts).

First, roughly chop then process the onion. I did a half recipe each night - 3 potatoes to half a medium onion. Onion and potatoes came from the Farmers' Market.

Mix the processed onions with the egg and then peel the potatoes and place in a bowl of water to prevent oxidation. First potato up!

Clever gadget, isn't it? Not quite as fine as the cheese wheel on the Cuisinart, but the process made a great latke! I decanted each potato into the egg/onion mixture as it finished processing. There is enough liquid in the bowl to prevent potato oxidation.

Add Matzoh Meal (it took a bit more than the 1/4 cup in the recipe to get the right texture, but remember, we didn't drain any liquid out of the potatoes), about a teaspoon of baking powder, salt and pepper, and it's ready to fry!