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!

I used a combination of Olive Oil and Peanut oil.

Serve up with applesauce and sour cream, and dinner is ready! 

And it wouldn't be Hanukkah dinner without a little dessert, would it? How about some fried donuts from our local favorite The Donut Hole.

Raspberry

Bavarian Cream

Chag Sameach (Happy Holiday)! 

More Fun Playing With Gefilte Fish

As Passover continues, I hope you enjoy these reposts from 2008 on how I make some of my favorite things! Next up - Gefilte Fish! Once again, in 2011, Mister Brisket outdid himself with splendid raw fish mixture that we are now finishing. It seems to get better every year!

Fun Making Gefilte Fish

I make no secret of the fact that, as a child, I foolishly missed out on sharing the joys of Jewish holiday cooking with my grandparents, older sister and mother. At that time in my life, it just didn't interest me. It was not until about 1990, after I had finished school and moved out to New Jersey, that my mother's Multiple Sclerosis worsened to the point where she could no longer cook her traditional holiday meals. I had just begun to explore the joys of cooking, having taken my first Chinese cooking classes through the Montclair Adult School, and I was determined to keep my mother's traditions alive by learning how to cook her dishes.

Every year, I consider changing my Passover menu. And other than tinkering a little with the spices, I always wind up keeping my preparations true to the tastes and smells I grew up with. For mom.

Since I moved to Cleveland, Gefilte Fish has been a challenge. Is it well neigh impossible to purchase any quality fish at retail here. However, when I first moved here over 12 years ago, there was a supermarket called Gale's located in Beachwood that catered to the Jewish community, and which could be counted on for all of the raw ingredients I would need to recreate mom's dishes. Gale's left us a number of years ago (and became a Wild Oats - feh!). There is a fish store in the Orthodox part of town that became my source for a few years - but they weren't interested in serving my needs. Yes, they'd get and grind my fish - but no onion ground in and no carp. My mother's recipe calls for 1 part whitefish, 1 part pike, and 1/2 part carp (for fat and texture more than taste). But their rules were not negotiable.

So, I tried another recently (at the time) opened local fish store that the newspapers raved about, in Cedar Center (long gone now). I will never forget the time I ordered 5# of fish according to the formula - and they handed me a bag with over 20 pounds - the kid who took the order had written "20" instead of "2" for one of the fishes - it was a disaster!

Finally, about 5 years ago, I learned that Cleveland's storied Mister Brisket (AKA Sanford Herskovitz) had begun to offer ground fish for the Jewish holidays. The first time I ordered from him, he said "no carp" - I guess there is an aversion to carp in Cleveland! But after I explained that "this is how my mommy makes it" - he relented. As you will see below, the fish he special orders, fillets, and grinds is pristine. And - Mister Brisket delivers - such a deal!

And so, yesterday, I made my 2008 Passover Gefilte Fish. I began with five pounds of fish fillets, which were ground with an onion by Mister Brisket, and one whole fish (sans fillets). I neglected to photograph the fish before I put it in the pot, so that is where we begin:



The first step in making this dish is to create a fish stock. The fish parts are placed in a large pot with sliced onion and good water, and brought to a gentle boil. After skimming, salt, pepper and sugar are added. How much? I don't know - I never measure.


Plumps When You Cook 'Em!

While the stock is simmering (for about 30 minutes), I make the fish ball mixture.


2# Whitefish, 2# Pike, 1# Carp Fillets, Ground with Onion


Blue Eggs from Breychak's Blue Egg Farm


Kosher-for-Passover Matzo Meal, Sugar, Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt

I only use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt (which is so prevalent in professional kitchens, it even got a cameo in the film "Ratatouille"). The other major player, Morton's, contains a chemical anti-caking agent (and I think it tastes nasty).


White Peppercorn from Heather's Heat & Flavor


Organic Carrots

That's all there is to it, folks!

First, de-shell the eggs. For five pounds of fish, mom used 6 eggs; I used 7 because many of the Blue Eggs are a little smaller than USDA "large":



Beat until frothy; I use a handmixer:



Add the ground fish, and remember to treat it as you would ground meat for meatballs - you want to work it as little as possible.



Here is where I made a small mistake - it is easier to incorporate the seasonings into the mix with less handling if you whirl them into the eggs. But I forgot - so I added the seasonings here and gently mixed them in. How much? I start with a tablespoon of sugar, and I eyeball the salt and pepper.



I am always conservative with the seasonings and matzoh meal at first, because every batch of fish is different, and there is only one way to know if it is right - taste it (and too much matzoh meal will turn the fluffy balls into lead ballons)! The matzoh meal is next - and again, I add a bit at a time and work it in, until the mixture "feels" right.



Once the mixture feels right, it is time to taste. Unfortunately, it is no longer safe to taste this kind of fish raw, as my mother and grandmother did (even though I know that these farm eggs are safe!) - and really, tasting it raw wouldn't give you the best feel for it anyway. So, I boil water in a small saucepan, pinch out a small ball of the mixture (which lets me test the matzoh meal-iness) and cook it for a few minutes. After tasting the cooked fish, I adjust the seasoning to taste - this time, I got it perfect on the second try!

No photos of the next step, because it takes two hands and makes a mess of them! I put some Kosher for Passover cooking oil in a dish, and dip into it periodically to keep the mixture from sticking to my hands. (Its not even Seder night and I'm dipping already!) I form the fish into ovals, which is how mom made them, and gently deposit each oval into the fish stock, which is now at a strong simmer. Once all of the fish balls are in the pot, I put on the lid and cook 1.5 hours.



During the first cooking time, I prep the carrots. After 1.5 hours, I add the carrots to the pot and re-lid. The fish balls are floating happily! I cook it another 1.5 hours (which is longer than mom cooked it, but I saw an elderly grandma make fish with Joan Nathan on PBS a few years ago, and she swore by a 3 hour cooktime). When cooking time is over, I use a slotted spoon to carefully remove the fish and carrots, taking care to examine for shrapnel from the skeleton. My mother said, as a girl, nibbling fish bits off of the bones was her favorite part of making this dish - me - even though I'm always tempted to save the stock and meaty bits for another use - they always wind up in the compost. The house just smells too much like fish after the cooking is done for me to find it appealing.






Cooking for the Jewish holidays brings me great joy; my only sadness is that I cannot share this food with mom, who still lives in NY 450 miles away. But, as this post demonstrates, making your own Gefilte Fish is not so hard as you might think (provided you have a good fishmonger, or a moonlighting butcher!), and you will never eat jarred fish again after you have tasted this!

Fun Playing with Chicken Soup

We prepared our Chicken Soup over the last two days. It was an interesting experience for me. I realized, after reading about stock-making here, that in a way, my soup-making process combines the stock and soup making processes into one.

This is NOT the way my mother made it - I began to studying the process of soup-making after seeing the movie Tampopo in the late 1980s. I loved the way Barbara Tropp wrote about stock and soup making in her book "China Moon Cookbook." It was here that I learned about the importance of chicken feet in soup making, and never letting the pot come to a boil. Well, that's not entirely true - my Chinese cooking teacher, Jo-Mel, taught me that the phrase "a watched pot never boils" is actually Chinese in origin, and doesn't mean that you should NOT watch the pot - it means that if you constantly watch the pot, it won't come to a boil and ruin the soup. As famously depicted in Tampopo, there is chemistry in poultry bones that will cloud the soup if the soup should boil.

One thing my mother did teach me was to make my soup from pullets. Indeed, every classic Jewish cookbook I've ever seen says to start with a pullet or "young hen" - "dressed" (that means sans feathers and organs, folks). Unfortunately, because the average consumer so seldom makes soup these days, pullets are virtually unknown in any mainstream market and even at the farmers markets, can be difficult to locate. The Blue Egg Farmer, Kathy Breychak, explained to me that pullets are hens that are, essentially, barely pre-menopause. Just as with human females, pullets still have female hormones and the ability to lay eggs, although they are slowing down. Their skin is still tight, and if fed right, a beautiful yellow that will infuse into a soup made with them. Stewing hens, by contrast, are "post-menopausal", and are tougher and longer cooking - and don't have that lovely skin anymore.

Last year, Kathy was able to supply me with two 5 pound pullets, which was perfect for 2 Seders worth of soup (plus). This year, she had none, though I was able to get a bag of lovely frozen chicken feet from her. I was unable to source true pullets, so I purchased my soup chicken from Mister Brisket, who gets nice, minimally processed chickens that are close to the pullets of my youth - but not quite. Therefore, I also order from Mister Brisket a "bag of bones" - which at holiday time is 10 pounds of freshly excised backs, necks and bones from "regular" chickens (it may be frozen at other times of the year - but is always top quality).


Mister Brisket's "Bag of Bones"

I start by rinsing the bones and placing at the bottom of my 20 quart pot.



Next, I clean and pedicure the chicken feet - note the brilliant yellow color!







Now, I rinse and add the soup chicken. Note the amazing color contrast between the feet and the soup chicken.



Add bottled water to cover (my tap water is nasty).



I turn on the flame, clamp on the lid, and attend to the vegetables.


Soup Greens: Celery, Carrots, Parsnips, Onions



As the pot warms, all of the blood and impurities in the meats extract from the flesh and into the water. It looks and smells pretty gross! Jo-Mel says that some Chinese cooks will bring a pot like this to a simmer, then empty the water, rinse the meat and start again! But have no fear - gentle heat will clear the stock - and I can't bear to throw any of the goodness away!

After about 45 minutes, the liquid clears and bubbles gently. I skim the scum and yucky looking stuff for about another 45 minutes. For a change, I didn't turn on the TV or play music - I was totally focused on the soup. It was an almost Zen-like experience! After some period of time, when it seemed that no yuckies were coming up to be skimmed, I began to add the vegetables to the pot. Onion first, then parsnip, then celery (using lots of celery leaves - my mother insists that's important for a good soup). Usually, I'd add the carrots now. But I decided to experiment with waiting longer to add them, in the hope they'd be in better shape to serve with the soup if I didn't cook the hell out of them. Once all the vegetables are in - I add some Diamond Crystal salt and whole Tellicherry peppercorns.



The last ingredient in my soup is parsley - again from mom - both curly and Italian flat. About a third of a bunch of each.





The pot is then allowed to cook at a very low simmer until the feet - which are the most dense item in the pot - have at least gotten very soft and loose. I put this pot on the stove at 5pm - and Bob came to bed at 5am, after waiting until about 3am for the feet, and then cooling and straining the soup. This is what it looked like after chilling for about 9 hours after this process:





We yielded about 2.5 gallons of soup - more than I will need for Passover, but it will freeze well. And that gelatin you see means lovely mouthfeel! What a wonderful way to play with your food!

Fun Making Gefilte Fish

I make no secret of the fact that, as a child, I foolishly missed out on sharing the joys of Jewish holiday cooking with my grandparents, older sister and mother. At that time in my life, it just didn't interest me. It was not until about 1990, after I had finished school and moved out to New Jersey, that my mother's Multiple Sclerosis worsened to the point where she could no longer cook her traditional holiday meals. I had just begun to explore the joys of cooking, having taken my first Chinese cooking classes through the Montclair Adult School, and I was determined to keep my mother's traditions alive by learning how to cook her dishes.

Every year, I consider changing my Passover menu. And other than tinkering a little with the spices, I always wind up keeping my preparations true to the tastes and smells I grew up with. For mom.

Since I moved to Cleveland, Gefilte Fish has been a challenge. Is it well neigh impossible to purchase any quality fish at retail here. However, when I first moved here over 12 years ago, there was a supermarket called Gale's located in Beachwood that catered to the Jewish community, and which could be counted on for all of the raw ingredients I would need to recreate mom's dishes. Gale's left us a number of years ago (and became a Wild Oats - feh!). There is a fish store in the Orthodox part of town that became my source for a few years - but they weren't interested in serving my needs. Yes, they'd get and grind my fish - but no onion ground in and no carp. My mother's recipe calls for 1 part whitefish, 1 part pike, and 1/2 part carp (for fat and texture more than taste). But their rules were not negotiable.

So, I tried another recently (at the time) opened local fish store that the newspapers raved about, in Cedar Center (long gone now). I will never forget the time I ordered 5# of fish according to the formula - and they handed me a bag with over 20 pounds - the kid who took the order had written "20" instead of "2" for one of the fishes - it was a disaster!

Finally, about 5 years ago, I learned that Cleveland's storied Mister Brisket (AKA Sanford Herskovitz) had begun to offer ground fish for the Jewish holidays. The first time I ordered from him, he said "no carp" - I guess there is an aversion to carp in Cleveland! But after I explained that "this is how my mommy makes it" - he relented. As you will see below, the fish he special orders, fillets, and grinds is pristine. And - Mister Brisket delivers - such a deal!

And so, yesterday, I made my 2008 Passover Gefilte Fish. I began with five pounds of fish fillets, which were ground with an onion by Mister Brisket, and one whole fish (sans fillets). I neglected to photograph the fish before I put it in the pot, so that is where we begin:



The first step in making this dish is to create a fish stock. The fish parts are placed in a large pot with sliced onion and good water, and brought to a gentle boil. After skimming, salt, pepper and sugar are added. How much? I don't know - I never measure.


Plumps When You Cook 'Em!

While the stock is simmering (for about 30 minutes), I make the fish ball mixture.


2# Whitefish, 2# Pike, 1# Carp Fillets, Ground with Onion


Blue Eggs from Breychak's Blue Egg Farm


Kosher-for-Passover Matzo Meal, Sugar, Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt

I only use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt (which is so prevalent in professional kitchens, it even got a cameo in the film "Ratatouille"). The other major player, Morton's, contains a chemical anti-caking agent (and I think it tastes nasty).


White Peppercorn from Heather's Heat & Flavor


Organic Carrots

That's all there is to it, folks!

First, de-shell the eggs. For five pounds of fish, mom used 6 eggs; I used 7 because many of the Blue Eggs are a little smaller than USDA "large":



Beat until frothy; I use a handmixer:



Add the ground fish, and remember to treat it as you would ground meat for meatballs - you want to work it as little as possible.



Here is where I made a small mistake - it is easier to incorporate the seasonings into the mix with less handling if you whirl them into the eggs. But I forgot - so I added the seasonings here and gently mixed them in. How much? I start with a tablespoon of sugar, and I eyeball the salt and pepper.



I am always conservative with the seasonings and matzoh meal at first, because every batch of fish is different, and there is only one way to know if it is right - taste it (and too much matzoh meal will turn the fluffy balls into lead ballons)! The matzoh meal is next - and again, I add a bit at a time and work it in, until the mixture "feels" right.



Once the mixture feels right, it is time to taste. Unfortunately, it is no longer safe to taste this kind of fish raw, as my mother and grandmother did (even though I know that these farm eggs are safe!) - and really, tasting it raw wouldn't give you the best feel for it anyway. So, I boil water in a small saucepan, pinch out a small ball of the mixture (which lets me test the matzoh meal-iness) and cook it for a few minutes. After tasting the cooked fish, I adjust the seasoning to taste - this time, I got it perfect on the second try!

No photos of the next step, because it takes two hands and makes a mess of them! I put some Kosher for Passover cooking oil in a dish, and dip into it periodically to keep the mixture from sticking to my hands. (Its not even Seder night and I'm dipping already!) I form the fish into ovals, which is how mom made them, and gently deposit each oval into the fish stock, which is now at a strong simmer. Once all of the fish balls are in the pot, I put on the lid and cook 1.5 hours.



During the first cooking time, I prep the carrots. After 1.5 hours, I add the carrots to the pot and re-lid. The fish balls are floating happily! I cook it another 1.5 hours (which is longer than mom cooked it, but I saw an elderly grandma make fish with Joan Nathan on PBS a few years ago, and she swore by a 3 hour cooktime). When cooking time is over, I use a slotted spoon to carefully remove the fish and carrots, taking care to examine for shrapnel from the skeleton. My mother said, as a girl, nibbling fish bits off of the bones was her favorite part of making this dish - me - even though I'm always tempted to save the stock and meaty bits for another use - they always wind up in the compost. The house just smells too much like fish after the cooking is done for me to find it appealing.






Cooking for the Jewish holidays brings me great joy; my only sadness is that I cannot share this food with mom, who still lives in NY 450 miles away. But, as this post demonstrates, making your own Gefilte Fish is not so hard as you might think (provided you have a good fishmonger, or a moonlighting butcher!), and you will never eat jarred fish again after you have tasted this!