jewish feast

I love latkes, so freaking much, dude. I have made them many times, and have yet to be disappointed with this dish. These are a quintessential peasant food: cheap to buy, long to store, straightforward to prepare and quick to cook. Cheap, delicious food is a passion of mine, one that I readily share with you at every opportunity.

Hanukkah started last Tuesday and ends on Christmas Eve on Wednesday, so I pulled out all the stops and spent my Sunday making matzo ball soup, purple potato latkes and applesauce. Every inch of this meal was homemade, with no canned or prepackaged ingredients involved in any step of these dishes. This is an extra step, effort-wise, but I get a lot of value out of making staple ingredients, and feel a strong sense of pride when I can produce more than I consume, from a corporate and financial standpoint.

Why buy Rachel's box broth or Mussleman's applesauce when I can just make it at home? Takes more time, sure, but less toll on me, both ethically and economically. It's a personal preference I feel an increasingly important need to clarify in my food writing the more I cook. Sort of undercuts the "I have no time/talent/know-how/desire to make it myself" excuse I hear from every home cook ever. I have an 8-7 weekday job, a child and a weightlifting schedule to keep, if I can find the time, so can you. You want to make it yourself! It tastes better and costs less! I will sell my readers on this eventually, so help me! DIY FOR LIFE Y'ALL.

I used Serious Eats again for this ethnic dinner, it's my go-to recipe website, as they preface many of their recipes with trial-and-error prose-length reasoning behind each step of culinary execution. I also used Bon Appetit, a site I began using with the Patty Melt post and keep coming back to for the simplicity of the ingredients yet somewhat advanced prep steps. Gives me a bit of a challenge in the kitchen, I love it.

I could not for the life of me find matzo meal. After the fourth store I visited failed to provide me this essential Jewish cooking ingredient, I stood in the breadcrumb/baking goods aisle, scrolling down the CHOW forums for an adequate substitute. For aforementioned reasons, I was a bit iffy on using saltines or water crackers as a matzo substitute, when a user recommended making matzo at home and grinding it up. Oh fuck yes I can. Mama likey.

So I started there, with a mission to make matzo. That's not true, I started my stock first, which involved peeling the skin off a whole chicken and shoving the naked carcass into my new massive  12qt stock pot, purchased for this meal (and also because I am stock-obsessed, and have been using two pots each week until buying this thing). I added carrots and celery and onions with the peel on, a whole head of garlic and some black peppercorns and let it boil until the breasts were done, then pulled those out for serving and simmered the broth for two hours more before straining. The smell was borderline unbearable, but I was good and kept the lid on to avoid slurping it all down before dinner time. It was hard to do, I won't lie to you.

Pulling the breasts out sucked, it was painful to touch the boiling meat, the steam was unmerciful, and I cursed and shrieked my way through it. Next time, I will cut no corners, and take the chicken carcass out to carve the breast meat off, then return to the pot of scalding liquid and vapor. Bastards.

I saved the chicken skin for schmaltz, or chicken fat, which I rendered in my small cast iron with onions, as is the traditional way. I strained the melty fat, tossed Cheebs some crispy skin (which he appreciated) and saved the fat for the matzo balls, which were a cinch, once I ground up the matzo. First, though, make matzo!

Move an oven rack to the topmost position of your oven, set two clean pans in there and set your temp to 500F. You want these pans nice and hot to lay the matzo onto, so be sure your oven preheats at least 20m or so. The dough was stupid easy to make: Mix flour, salt and oil, add water until the dough forms, then divide into a dozen balls and roll each out on a lightly floured surface.

You want to roll each ball of dough crazy thin. The recipe mentioned rolling each dough ball so thin you can see through them. Mine never got transparent, but I was able to roll them so thin they began to rip, so I'm chalking that up as a success. Originally, I rolled out all 12, laid them on top of each other with a light dust of flour in between each overlapping piece, but as they sat there, they tended to stretch out to an unreasonable length as I went to pick them up, and were difficult to place onto the preheated pan without wrinkling or trailing over the edge of the pan.

I resolved this stretchy dough issue by rolling out four dough balls at a time, two for each pan, then quickly transferring each directly to the hot pan and baking for three minutes or so, just long enough to roll out the next four. The result was long, crispy sheets of matzo, lightly browned and a little bubbly. I will edit this post with a photo of them, that's how impressed I was. Know what they taste like? SALTINES! I swear to you! So easy and quick to make! All this, because stores in town can't carry an ingredient integral to my dinner. What an exciting trial-and-error kitchen experience.

I ground up the matzo in my food processor and stuck it in a plastic bag, then hit these crumbs with my coffee grinder for a fine powder consistency. Makes the balls and latkes smoother. For the balls, I mixed the meal, schmaltz, a pinch of salt and a little beer. The recipe called for club soda, but the only carbonated beverage I had on hand was beer and peach fuzzy water, so I used the former here and the latter later on, as you'll see soon enough. Stick this wet dough in a fridge for a couple hours, more or less when the broth finishes up.

When the broth and balls were right around the 2-hour mark, I started my latkes. I picked up some purple potatoes at Global Foods the weekend before last, and was so stoked to find comparable pigment inside upon slicing them open (I was worried the flesh would be white). I don't peel my potatoes for my recipes, unless it's potato soup, and that's because smooth soup is simply the best and worth the nicked knuckles for me.

Instead of hand-grating eight medium-sized spuds (even more knuckle cuts), I used my food processor to make short work of shredding. I need a grating insert, as I have a standard processor, and got fine bits instead of long strips, which worked well, but I prefer the strips, aesthetically. I hit five peeled onions with the same food processor, mixed them with the potatoes, and squeezed handfuls of the stuff through a cheesecloth to drain out most of the moisture. Never eat soggy latkes, folkd. A dry potato is a happy potato, and a happier eater, too. Wet potatoes get gummy and gray and never crisp up, due to the high water content. It's an extra step you cannot skip, I assure you.

Once the potato and onion is as dry as possible, alternate between adding matzo meal and eggs, until squeezing a wad readily retains its shape in your palm. Then salt the absolute shit out of it. I mean it, these things are bland as hell if you don't liberally season. I heated some oil in both cast iron skillets as I prepped my latkes, then tested the temp by flicking a tiny bit of potato into the pan. If the spud bubbles like crazy, your oil is ready to go.

I grabbed a golf ball size of latke mix and flattened it in my palm, but noticed it was difficult to transfer from palm to pan, so in a moment of guerrilla inspiration, I used my metal spatula to scrape the potato patty out of my pan and into the oil. Worked perfectly. You can press these down with a spoon, if you like, I didn't need to. You will see the edges of each latke begin to brown soon enough, flip them over and make sure they're nice and brown, then wait a bit more as the other side finishes and transfer to a pan with a cooling rack on it.

Test your seasoning by frying a single latke at a time until you shake your head yes over and over in savory realization of flavor achievement. If you rush this step, you will end up with sub-par latkes, and with a process as elaborate as this, under-salted potatoes is a real knee to the balls, both painful and preventable. I fit four latkes into my small pan, six into my larger pan. Once a baking pan filled up with fried latkes, I stuck it in my oven at 200F to keep warm as I assembled the matzo soup and made applesauce.

The sauce was easy: core and chop up six apples (I used granny smith and fuji), boil in water (I used peach fuzzy water I had on hand) with a little lemon juice and a pinch of salt, until apples are soft and can be squished with a spoon. I pulled them off the heat and hit them with my handheld blender, which I rarely use but will use much more in the future, as it worked magic on my apples. I didn't peel them, yet they came out smooth. I am kicking myself for using my tiny little two-cup processor for my potato soup instead of this magic blending wand. Will remember this next time I make it.

Set the applesauce aside, strain your broth if you haven't already, and heat to boiling with some chopped carrots. Cook these until tender, 5-10m, then add the chicken breast you pulled off earlier. I hand-shredded each breast before dropping into the pot. Turn off and wait for the matzo balls to finish.

Matzo balls, the final step of this meal, are straightforward to make, but make me anxious, as handling wet batter and pillow-like balls in boiling water seems terrifying at first glance. With wet hands, scoop out some wet matzo ball batter, and transfer from hand to hand until ball-like, then slide it into a pot of boiling salt water. Simmer these in there for 20m, then turn over and remove from the broth once they sink. I put two in each bowl, then added some chicken and carrots before I poured the broth in.

The result was worth the wait. The latkes were crisp and salty and stiff with a perfect brown crisp on each side, with no limpness or sogginess to them. The matzo balls were flavorful and surprisingly dense, and the broth was rich yet satisfying. I love boiled carrots, so much. I mixed my applesauce into some sour cream with horseradish for dipping, a recipe I saw on Rachel Ray some morning at my dad's house earlier this year. Has a nice zippy heat to it, and sour cream is essential for latke dipping in my book.

This meal was exhaustive and elaborate, sure, but I tend to become rather sentimental about meals I pour an insane amount of effort into. Likely why I prize Thanksgiving so highly. I love devoting myself to a dinner, both time and resource-wise. A friend of mine bought me The Bread Bible for Christmas, which I cannot wait to crack the spine on, as bread encompasses this same sentiment of love through labor and long waits. There's a romance to breadmaking and multi-component, stepwise dinners that I am quite partial to. Plus, it makes my Sundays feel like a culinary investment, provided I plan and allocate my time and ingredients accurately, the what going where and in what sequence that is so paramount to meals requiring long-duration meal prep.

At the very least, try the latkes and applesauce with the horseradish sour cream. Though I do recommend trying this soup, as it makes enough to last all week. Be sure to store any unused matzo balls in cold water, or chilled broth you boiled them in (the ideal preserving fluid, to be honest). Happy Hanukkah, everybody! Latkes and applesauce and homemade matzo for everyone!