By Ellen Kushner: I genuinely love Chanukah latkes – what’s not to love about hand-grated potatoes (and a few onions), bound together with a little egg & flour and fried in oil til they’re nice and crispy? And then some nice tangy apple sauce (Granny Smith?) on top, right away, so you don’t lose the crunch.
For music, I blush to say that I laugh like a hyena every time I listen to/watch Jon Stewart’s “Can I Interest You in Chanukah” song from last year’s “A Colbert Christmas” with Stephen Colbert.
But in a more traditional vein, I’m a complete sucker for Christmas carols. I have a low voice, which was even lower when I was a kid, and a good ear, so became adept at improvising harmonies (since I couldn’t hit the high notes of the melodies). I look forward every year to getting to swoop around the “glorias” of “Angels We Have Heard on High” and the tight, close harmonies of “Lo, How a Rose e’er Blooming.” Gorgeous, glorious music; I don’t understand why anyone listens to this modern crap.
[You can find Ellen and her spouse Delia Sherman at @ellenkusher.bsky.social. This is reprinted from the Archives of Sleeping Hedgehog.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
How to tell if that fellow shopper in the produce aisle is the real deal: they confide in a whisper, “My baba always put a little flour in hers.”
Dana Crumb authored a cookbook, full of glorious illustrations by her then-husband Robert Crumb. A latke recipe was included, with the comment, “They are also good the following day, cold and hard and greasy, but usually only if you are Jewish.”
When I was going to university, some 40 years ago, I lived in the nearest town, the one where Stephen King lived, and there was a Jewish bakery there. The couple that ran it were the parents of a son who eventually became both a congressman and a Senator, Bill Cohen.
They had just two products, stellar rye bread and what they called hard rolls which were anything but that. They opened about six in the morning and by noonish everything was gone.
For a slightly healthier version, you can use yams or sweet potatoes, finely grated carrots, and cinnamon. Still want the applesauce, though there’s also Team Sour Cream. My problem is that the house has that stale oil smell until the January thaw.
Half potato and half zucchini? Can they be oven-baked, or would generations of latke makers plotz at the thought?
My family’s tradition states that the secret ingredient in all proper and tasty latkes is the blood from your knuckles, the result ot grating the potatoes by hand.
I think that’s Eastern European in derivation, probably originating with hasty grating, owing to the imminent arrival of the Cossacks and the need to hide everyone in pickle barrels.
@Steve davidson, that is hilarious and horrific in approximately equal measure.