Potato Latkes

Happy Hanukkah! Saturday was the first night of the eight days and since we have several merging cultures in our household, we celebrated the start of the holiday season by making traditional potato latkes.  If you don't know what they are, they are also known as potato pancakes.  Quite yummy, but probably not so healthy because they are fried.

Recipe adapted from My Very Own Hanukkah Box

Ingredients:  

• 5 medium potatoes
• 1 small onion
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons of flour
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

• frying oil (NOT olive oil)  (the recipe said do not use olive oil, but when I was researching Hanukkah on Wikipedia  it said that you should preferably use olive oil,... so who knows really)
• lots of paper towels

1. Peel potatoes.  Rinse in cold water
2.Grate potatoes.  I used my kitchen aid... it made it so much easier then grating it all by hand!
3. Peel onion and grate into the potato.
4. Put potato and onion in colander.  Press down and remove as much liquid as possible.  Pat down with paper towels and put back into a dry bowl.  ( We got a couple cups of liquid out of ours)
5. Beat eggs, then  mix well into the potato with the flour, salt and pepper.
6. Pour a little oil into the frying pan. When hot add a heaping spoonful of the potato mix, pressing it flat with spatula.  Don't overcrowd the pan with too many pancakes.
7.Once edges are browned, turn over and fry on other side.  Both sides should be golden brown and crispy.
8.Have a plate ready with paper towels and place latkes there to drain oil.

Best served hot.

 Traditionally eaten with applesauce.  Other toppings that we use are sour cream, mustard or ketchup.  I tried googling additional topping ideas and there were some pretty creative ideas out there, but I like to keep it simple.

Light the menorah, play some dreidel, eat some chocolate gelt and have a happy eight days of Hanukkah!