Tag: sufganiyot

What’s for supper? Vol. 452: The road to heaven is paved with pavlova

Happy Friday! I am putting off going out into the blowing rain to bring a secret santa present in to a kid who forgot it. The kids are miffed about the rain in general, because it’s washing away all the snow right before Christmas. But I am not mad about the break from the freezing cold! So maybe I am looking forward to going out into the rain, after all. 

I should warn you, I’ve gotten VERY crafty lately. Some people feel guilty for not doing a lot of crafts at Christmas. Please don’t do that to yourself! I enjoy crafting, and that is literally the only reason I do it. No moral issues whatsoever, except that I’m trying to be better about cleaning up after myself afterwards, or at very least not getting so much glue on Damien’s work table. Ok, you have now been warned re: the crafts!

Here’s what we ate this week: 

SATURDAY
Leftovers and pizza pockets

Saturday was just a regular errands day, and I got my skeleton pals decorated for Christmas. 

Not the most creative display, but they look pretty cheerful. 

Saturday evening, I got busy and made ten little pavlova balls, a batch of lemon curd, a batch of raspberry coulis, and a dozen sugared raspberries. I’d been drooling over this recipe for pavlova bombs from Recipe Tin Eats, but it was too much work for a regular dessert, and no one in the family would want it for their birthday. NO ONE BUT ME, THAT IS. And it was almost my birthday! 

SUNDAY
Adults Chinese food; kids ravioli; pavlova bombs for all

Sunday after Mass, Damien had to work, but I spent a very pleasant afternoon stringing lights all over the living room and dining room and tree. Actually the tree part was less pleasant, because I thought and thought and thought about which way I wanted to string the lights together so that they would end up with the right end of the plug at the bottom, and I still messed it up. I think I probably plugged it into itself somehow, which helps no one. Also I was listening to my favorite Christmas album, but it was a bad connection and kept stopping and starting, and I was getting a little huffy. 

So I begged the kids to help me, and they obligingly got up and unstrung all the lights, so I could start over. While they were taking the lights off the tree, Damien came in, and they instantly started trying to convince him Christmas was over and he had slept through it.

And there we have the duality of teenagers: They are good kids, but they are terrible kids. 

Then Damien and I went out to eat! (My actual birthday was Monday, but weekend birthdays are better.) We had pork buns and egg rolls, and I had some kind of sizzling triple delight situation

and it earned its name. Then we came home and I put together the pavlova bombs!

 The reason I made the pavlovas the night before is because the way to keep them from cracking is to bake them, turn off the oven, and then leave them in there for a long time to cool down very, very slowly. So I left them in there overnight, and then took them out in the morning and covered them with plastic wrap. Then on Sunday evening, I whipped some cream and put the lemon and raspberry filing in pastry bags, and assembled the sugared raspberries and some mint leaves, and Benny chopped up some roast pistachios for me.

Here’s all the elements. Don’t the pavlovas look pretty? They’re so dainty and glossy, but they’re very stable.

To fill the pavlovas, I poked a hole with a skewer in the bottom and swizzled it around inside a bit to make room for the fillings. First I put in the raspberry coulis, which was pretty thin, so it was really more like letting it drip in, than piping it in. Then I piped in the lemon curd until the pavlova was full. Then I plugged the hole with a dab of whipped cream, turned it over, and topped it with a big blob of whipped cream. Then each one got garnished with a sugared raspberry, a few mint leaves, and a sprinkle of chopped pistachios. 

Prettiest thing I’ve ever made in the kitchen.

And when you break them open, they’re even prettier!

Absolutely fantastic. The two fillings were wonderfully tart, which was excellent with the sugary pavlova and the cool whipped cream. Then some of the spoonfuls also had the nuts and the mint, and wow, it was just luscious and exciting. The different flavors and textures played with each other SO well.

Nagi’s recipe is clear as a bell, and I have no questions or clarifications. My only tiny quibble is that the lemon curd has lemon zest in it, which is obviously great for the flavor, but not so much for the texture. At first I thought I had let the egg scramble while I was cooking the curd, but it was just the zest. This is the MINOREST of minor quibbles, though, and honestly, if I ever make this again, I’ll probably just follow the recipe exactly again. 

Then I got presents! I’m a little embarrassed to be 51 years old and still getting this many presents, but I really love getting presents, so this is what we do. Damien gave me a cheese-making kit, some gorgeous earrings, a special beautiful mug, and Brisbane by Eugene Vodolazkin; Benny gave me a drawing of Our Lady of Guadalupe; Lena gave me a storytelling card game; Sophia gave me some lovely enameled tin earrings; Clara gave me a wonderful mystical blue ceramic bowl she made, and Lucy gave me a pair of socks she knitted for me, with a skull pattern. 

Amazing gifts, every last one. Then we retired to watch the new Spinal Tap movie in bed, and it was so gently amusing that I feel asleep halfway through. 

Oh, one last thing! These sugared raspberries were so nice.

They’re super easy, but you have to make them ahead of time. You just brush them with egg white and then roll them in sugar. It’s supposed to be sanding sugar, which is more coarse and sparkly than table sugar, but I didn’t have any. The regular sugar turned out great. The raspberries have this fragile little sweet, crackly shell on them that feels really special. Definitely adding this into my arsenal for garnishing future fancy desserts. 

MONDAY
Chicken pot pie

Monday I gleefully took out the chicken pot pie I made made and froze before Thanksgiving. I left it wrapped in three layers of tinfoil and heated it up (without thawing it) for a few hours in a lowish oven, and then turned the oven up for about half an hour before supper, until I could hear the pie bubbling.

The very center was still a little cold, so I nuked it and it was great. 

Crust still flaky, filling nice and tender and tasty. I was very pleased. I adore chicken pot pie.

We decided that Tuesday would be a Fisher Flop Out day, because the logistics of getting to school were gonna be horrendous. So we stayed up a little late and watched Gremlins, because it turns out I’ve been caring too deeply about a lot of the wrong things most of my life, and it’s actually an okay movie, whatever. The story about how she found out Santa isn’t real gets me every time. 

TUESDAY
Aldi pizza

Tuesday, Damien and I took a kid for a long-awaited medical appointment out of state, and we are gone alllllll day. When we got back, Damien dropped me and kid off at home, then got some pizza and cooked it and I basically just ate pizza and flopped around exhaustedly and then went to bed. 

WEDNESDAY
Roast beef sandwiches, chips

On Wednesday, I cooked a hunk of roast beef in the morning, again following the first part of this recipe from Sip and Feast. I dry brined it with kosher salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder for 90 minutes, then cooked it at 500 for 15 minutes, then turned it down to 300 and let it cook for another half hour or so. Then I let it cool, wrapped it in plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge. Cut up some tomatoes and put some nice smoked gouda on a platter, and put everything away. 

Then I set out and dropped off some paperwork, loaded a bunch of clothes into the dryer at the laundromat, picked up the kids, and went to . . . deep breath . . . Five Below and Old Navy and Barnes and Noble and Michael’s, and then back to the laundromat, and when we got home, BOY were my feet glad I had already mostly made supper. Damien sliced up the meat and we had lovely, lovely sandwiches. 

I put mine under the broiler to melt the cheese, then added the tomatoes and some horseradish sauce. An absolute delight of a sandwich. (You may recall that, last time I made roast beef sandwiches, the oven died before I could toast the bread properly, and then you may recall that the moment after Damien fixed the oven, the dryer broke. You are now all caught up with Fisher Appliance Calamities, except that the trick that makes my car start stopped working, and we think maybe the alternator damaged the battery. Whatever, it’s fine, it’s whatever!) 

That evening, I made 22 of these little 12-pointed paper stars. I made a little video to show how it’s done. 

While I snipped, I listened to Christmas With the Louvin Brothers 

which is just a great album. I prefer this so VASTLY over those smarmy 50’s cocktail lounge versions of these songs that everyone thinks of as essential Christmas music. Start your kids on this album young, so they’re not jerks about it when they get older! 

THURSDAY
Ham, peas, mashed potatoes

I really don’t know what I did all day Thursday. I think I slept late and then ???. Oh, I did some sad banking and then spent an absurdly long time trying and failing to buy a dryer. Like, I want to give Home Depot my money, and allegedly they also want that? But you’d never know it, by the way their website is. (BAD.) 

It was a rare day in which I hadn’t done any dinner prep, so thank goodness for ham. When we got home, I sliced it up and put it in a dish with some water, covered it with tinfoil, and put it in the oven to warm up (it was already cooked, and it heats up faster if it’s sliced) and then quickly made some mashed potatoes and heated up some peas. 

I didn’t take a picture, but here are twelve photos of the last twelve times I made this exact same meal, each time to wild acclaim from my family:

Nobody can open a bag of frozen peas like me, I tell you. 

Thursday night, I hung up all the stars I had made

The yellow ones are made with this paper from Michael’s that comes in four related shades in one pack. I used three different shades for each star, and I like the effect. I also got some red foil paper, and was annoyed to discover it is only foil on one side! Oh well. 

I also sliced up a bunch of oranges to dry. I put the slices on baking racks on a pan in a 250 oven for about two hours, flipping them every half hour or so.

They were still somewhat juicy at this point, but they were starting to get little brown marks from the racks, so I just left them out to air dry more overnight. 

FRIDAY
Fish tacos, guacamole

Oranges still a little damp! That’s okay; they’re dry enough to work with.

It’s raining, as I mentioned, but I was already kind of sweaty from yoga, so I went out and clipped a bunch of pine needles for some stars I want to make. I think the oranges, some cranberries, and these stars will make a really pretty garland. I like making Christmas decorations that will continue to look bright and pretty after Christmas, when there is still plenty of winter left and we will need some color. Here is a garland from a few years ago, that we left up long after Christmas: 

This one has oranges, lemons, limes, and grapefruit, but this year I’m just doing oranges. 

So then I discovered that the Christmas card I made for a dear friend, and which I had miraculously chased everybody in the house down to sign, had somehow gotten wet, and I set about making a replacement card and maybe went a little crackerdog over this for various reasons, at which point Damien suggested that HE could go to the laundromat, mail my card, drop off the forgotten secret santa present, go to adoration, and pick up the kids, and I didn’t even have to put pants on. Then he brought me some coffee and headed out into the rain. I guess I will go wipe the glue off his worktable, and then we will be even. 

We’ve heading into the home stretch of Chanukah

and I am thinking about blintzes and latkes and maybe sufganiyot. Heck, maybe I will make one or more of those tonight. The kids are not crazy about fish tacos, but nobody can resist a jelly donut. Yeah, I think I will make some jelly donuts. Usually I follow a King Arthur recipe, but I think I will try Smitten Kitchen’s version this year. Smitten Kitchen has been very good to us lately, and I like the looks of those donuts. 

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Rebecca's chicken bacon pie

Ingredients

  • double recipe of pie crust
  • 1 pound bacon, diced
  • 4 ribs celery, diced OR one big bunch of leeks, diced
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 1 bunch thyme, finely chopped
  • 3 chicken breasts, diced
  • 2-3 potatoes, peeled and diced
  • 6 Tbsp butter
  • 6 Tbsp flour
  • 3 cups concentrated chicken broth (I use almost double the amount of bouillon to make this)
  • 2 Tbsp pepper
  • egg yolk for brushing on top crust

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 425.

  2. In a large pan, cook the bacon pieces until they are browned. Take the cooked bacon out and pour off most of the grease.

  3. Add the onion and celery to the remaining bacon grease and cook, stirring, until soft. Return the bacon to the pan.

  4. Add the thyme, pepper, and butter and cook until butter is melted. Add the flour and whisk, cooking for another few minutes.

  5. Whisk in the chicken broth and continue cooking for a few more minutes until it thickens up. Stir in the chicken and potato and keep warm, stirring occasionally, until you're ready to use it.

  6. Pour filling into bottom crust, cover with top crust, brush with beaten egg. Bake, uncovered, for about an hour. If it is browning too quickly, cover loosely with tin foil.

What’s for supper? Vol. 357: Ich bin ein ludicrous display

Happy birthday to me! Today, for my birthday, I wish for you a very happy take your vitamins and drink some water, and many happy returns of the move your body and thank God for the day. 

Yesterday, we got some . . . medium-rotten financial news, which I delivered while Damien was replacing his brakes on his car, one of the kids called because their car had broken down, and while I was picking her up, my check engine light came on, and then we got home and one of the kids tested positive for Covid, which would explain a thing or two. We’re supposed to be getting ready for Benny’s birthday party, but of course we had to cancel. El bummer supremo.  

However, excelsior. Right? What is the other option? This year was better than last year, and I can only conclude that the coming year will be even better. I am 49 and I thank God for the day.

Hey, this is the year I finally got the hang of deep frying things without freaking out or trashing the kitchen. AS YOU WILL SEE. 

Here is what we ate this week!

SATURDAY
Chic-ken-bur-gers! [clap! clap! clap-clap-clap!]

And chips. 

SUNDAY
Ham, peas, and mashed potatoes

The supermarket Dora works for got a shipment of . . . mislabeled hams, or something? So everybody got hams. Some days, the two most beautiful words in the English language are “fully cooked.” 

On Sunday I decided it was time to finally get around to dealing with the rugelach dough I made last week or possibly the week before. If you are wondering, the dough is still good! It’s just butter and cream cheese and flour, so it’s hard to hurt, as long as you wrap it up good. 

Jump to Recipe

The dough becomes sweet, and it gets a lovely little fragile crisp outside, because you roll it out on drifts of sugar. It’s really surprisingly tender, considering how dense the ingredients are.

Then you spread your fillings over the circle you’ve rolled out, cut it into triangles with a pizza cutter, and roll them rugelachim up

Then you do it 4,000 more times, and bake them on sprayed baking racks. This was my big breakthrough with rugelach production, because the filling leaks out now matter what I do. This way, it leaks onto the pan below (which you have lined with parchment paper), and the rugelach stay above the fray.

Let the rugelach cool for about ten minutes before you try to remove them from the rack. The easiest way is to push up on them from underneath, to pop them off the rack in one piece. 

So I ended up making some Nutella, some apricot walnut, some strawberry jam, and some with honey, cinnamon, and pistachios.

These are unbaked, demonstrating that you can re-use the parchment paper and bake several batches without having to clean the pan. 

And here are the honey pistachio cinnamon ones, baked. I made some with the pistachios sprinkled over the dough, and some with the pistachios rolled right into the dough. I also drizzled more honey over the top of the second variety. 

And I could not taste the difference. They were all good! 

It’s always a little startling to see how few you come up with, after such a long time rolling and baking, but on the other hand, I think we still have a few leftover today, Friday (after giving away several tins of them), so I guess it was the right number. 

You can save time by rolling the dough into a rectangle, rather than a circle, and spreading the filling on and then rolling it up in a log, like you would cinnamon buns; and then you just slice it into a bunch of little pastries all at once. Much faster. But then you get spirals/rosettes, rather than these sort of snail-shaped treats, and I just like them better this way. Why can’t more things be snail shaped? 

Tonight is the last night of Chanukah, but I am here to tell you that you can still make rugelach all through December and beyond, because nobody says “no” to rugelach. 

MONDAY
Muffaletta sandwiches and raw veg

I started (I mean years ago) trying to make these sandwiches as close to the authentic originals as possible, but now we just do whatever. This time it was baguettes for the bread, ham, turkey, salami, pepperoni, and I think some Italian speck, and provolone, and I used the food processor to make an olive salad with black and green olives, banana peppers, and red onion, with olive oil and wine vinegar, salt and pepper.

Maybe not authentic muffaletta sandwiches, but they were good. 

I made a big platter of raw vegetables

and I’ve been snacking on it all week. There is a time of day, every day, when I’m really not hungry in any meaningful way, but I cannot seem to convince my mouth that it doesn’t need to be chomping on something, so it’s helpful to have some pre-cut vegetables. Easy to transport, easy to grab.

So I snack on these, and THEN I start gobbling leftover cookies and whatnot. Follow me for more strategies on putting a ton of energy into not losing weight. 

TUESDAY
Chicken biryani, pomegranates

Been thinking about biryani for several weeks now. I use this basic recipe and adjust the seasoning as I see fit. It’s not hard at all. You just have to brown up the chicken, which you have opened up by slicing it along the bone

and then cook up your onion and ginger and spices in the hot oil, and then add in the rest of your stuff. It’s a little more involved than that, but it’s all in one big pan.

I didn’t have golden raisins, so I chopped up some apricots

So I cook it all up as early in the day as I can, and then transfer it to the slow cooker and keep it warm all day. This almost always makes the rice/liquid proportions come out even, and you don’t end up with soupy biryani or chompy rice

I accidentally threw the cilantro in with the chicken when I was cooking it, so I just added more fresh on top, along with some toasted almonds. Yum. We also had pomegranates. 

Oh, the apricots kind of turned to mush, which was disappointing. I didn’t think of it, but I guess raisins are better because they cook inside their little skins. It wasn’t bad, but the apricots didn’t really add anything. 

WEDNESDAY
Pizza

I was informed that one cheese, one olive, and one pepperoni pizza would “do numbers,” so that’s what I made. 

I also felt a sudden urge to make sufganiyot before Chanukah was over. I used this recipe from Once Upon a Chef. I made the dough in the early afternoon and set it to rise while I did my afternoon errands. When I got back, I rolled it out and cut it into 48 squares

and then you just fry them in a few inches of oil, about six at a time, and they puff up.

I always have a larf when I get out my candy thermometer. I can’t remember if I’ve told this story before, but when Irene was little, we were making caramel for something, and she said, while stirring: “We don’t want it to get too hot. Not hard ball. Or hard crack. Or . . . [peering at thermometer] fish donut.” 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Little kids are heroes. They are so willing to accept so much NONSENSE from the adult world. They’re just like, “Welp, I guess fish donut is a thing, and I just have to deal with it,” and off they go. 

We just made donuts, though. No fish involved. 

When the donuts are cool enough to handle, you cut a little slit in the side and get some filling in there. I used pastry bags and did half raspberry jelly

and half vanilla pudding.

Then you dust them with powdered sugar and eat them up. They were nice! They didn’t inflate as nicely as the ones in the recipe picture, so they stayed pretty square-ish, which was a little odd; but they were cooked all the way through, and had a nice crisp exterior and fluffy interior. I’ll probably use this recipe in the future. Everyone was very impressed, and 48 turned out to be the right number. (They’re smaller than, say, Dunkin’ Donut donuts, but bigger than Munchkins or whatever they’re called.)

THURSDAY
Roast turkey, cranberry sauce, brussels sprouts and squash, potato latkes

I had bought an extra turkey while they were still on sale for Thanksgiving, and Damien roasted it slowly with lemon halves and an entire head of garlic shoved inside, and salt, pepper, and garlic powder outside. Delicious and moist. 

I roasted a pan of Brussels sprouts and butter nut squash wedges along with, I don’t know, olive oil and honey, salt and pepper, and shoved that in the oven while I was frying up the potato latkes. 

Jump to Recipe

Every year I think I’m going to try some interesting variation on the recipe, or at least some onion or something, but every year, Chanukah comes right when I’m barely keeping my head above water with a million other projects. So basically just potatoes, eggs, flour, and little salt and pepper it is! And lots of oil, of course, which is what makes it a Chanukah food. 

They turned out pretty good. 

I served them with sour cream and mashed-up whole berry cranberry sauce, which turned out to be not really a great companion for latkes. So now I know! But it was a nice meal. 

We also discovered our dreidels are all missing, so I made one out of a paper plate and a matchstick,

annnnd then drew the letters on upside down by mistake. 

But it spun fine and fairly, and that’s what matters. I had bought chocolate coins back when everyone else was getting ready for St. Nicholas day, so that was set, anyway. The kids had a surprisingly good time playing dreidel. 

 

We have been doing okay keeping up with Chanukah candles and Advent candles and the Jesse tree. By “okay,” I mean we mostly didn’t skip it, and when we did do it, nobody got into a fist fight. Mehr licht. 

Thursday was the day I put up my annual Ludicrous Display (this began years ago, when I nailed a giant garbage bag spider on the shed for Halloween, and I kind of thought Hurricane Irene would take care of it after Halloween, but it didn’t, because I used so many nails; so we just put a Santa hat on it and let it stay. Thus began a tradition of putting up Halloween decorations with an eye toward longevity, so if there are skeletons, they put on bunny ears for Easter, and so on.

This is less funny than it used to be, because lots of people now have permanent skeletons; so I was looking for something a little different this year, and for some reason I got it into my head that we needed a Sacred Heart. So I made one out of foam and zip ties.

and added some lights and gold whatnot. Then I took the Groucho glasses and bats and whatnot off our front skeletons and made them look like they were paying impressed, and I put the heart up, and 

ehhh, I thought maybe it would look better in the dark

but it still looks kinda dumb! I guess it needs some work. Or whatever. I was okay with weird, but this is just confusing. Anyway, I took the bats down. 

The mailbox looks pretty good

and we haven’t gotten one of those chiding postcards from the post office yet. 

FRIDAY
??

I don’t know, I got tuna and fries for the kids, thinking Damien and I could go out for my birthday, but I think I’ve done enough plague superspreading for one week, going to the store 5,000 times and not realizing we all had Covid. (This year’s Covid seems to look like feeling kinda low and yucky for a few days and then throwing up one time, and then feeling much better, but sneezing.)

Oh, speaking of feeling better, I started a 30-day plank challenge group on Facebook, if anyone wants to join. We’re on day 4 today. No pressure, and nobody’s a super athlete or anything. It’s just easier to get this kind of thing going if you’re not alone! 

And that’s my story.  Next year, I’m gonna make blintzes. Blintzes with blueberry and pot cheese. Then we’ll see a ludicrous display. 

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Rugelach

These are tender little pastries for Chanukah or any time. Use whatever kind of filling you like: Jams, preserves, cinnamon sugar, nutella, etc. These are time consuming, but don't take much skill, and they freeze well, so they make pretty little gifts.

Servings 80 rugelach

Ingredients

dough

  • half pound butter
  • 8 oz cream cheese
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 cup or more sugar, for rolling

filling

  • 1/4-1/2 cup preserves or other filling
  • 1/4-1/2 cup finely chopped nuts (optional)

Instructions

  1. In a food processor, combine the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Slowly add in the flour and keep mixing until smooth. You can do this by hand, but it will take a while! The dough should be fairly stiff and not sticky when it's done.

  2. Divide the dough into 8 balls. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.

  3. Preheat the oven to 400.

  4. Prepare a pan by lining it with parchment paper, then spraying a baking rack and putting the rack on the parchment paper. Line a second pan with parchment paper, to which you will remove the rugelach when they come out of the oven.

  5. Use the sugar to cover your work space, and use a rolling pin to roll a ball of dough into a round shape the size of a large plate. It should be thin enough to flap a bit when you give it a shake. If your rolling pin sticks, sprinkle more sugar on. You can turn the dough over to make sure both sides get sugared. It doesn't have to be perfectly round, as it will be cut into pieces.

  6. Spread the jam or other filling over the dough, leaving an open space in the middle. If you're adding nuts, sprinkle them over the filling.

  7. Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into 16-20 triangles.

  8. Roll each triangle up from the outside in. Place each rolled rugelach on the sprayed baking rack on the pan, with the skinny point down. They puff up a bit, so leave the space of one rugelach in between.

  9. Repeat for each ball of dough.

  10. Bake for ten minutes. If the dough isn't golden brown, give it another two minutes. These go from perfect to burnt very quickly, so be alert.

  11. When they bake, the filling will ooze out and pool and burn on the parchment paper, but the rugelach will not burn.

  12. When the rugelach come out of the oven, immediately use a butter knife to transfer them to another pan or rack to cool.

  13. Once they are cool, they can be wrapped in plastic and kept in the freezer for weeks without harm.

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Potato latkes

Serve with sour cream and/or apple sauce for Hanukkah or ANY TIME. Makes about 25+ latkes

Ingredients

  • 4 lbs potatoes, peeled
  • 6 eggs beaten
  • 6 Tbsp flour (substitute matzoh meal for Passover)
  • salt and pepper
  • oil for frying

Instructions

  1. Grate the potatoes. Let them sit in a colander for a while, if you can, and squeeze out as much liquid as possible. 

  2. Mix together the eggs, salt and pepper, and flour. Stir into the potato mixture and mix well. 

  3. Turn the oven on to 350 and put a paper-lined pan in the oven to receive the latkes and keep them warm while you're frying. 

  4. Put 1/4 to 1/2 and inch of oil in your frying pan and heat it up until a drop of batter will bubble.  

  5. Take a handful of the potato mixture, flatten it slightly, and lay it in the pan, leaving room between latkes. Repeat with the rest of the mixture, making several batches to leave room in between latkes. Fry until golden brown on both sides, turning once. Eat right away or keep warm in oven, but not too long. 

  6. Serve with sour cream and/or applesauce or apple slices.