RECIPE! Potato Latkes

I TOLD YOU: a whole week of Passover recipes!

Tonight, after a day of feasting on leftovers, the evening was capped with potato latkes, a.k.a. potato pancakes. I'm not exactly sure there's much nutritional redemtion in potato pancakes (as you'll notice from the ingredient list), but I'll be damned if they're not some of the most delicious foods ever invented. And you get to eat them with both sour cream and applesauce which are not two things the Israelites were likely to have had while fleeing Egypt, but are delicious nonetheless.

Please locate the following:

4 or 5 medium-sized potatoes
1 large onion
2 or 3 eggs
2 tbsp flour
salt + pepper
garlic powder
3/4 cup olive oil

Peel and grate the potatoes. Squeeze water out of grated potatoes. Peel and grate onion into potatoes. Add flour, salt, pepper, garlic powder (or season to your taste), and mix in the eggs. Heat oil over medium heat. Drop pancake-sized spoonfulls of batter into oil, fry to golden brown. Remove, blot out excess oil, and serve with sour cream and applesauce.

A few notes: first, the trick is to not end up with too much egg in the batter. You can use two potatoes and one small onion and one egg to make fewer latkes, and you can double and triple the recipe to make as many as you like, but always add eggs guessing on the less-is-safer priciple. You can always add one more if the potato isn't sticking together enough.

Secondly, the step where you squeeze out the potatoes is as annoyingly gross as it sounds, it does leave your hands covered in potato bits, but unless you want your latkes to end up runny and a pain in the ass to cook, you'll do this. Trust me, it's worth it.

It's also worth mentioning that potato pancakes are twice as delicious the next day, even cold, sort of like tortilla espanola is twice as good the next day, cold, and especially when you're hung over, so feel free to make a bunch of them.

NOTE: I have since been informed that flour is not allowed during Passover, even if it's not being used to leaven anything. So, substitue matzoh meal or potato starch instead. Fantastic, it's only day one, and I'm already breaking rules...