Tag: James Cameron

Wander three blocks past Broad Street Books towards Washington Street and your eyes will be drawn to a grand, teal Victorian-era home. Nestled inside is Sweet Harmony, a Middletown fixture. Its name is fitting. With its cozy hearth, oversized wicker chairs, laced curtains held by ties with faux-fruit attached, and an admittedly impressive collection of tchotchkes, Sweet Harmony evokes a garish, old-fashioned New England inn.

At first, the preciousness of the décor comes off as overwhelming, but Sweet Harmony’s tasty food offsets any feelings of unease from your surroundings. The café is not merely a place to treat your taste buds, though—it is also a gift shop. If Goodwill is not satisfying your craving for kitsch, you just may find that perfect, gaudy trinket for which you have been arduously searching. Just maybe.

This lunch-only spot serves a wide array of salads, sandwiches, entrees, and desserts, all of which are homemade. Daily soup specials are also available. The salads include an upscale prime rib on a bed of greens, a down-to-earth ham, turkey, and American cheese salad with carrot shreds and lettuce, and six or seven additional varieties. The selection of sandwiches is equally diverse and plentiful; they range from the vegetarian-friendly eggplant and hummus wrap to fleshy liverwurst on toasted rye bread. Entrees include bubbling macaroni and cheese, a “heavenly” chicken salad, and a fresh crab wrap. The beverage menu offers herbal and caffeinated teas, a fifties-style root beer float, and fresh fruit smoothies, among other appealing concoctions.

I decided on the black forest ham sandwich, which featured generous cuts of tender ham, melted brie, and a coat of Dijon mustard, all served on a French roll. It was a luxurious blend of salty and buttery flavors, and was quite – dare I say it – harmonious. The hint of spice and wine from the mustard pleasantly infused the richness of the meat and the cheese. The sandwich was not totally flawless, however: the ham was just a little too salty.

The friend I treated to lunch ordered a tuna melt topped with semi-circles of raw red onion. This sandwich was much too creamy due to a surplus of mayo and Swiss cheese. However, the rosemary focaccia on which it was served was lip-smackingly good: well-herbed, moist, and light.

Sweet Harmony is known regionally for its decadent and artfully crafted cakes. On any given day, its bakery boasts 10 to 15 homemade cake types. There are such classic American desserts as strawberry short cake, cream puffs, and a few different takes on chocolate cake. After an extended internal debate, I settled on a two-tiered carrot cake with a deliciously airy cream cheese frosting. This fresh, buttery, and perfectly sweetened cake hit the taste-receptor target.

The service was a perfect match for the vibe; the waitress was very hospitable (perhaps stepping into overeager) and had an appropriately sugary disposition.

If you are made uncomfortable by schmaltz, cloying trinkets, or mayo, I might walk down to another eatery on Main Street; but if you feel like having an enjoyable lunch in outlandish kitschville, give Sweet Harmony a try.

Location: 158 Broad Street (Between Court St. and Washington St.)

Hours: Open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. from Tuesday to Saturday. Closed Sunday.

Price Range: $$ (sandwiches average $9, entrees range from $8.95 to $10.95, and desserts cost $3.95 to $6.95).

Since I love Asian food, especially Thai food, I am quite excited to share some of my favorite Asian fusion dishes that I like to cook at home. The kicker: they all use Weshop ingredients.

Now, I love salad, but it can’t be just a green salad. Below is a recipe for a cold salad with Soba buckwheat noodle, which is originally from Japan, as the main ingredient. This dish is similar to the seaweed salad that is served in Japanese restaurants, the Rama salad that you would find at Typhoon, or Ahi Poke (Hawaiian Tuna Salad). It is an effortless dish that explodes with complex flavors of fresh ginger and toasty sesame oil.

Ingredients

1 pack Soba buckwheat noodle (about 8 oz)

½ medium-size red or green bell peppers, julienned and diced (also see below for other varieties)

½ cucumber, thinly sliced or shredded

1 tablespoon fresh ginger, finely chopped

1 tablespoon scallion or cilantro, or both, finely chopped

2 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari

2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

2 tablespoons rice vinegar (optional)

1 teaspoon chili flake, jalapeno, or serrano, chopped finely (optional)

A pinch sesame seed (optional)

Makes 4 Servings.

Instructions:

1) To cook buckwheat noodles, it is best to follow the instructions on the back of the package. Bring water to boil then add the noodles. Uncover the pot and allow the noodles to simmer in low heat for five to eight minutes. Stir occasionally. Drain and rinse with cold water.

2) Chop your vegetables while you wait for the noodles to cook. In a large salad bowl, whisk together ginger, scallions, cilantro, rice vinegar, soy sauce, chili flakes, and sesame oil. Add cucumbers and bell peppers.

3) Thoroughly combine the noodle and the dressing. Sprinkle some sesame seeds before serving.

Tips: Always simmer Soba noodles on low heat after you bring the water to boil. Slow cooking Soba noodles gives them a tender and firm texture. If you cook the Soba noodles in boiling water in the same way you prepare pasta, your soba will be overcooked, sticky, and taste starchy (I made this mistake twice because I didn’t read the instructions!).

For variety, feel free to replace cucumber and bell peppers with your choice of vegetables such as sprouts and carrots. You can also grill (use the “broil” mode in your oven) vegetables such as eggplant, asparagus, zucchini, bell peppers, and Portobello mushrooms.

Somehow oatmeal never gets the best rap. It has pretty paltry aesthetic appeal, sounds like something you make your least favorite hamster eat for dinner, and just lacks culinary excitement. But we all forget that oatmeal is perfect for snow. Just imagine: you look out your window and kind of doubt your existence because everything is really white and almost blinding, and you start to see little weird flashes of light from staring so long. But wait! What’s that you smell? Yes, it is cinnamon mingled with a touch of cardamom and maple syrup! Take a deeper whiff…is that banana too? And cranberries? You run over to see where this magical amalgam of scents could be wafting from, and, lo and behold, a humble mug filled to the brim with spiced oats, chunks of banana, bursts of cranberry bits, and (for that essential nutty crunch!) sunflower seeds swimming throughout. And even better for you, the bananas, cranberries, and sunflower seeds can all be collected with the help of your handy-dandy Eco-To-Go container.

Ingredients:

½ cup dry oatmeal

1 cup water

Maple Syrup, to taste

Cardamom, to taste

Cinnamon, to taste

Dried Cranberries, to taste

1 banana, sliced

Sunflower seeds, to taste

Instructions:

Put oats, water, and banana in a microwave-safe bowl. Stir and microwave for two to three minutes. Season hot oatmeal with spices, maple syrup, cranberries, and sunflower seeds. Try not to burn your tongue.

Plan for finals: Buy giant bag of chips to nosh on while writing paper. Finish half the bag of chips, finish quarter of paper. Feel awful. Decide you need chocolate to put you in a better mood—lots of chocolate. Buy bag of chocolate chips. Endorphins, right?  Eat half of bag of chocolate chips while watching Community. Write a paragraph—feel empowered. Realize you have goldfish leftover from your Usdan To Go lunch (be amazed by the fact that you didn’t eat all your goldfish immediately). Realize that you have five hours left before your paper is due. You need to be proactive! Obviously, you should make cookies. Your end product will be ready in half an hour and look how frugal it’ll be to use those half-finished bags of processed glory!

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1 1/2 cups chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, and/or toffee bits (i.e. if you are hyperglycemic, you may die)

1 1/2 cups goldfish, other cheesy snacks, pretzels, fritos, potato chips, soy crisps, Doritos, corn nuts (i.e. if you have hypertension, you will die)

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Grease cookie sheets.

2. Stir the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside. In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended.

3. Beat in the egg and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the dry ingredients until just blended.

4. Stir in the other lethally sweet/salty items with a wooden spoon. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time (for giant cookies) or a tablespoon at a time (for smaller cookies) onto the prepared cookie sheets.

5. Bake larger cookies for 15 to 17 minutes, or 10 to 12 minutes for smaller ones (check your cookies before they’re done; depending on your scoop size, your baking time will vary) in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

6. FINISH YOUR PAPER!

Everyone knows that Christmas is the best holiday—nay, the single best event—of the year. Nothing compares to the magical, sparkly, love-filled, jingle-belling joy that surrounds every person and emanates from every storefront during the Christmas season. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes Christmas so undeniably, mind-blowingly fantastic—playing in the snow, decorating the tree, talking with the relatives you haven’t seen all year, humming carols, watching classic Christmas movies like Miracle on 34th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life, baking cookies, drinking eggnog and spiced cider, hanging stockings, stringing lights, taking a photo with the mall Santa, reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas, warming your hands around the fireplace, waking up on Christmas morning . . . I should probably stop—but without a doubt, food is an essential part of the magic. Christmas dinner is always a delight—but food can make the perfect gift as well. Here’s a guide of food-focused gifts for every member of the family.

Your obsessive-compulsive, exercise fanatic mother

Xoçai Omega chocolate squares. Every woman loves chocolate, but if the woman you’re buying for refuses to eat anything that doesn’t have dietary fiber in it or exceeds a five percent fat content, you may have given up on chocolate as a gift. Luckily, Xoçai offers dark chocolate packed with “plant-based antioxidants that help the body’s cells resist damage by free radicals,” according to their website. Plus, it comes in a sporty-looking wrapper, just in case the description didn’t convince her that it was actually healthy.

Your still-a-hippy-even-though-it’s-been-40-years-since-1970 father

Manna Organic Banana Walnut Hemp Bread. Not only is it delicious and made of hemp, but its loafiness is also reminiscent of the classic Christmas treat fruit cake.

Your stoner little brother

Ben and Jerry’s Magic Brownies Ice Cream. Alright, I’ll admit that this flavor is inspired by Dave Matthews Band, but I promise that it will please your taste buds in exactly the opposite way that Dave Matthews doesn’t please your ears. “Black Raspberry Ice Cream Swirled with Sweet Cream Ice Cream & Fudgy Brownies”—it’s basically Brownie Batter Deluxe Edition. On the other hand, you could always just go for actual magic brownies.

Your legitimately crazy artist aunt

For this one, you’re going to have to bake. There is nothing crazy artists love more than homemade things. I recommend Amanda Schwartz’s Usdanigan compost cookies, but you could always go simple and make classic gingerbread.

Your intellectual professor uncle

Whatever you do, do not get wine. There is no wine you can afford that your Harvard-educated, vest-wearing uncle will not scoff at. Instead, go with a small wheel of good comté—if he loves wine (which I guarantee you he does), he will also love cheese. And comté is always classy.

Your legally blind grandpa

This is your opportunity to get rid of the wheat grass shake mix your exercise fanatic mom put in your stocking—roll it up in a new sheet of wrapping paper and your grandpa won’t even notice. Then again, if you’re not a terrible person, Alaskan smoked salmon is a good choice; salmon improves vision, and since it’s preserved it will still be good when your grandpa finds it next year after forgetting that he put it in the back of the pantry the day after Christmas.

In light of the impending winter holiday and exam week, Ellie and I thought that it would be appropriate to offer to you, our beloved readers, a holiday favorite, along with a tasty snack recipe to keep you going through these stressful times. We both realize that the holiday season can be one of the most hectic times of the year, not only because of exams, but also because of the stress of finding gifts, scheduling those obscenely early shuttle rides, and trekking through countless airports on our journeys back home. One way to stay awake, alert, and healthy during this chaotic period is by eating well and eating food that bring merriment to the soul. Here are two recipes: one for traditional homemade sugar cookies with tips for decorations, and our very own creation, the festive pita pizza.

Sugar Cookies

To begin work on the sugar cookies, gather together flour, baking soda, baking powder, butter, an egg, vanilla extract, and most importantly, sugar. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. While the oven is preheating, stir together all the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder) in a bowl and set aside. In another large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. This may require a number of strokes, but keep going until the two have blended together nicely. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Once the wet ingredients have been thoroughly mixed together, stir in the dry ingredients from the separate bowl. Gradually stir your mixture until it has solidified into a soft, malleable form. Make sure your work surface is very clean, for we do not want to encourage the emergence of even more sickness during flu season.

Roll rounded teaspoonfuls of dough into balls and place them onto an ungreased cookie sheet. To fully immerse yourself in the holiday spirit, gather a few friends and make it a competition to see who can carve out the most recognizable holiday shape. These can range from menorahs to the traditional Christmas tree to the mazao (the fruit basket of Kwanzaa). By this time, the oven should be preheated so go ahead and place the cookie sheet in the oven. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until the dough balls have flattened out into rounded, golden-brown cookies. Once this absolute cookie perfection has been achieved, take the cookies out of the oven and place on a cooling rack. While they cool, assemble any possible decorative materials you can find. These may include: rainbow sprinkles stolen off the donuts at brunch, cream cheese icing taken from the carrot cakes at dinner, or even some almonds from the Usdan salad bar.

Pita Pizzas

On a healthier, less-holiday inspired note, we now turn to pita pizzas to help give your brain a small boost to combat finals, last minute research papers, and group projects. The essential ingredients are flat pita breads, feta cheese (or any others that strike your fancy), tomatoes and basil. Keeping with this red, white, and green theme, olives may also be used as a colorful topper. Begin the process by laying your pitas out on a cookie sheet, sprinkling them with cheese, and adding a few thin slices of tomatoes on top. Put them in the oven at 400 degrees in order to melt the cheese fast and keep the bread from drying out. When the heavenly wafts of cheese and tomatoes can be smelled from down the hall, take the pita pizzas out and allow them to cool for a few minutes. Top with your green ingredients, basil, and olives, and thoroughly indulge in this healthy but delicious snack.

Remember, the holidays are essentially the only time of the year when self-indulgence can be excused. Happy holidays to everyone and enjoy the most wonderful time of the year.

Next semester, I am leaving the snowy winter wonderland of Connecticut to embark on a trip across the world to the homeland of arguably some of the tastiest food in the world: India. It is the original spice trade homeland, birthplace of chicken masala and saag paneer, and the creator of the samosa. Rather than abandon the Argus, I will be serving as your honorary food correspondent, writing in from Jaipur, India—located about four hours south of New Delhi. I will send you recipes that will blow the spicy out of Tandoor and leave you craving Havelis. I will send you pictures of curries that will make your tongue tingle and of yogurt Shrikhand to cool you back down. For my last recipe of the semester I wanted to begin experimenting with the food that I will be eating for the next five months.

When it was ordered that this week’s food section be Christmas themed, I thought it would be difficult to connect a recipe to my upcoming trip. But Christianity is India’s third largest practiced religion, with 24 million followers (about 2.3 percent of the country’s population), so I was able to rustle up some classic Indian Christmas recipes online.

Yet, in the throws of finals and papers due at midnight, I was not able to actually try this recipe. I have included a recipe for Christmas Kulkuls (found on indianfood.about.com), in addition to a tried-and-true recipe for samosas that I made with my sister last year. The samosas are a truly delicious recipe that, if I were a full-time cook for my program house, I would make daily. So enjoy your first Indian dinner and dessert from me!

Kulkuls

Ingredients

3.5 cups Flour

4 tsp powdered sugar

1 Egg

Milk (room temperature)

1 tsp butter

1/2 tsp of baking powder

Oil for frying

1 cup sugar

4 tbsp water

1)   Mix the flour and the baking powder. Add the butter a little at a time and mix gently.

2)   Beat the eggs separately and add them to the flour-butter mixture. Add the powdered sugar and coconut milk and mix with fingers until it’s a nice consistency.

3)   Role the dough into marble-sized balls.

4)   Grease the back of a fork with some oil. Shaping the kulkul is an art, but not too difficult. It is soft and pliable, and you need to work quickly to shape the entire batch of dough.

5)   Flatten and press a ball of dough onto the prongs and then roll the dough off the fork into a tight curl. Cover the dough you are not using with a wet cloth so it does not harden. Finish the entire batch.

6)   Heat the oil in a deep pan on medium-high. When the oil is hot, fry the kulkuls, turning them often, until they are golden brown. Place them on paper towels to drain.

7)   Heat up the sugar with a little water until the sugar melts into a syrup. Quickly put all of the fried kulkuls in the pan and make sure they are coated evenly.

8)   Spread them out on a plate to cool.

9)   Eat on Christmas day!

Samosas

Filling

Heat in a skillet:

– 1 tbsp vegetable oil

– pinch of ginger

– 1/2 tsp cumin/mustard mix

When seeds pop, add:

–       1 med onion, chopped finely

–       1 tbsp fresh cilantro chopped

Sauté until the onion becomes translucent, then add:

–       1/2 tbsp lemon juice

–       1 tsp cumin

–       1/2 tsp salt

–       a pinch of red hot pepper powder

Sauté for a few minutes and then add:

–       3 medium tomatoes, already cut and boiled until soft

–       1/4 cup of frozen peas

Mix well and sauté until heated, then remove from the heat and set aside.

Dough

Mix in a bowl:

–       2 cups of white flour

–       2 ½ tbsp vegetable oil

–       1 ½ tbsp rice flour (this can be regular flour if you don’t have any)

–       ½ tsp salt

Add water gradually (1/4 cup at a time) until dough holds together and kneads well. Roll into a ball and cover with a moist cloth. Let it sit for 20 minutes.

Constructing the Samosas

Break off 1.5-2 inch pieces of the dough and roll into 6-8 inch diameter circles. Cut each circle in half and fold each half circle into thirds to make a pie wedge shape. Seal the point by pressing or pinching. Pick up the dough and seal the outside edge. Fill the cone with samosa filling. Pinch to seal. Cover with a moist cloth until ready to fry.

Fry

Put the samosas in a deep pan with hot oil and flip them over until they are golden brown on both sides. Let them cool on paper towels.

I’ll admit it – I have never once had a white Christmas. In Cape Town, the holiday season means barbeques outside in the sunshine, and ice cream at the beach the day after Christmas. But on some level, a white, wintry Christmas just feels right even to me. It could be all those carols my Christmas-crazed housemate and Argus editor-in-chief Katherine has been playing since the day we got back from Thanksgiving break, but even “I’ve Been Dreaming of a White Christmas” loses its appeal after a while. I think the real romance of a white Christmas comes from the toasting. Christmas toasts are all about getting cozy around the fire and celebrating family and friends while cultivating a certain warm and fuzzy feeling inside. It’s a little hard to get that authentic festive feeling when you’re outside in 85-degree weather, raising iced tea glasses. Eggnog really is the only legit option.

So for vegans and the lactose-intolerant, for whom holiday fare is often already a struggle, I present my Christmas gift to you: SOY NOG. Or, as I like to call it, Soy Nom.

This fabulously festive, delectably delightful recipe, adapted from vegparadise.com, requires a blender. It may not be dorm kitchen-friendly, but it’s also super quick and easy, so you can make it at home over break and impress your mom.

Ingredients:

1 blender

1 quart of vanilla soy milk*

1 12 ounce carton soft or firm silken tofu

3/4 cup maple syrup

Yummy ingredients that are not actually that important to quantify:

1/2-1 teaspoon each of ground cinnamon and nutmeg

3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom (What do you call the mother of a Wesleyan student? A carda-mom)

1/2 ground cloves

2&1/2 teaspoons real vanilla extract

3/4 teaspoon rum extract (or a splash of the real thang if you’re over 21)

Throw all that good stuff in the blender and blend for about 1.5 minutes on low. Chill before serving, stick in a fancy pitcher and go forth to impress your relatives (or at least six of them, since that’s how many this recipe serves).

*My two cents about soy products: Obviously, soy is not amazing for the environment and shouldn’t replace meat as your main protein source – grains, beans and legumes are where it’s at guys. But for recipes like this, quinoa ain’t gonna cut it. However, a lot of people assume soy is always the healthy option. In fact, many “natural” soy milk brands, including Silk, process the raw soy with a neurotoxic chemical, hexane – most commonly known as a byproduct of gasoline refining – simply because it is cheaper. So skip the Silk and go for Edensoy or another certified organic brand which uses truly natural processing techniques and U.S. soy beans, keeping it at least semi-local.

The month of December is almost always associated with the “holiday spirit,” or the endorsed overconsumption of certain foods, beverages, and hopelessly useless items that tantalized us from store windows. It should have been easy for Rachel and I to come up with a clever idea for this weeks’ culinary endeavor, yet we were at a loss when our editor suggested that we write a piece centered around Hanukkah. As two gentiles, our knowledge of Hanukkah was limited to a few simple facts: there is a menorah, eight days of gift giving and dreidel spinning. Thus we decided to ask a few of our fellow frosh to provide us with some insight into the culinary traditions of the holiday.

After attending the Hanukkah celebration in the Olin lobby, where jelly-filled doughnuts were making the rounds, we sat down with Emma Weizenbaum ’14 and Andrew Cohen ’14 to talk about traditional foods eaten during Hanukkah.

“Basically anything using grease or oil,” Cohen said.

After we stared at him questioningly, he explained that it represents the miracle of oil. Both agreed that Hanukkah is not really a holiday that is known for the food, but there are two foods that are eight-day essentials: sufganiots and latkes. For those of us unfamiliar with these two fantastic fried foods, a sufganiot is a jelly-filled doughnut, and a latke is a potato pancake.

Since frying can be quite the hassle in a frosh kitchen, and oftentimes leaves a lingering smell, both of these recipes are rather tricky. Most likely no one is going to want to slave over a jelly doughnut when Dunkin’ Donuts is just a short walk away on Main Street, so latkes are probably the best bet for this culinary endeavor. They are fairly easy to make; however, be prepared to use your oil generously. We would personally recommend peanut oil because it doesn’t burn at high temperatures, but some other suitable alternatives are canola, sunflower, and corn oil. We also feel it is our duty as encouragers of holiday culinary experimentation to warn frosh cooks to beware when they are using hot oil.

“I was sitting around the kitchen table watching my gentile friends attempt to make latkes,” Cohen told us. “They seemed to be having a delightful time until the oil began to spit and hiss, causing the group to scatter throughout the house. I couldn’t stop laughing the whole time.”

Weizenbaum, on the other hand, recounted a less violent holiday story.

“Some of my favorite Hanukkah memories come from watching my non-Jewish friends trying to spin a dreidel,” she said. “Some of them actually got the hang of it, but it took them a while.”

To add some spice to your recipe, she suggested eating your latkes with homemade ginger applesauce.

“Use fresh grated ginger for the best flavor,” she said.

Since most of us do not keep a spare grater lying around, the best way to do this is by “borrowing” a cafeteria knife and using the serrated edge to shred bits of ginger. If this seems too tedious, you can simply buy some powdered ginger available at Weshop. Rachel and I wish you the best of luck on your cooking adventures and Happy Hanukkah to all. Love, your favorite shiksas.

Apart from “I had a little dreidel” and the menorah, Hanukkah doesn’t provide as many great traditions or songs as Christmas does. Let me admit it upfront: I’m Jewish, but I love Christmas. It took coming to college to realize how great decorating a tree was (my mom never let us have a “Hanukkah bush”), how heartwarming Frank Sinatra’s Christmas album is, and I still can’t wait to make eggnog and popcorn strings. Yet, arguably the best part of the holiday season lies within an oil filled skillet.

Every year on the first night of Hanukkah the smells of frying onions, garlic and potatoes drifts through my house reminding me why it really is so important to have a holiday honoring that damn miracle oil. Latkes are the Hanukkah miracle reproduced in deep-fried edible form.

In my house, latkes are my dad’s terrain. Every year he breaks out his food processor, the pounds of potatoes dug up from our garden, and a basketful of onions and garlic. He makes enough latkes to last us for dinner and lunch the next few days so we can make our friends envious in the cafeteria. One year my mom tried to make latkes with only a few tablespoons of oil and ended up with floppy brown pancakes. As my dad says, there is no such thing as a low-fat latke. Embrace the oil, grate the potatoes and recreate the Hanukkah miracle in your own kitchen.

This is my dad’s recipe that I wrote down when I was a freshman and tried to replicate his latkes in the Butts’ kitchen. As you know if you have ever been to a Hanukkah party and sampled the many different varieties of latkes, everyone has their own formula for making the potato pancakes. These ones are pretty garlicky and crispy. It takes a few times to get the consistency of the latkes right so they aren’t too runny or too fat, but once you get the hang of it you can make a whole plateful that will satisfy all your Hanukkah cravings.

Ingredients

3 lb Potatoes

1 lb Onions

– This should be a 3:1 ratio, so if you don’t have a scale try to eyeball it.

Several cloves Garlic

Salt

Pepper

Flour

2 eggs

Vegetable oil

-Wash potatoes and grate them. This can either be done with a food processor or a hand cheese grater for us college kids without kitchen appliances.

-Salt the potatoes adequately (they should be covered) and let them sit for 15 minutes. Squeeze out the excess water.

-Dice the onions or grate the onions and squeeze the water out. Sauté the onions and add the diced garlic.

-Mix the potatoes and the onions. Stir in the two eggs. Add pepper. Add 1/2 cup of flour so it sticks together, but not too much.

-Put oil in a pan on medium high. Let the oil get hot. Form potato balls, about a small handful, and place in the plan and flatten with a spatula. Flip them over when they are brownish on the bottom.

-Place them on sheets of paper towel to soak up extra oil.

-Eat with applesauce or sour cream!