Latkes!

I’m not even a tiny bit Jewish but for some reason, I grew up eating my Nana’s potato latkes. I don’t know where she got the recipe or why she was compelled to make them, all I know is they were delicious.
I rarely make latkes because I have a thing about frying in the house. I’m extremely sensitive to smells and despite enjoying the taste and texture of fried foods, the smell usually puts me off. But this New Year’s Eve, they found their way on to our dinner menu so I decided to bite the bullet, turn on the ceiling vent, open the kitchen door and fry up some latkes.

I searched the internet for recipes and since most latke recipes are pretty similar, I decided to improvise and luckily, it worked. The latkes were so delicious, we made them two nights in a row. Unheard of around here.

Potato Latkes, Two Ways

Serves 4

4-5 medium Russet potatoes
1 onion
2 eggs
1/4 cup flour
kosher salt and fresh ground pepper

Either

1/4 cup thinly sliced scallions
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley

OR

a couple of sprigs of finely minced rosemary

(Yes I know, none of these ingredients are strictly traditional but neither am I so there.)

With a box grater or food processor with a grater attachment, grate your scrubbed clean potatoes. There’s no need to peel but if it makes you happy and you don’t want the extra fiber…
Grate your onion as well. Toss both into a large bowl lined with a kitchen towel or double layer cheese cloth and squeeze the heck out of it.
Keep squeezing, you’re going to get a lot of liquid. Discard the liquid that you’ve squeezed out and dump the potatoes and onions back into the bowl. In another bowl, lightly whisk your eggs, salt and pepper and pour over the potatoes and onions. Sprinkle the flour over that and use your hands to mix everything in.

In a frying pan, heat enough oil to come 1/2″ deep. The oil should be hot and you should use an oil appropriate to frying at high temperatures. Peanut oil is ideal but I didn’t have any so I settled for canola.

Scoop up the potato mixture about a 1/4 cup at a time and shape into a patty. I like to set my patty onto my metal spatula and lower it into the oil. Mostly because I am a wuss. I slide my spatula out and use it to press down and flatten my latke. Cook the latkes (You already know not to crowd them in the pan, right? No more than 4 at a time, right?) until the bottom is golden brown all over and flip. Cook until that side is golden brown as well. Remove latkes from the oil, sprinkle with salt and eat immediately. Or, place the latkes on a paper towel lined cookie sheet into a 250 degree oven until all of the latkes are done.

Some people like to get all fancy and top their latkes with sour cream or even worse, sour cream and caviar. Some people like to eat their latkes with applesauce. Me, I like my fried potato patties as they are, starchy, salty and crunchy.

Makes dealing with the nauseating smell of hot oil almost worth it.

Apricot and Rosemary Oven Ribs

I love to make jam and I love all things porky so when I was searching for how to prepare baby back ribs for New Year’s Eve, I was delighted to find a recipe online that combined two of my loves Apricot and Rosemary Oven Ribs .

While Ms. Saretsky’s recipe couldn’t be easier. I took liberties with both ingredients and cooking method, using Ms. Saretsky’s recipe as a template as I often do.

I have to say, the ribs, cooked low and slow in the oven and then glazed and baked for a short while at a higher heat were phenomenal. Tangy, sweet, lightly sour, tender and delicious. Falling off the bone easily with a gentle tug between the teeth. We are going to love tucking into them as leftovers.

Apricot and Rosemary Oven Ribs

6 pounds pork baby back ribs cut into single ribs
2 cups apricot jam
1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
4-5 sprigs of rosemary
1/3 cup olive oil
10 cloves of smashed garlic
generous pinch of kosher salt and freshly grated black pepper

Mix all marinade ingredients and pour over ribs in a large, deep bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.
Spread ribs out on to one or two 9 x 13″ baking dishes. I used two to give my ribs room. Evenly distribute the remaining marinade, cover the ribs with foil, pop them in the oven and ignore them for the next 2 hours. At 2 hours check the ribs for tenderness. I let mine go 30 minutes more at which point I removed the ribs from the oven and poured off and discarded all of the accumulated juices. Trust me, it was mostly fat. A lot of fat.
Raise the oven temperature to 350 degrees.
Put the ribs back in the baking dishes and brush generously with an additional 1 cup of apricot jam.
Pop the ribs back in the oven, uncovered for 15-20 minutes more, just until the jam thickens up and the ribs start to get sticky.

I worried that all of the jam would make the ribs too sweet but since I was using homemade jam and I tend to make low sugar jams, it wasn’t a problem. The sweetness of the jam is balanced by the tang of the vinegar and the garlic.

So, so good.

Porky deliciousness

King’s Donuts

The driveway donut cart...

Upstate New York is not exactly a culinary mecca but in humble towns both large and small, there are gems to be found. The King’s Bakery at Double K Farms in Cambridge, NY is one of them.
Every Sunday and Monday morning, the King’s sell donuts from a cart in the driveway of their charming home on Main St. in Cambridge, NY. They sell their donuts for as long as they can push the cart down the driveway, pretty much as long as there is not snow on the ground.

I’ve never particularly cared for donuts but that’s likely because I grew up with Dunkin Donuts. The King’s donuts are nothing like the donuts that I knew growing up. The King’s make their donuts in the kitchen of their farmhouse. James King, often assisted by his mother Sally, produces donuts, fritters, pies and danish of such extraordinary character that we frequently make the 45 minute drive from Saratoga Springs to pick up a box of their prized treats, often waiting in lines 10 or 15 deep and 10 or 15 minutes long. They are worth every moment spent waiting.

The sumptuous selection

When you get to the front of the line, you are greeted by James’ wife, the lovely Jana King. She will patiently explain the offerings to you and box up your selections. I am always pleased by the reasonable prices for these hand made delights. I never manage to leave without a dozen.

My favorite donut the King’s make is the Bismark.

The Bismark

The Bismark is an almost impossibly light puff of fried dough that is sprinkled with the finest of superfine sugar, cut in half and filled with a cream that is something between a whipped cream and a Swiss meringue frosting. I’m dying to know what it’s made out of but in the mean time, I am content to eat far too many. Happily.

If you visit the donut cart, you can contact them on Facebook to be sure they’re open or call them at 518-677-3530. They’ll even have your order ready for you as we found out this weekend when I wanted to be sure I’d get my precious Bismarks.

King’s Donuts at Double K Farm
108 West Main Street
Cambridge, NY 12816

And in case you are wondering, no, you will not find a better donut anywhere upstate NY from Albany to Lake George…at least.

Polenta Pancakes

Pancakes for breakfast are a special treat in our house. It’s hard to justify them as a healthy start to the day. I love them but there is nothing like a sweet plate of pancakes to make you feel like going right back to bed and sleeping off your carb coma.

In my quest to feel a little less guilty about feeding my family fried discs of flour and butter topped with sugar, I have tried tons of pancake recipes. They all have their charms. Whole wheat pancakes, oatmeal pancakes, I do love them and I feel slightly more virtuous eating them for breakfast. But my new favorite pancakes are made with polenta. I love polenta not for the fact that it’s packed with fiber and it’s minimally processed. No, I love polenta because it’s delicious. And versatile. Polenta lasagna… Red wine braised beef on a bed of Parmesan polenta…polenta served creamy and cheesy or chilled and cut in to wedges and fried in olive oil served as a side dish…polenta porridge for breakfast. You see where I’m going with this? There are so many ways to enjoy polenta but right now it’s breakfast time and I want to share with you my new favorite pancakes…

Polenta Pancakes

In a bowl, whisk together:
1 cup white wheat flour (King Arthur is commonly available in most supermarkets but you can also use AP flour)
1 cup polenta
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
pinch of salt
1 T sugar

In another bowl, whisk
1 1/4 cups of buttermilk
2 eggs
1/4 cup melted butter or olive oil

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix together just until all dry ingredients are incorporated . I like to let the batter sit for 10 minutes to soften the polenta but I’ve also used the batter right away and the pancakes are fine.

We like our pancakes topped with jam or fruit compote but I think these would be wonderful with maple syrup or apples sauteed in butter and sugar.
The best part of them, aside from how delicious they are, is that you don’t feel overly full and sleepy after a breakfast because who wants to start the day on a sugar high?

*Note: These pancakes are wonderfully adaptable to a wide variety of alternative milks. I had them this morning with rice milk and they were fantastic. We frequently use coconut milk so I’m going to try them with that next.

Homemade Oreos or What all the cool kids were doing….two years ago.

Despite the many sweet focused posts on this blog, I don’t actually eat that many sweets. When I crave, it’s usually more along the lines of pasta and well, pasta. But recently at work I made a batch of chocolate sugar cookie dough that was a little off. It wasn’t bad, it just was a little too buttery. We baked off some of the cookies as a test batch and when everyone tried them, they thought they tasted exactly like the cookie part of an Oreo…only better.

The next day I decided to bake a few of the cookies as Oreo circles. When they were cool I piped our vanilla buttercream on half of the cookies and sandwiched them with the other half of the cookies. And voila we had Oreos…only a thousand times better. I had to break my month long no sweets at the bakery fast to try one. They were OMG good.

When I got home, I couldn’t stop thinking about those cookies. Luckily, the internet abounds with homemade Oreo recipes of which the Smitten Kitchen’s are among the most well known and oft copied. I decided to hop on the very old Oreo cookie making band wagon and with my trusty kitchen helper by my side, we made Oreos.

In the Smitten Kitchen recipe, the cookies are dropped by spoonfuls onto the cookie sheets. When I made the dough I thought it was sturdy enough to roll out, so that’s what we did. We rolled the cookies to a 1/4″ thickness and then used a circle cookie to make rounds which we baked on Silpat lined cookie sheets. We baked our cookies for 11 minutes instead of 9 because I wanted a crisper cookie. They turned out perfect.

I used my own very simple buttercream recipe that I made in the food processor because I was too lazy to take the KitchenAid out again and the food processor is lighter. I put 2 cups of powdered sugar in the food processor and sliced a stick of slightly softened butter on top and gave it a whirl until it was smooth. I then scraped the seeds of a vanilla bean into the mixer and drizzled in a teensy (less than a tablespoon) bit of coconut milk and whizzed it again. It made a gorgeous filling all speckled with delicately scented vanilla beans. So pretty. I used a disposable pastry bag from AC Moore to pipe my filling but you can always use a Ziplock bag with the corner snipped off.

Besides using my own buttercream recipe, I made a few changes to the cookie recipe on the Smitten Kitchen blog. I used white wheat flour in place of all purpose flour because it’s so finely milled that you don’t notice it’s whole wheat and I often substitute it in recipes. I used the 1 cup of sugar instead of 1 and 1/2 cups and I used a scant 1 tsp. of salt because boosting the salt makes the cookies a little less sweet and more grown up tasting. For the cocoa, I used Hershey’s Special Dark which gave my cookies that signature almost black look.

I don’t praise lightly but these cookies were phenomenal. One is enough to satisfy but it’s really hard not to eat more.