Hummus, My Comfort Food

shlomi on January 2, 2010

Backstory

2020 update: Changed the recipe a tad since the 2010 original release .

Hummus has been around for ages. Every Middle Eastern country has their own version. I distinctly remember sharing a dish of it with an NPR reporter, washed down with Orangeboom beer at the pub in Hotel Beirut in Heliopolis, Cairo, Egypt while on my way to join my unit during the Iraq War in 1991. It had the tangy taste of lemon juice, as opposed to the cumin fragrance of the Lebanese versions I’d become used to in Northern Israel.

Where the zahtar goes, whether to use paprika or chili pepper, pine nuts or plain, a pool of prepared t’chi’na in the center… these are all good questions. And, of course, the deep philosophical schism of whether to prepare the t’chi’na separately, or add the raw or toasted sesame seed paste directly to the chickpea mixture. Garlic? Usually. Cumin? Always. Olive oil advocates are split on “virgin” and “dirty” versions.

In all its variations, this is a dish with immense popularity for tens of millions of people worldwide. It’s a healthy, vegan food that’s easy to make (particularly if one uses canned chickpeas), and very fast if one is armed with a food processor. It’s got great staying power: it’ll stay in the fridge for over ten days. Chickpeas are high in fiber, low in simple carbs.

I’m giving you my version. It’s based on using the tchina recipe I’ve already got on the blog.

A note on the olive oil: while in America everyone seems impressed with clear, “virgin” olive oil (I think it’s a symptom of sexual repression), what’s needed for this recipe is the dregs and taste of the olives themselves. In Israel it’s possible to buy olive oil that’s not clear, that’s filled with the crumbs and dregs of the pressing. When I say “olive oil” I’m referring to that kind of oil, not the flavorless, insipid oil for which we seem to want to pay top dollar. I guess you could use olive juice, but that’d be a weak thing compared to the real thing. So find some local olive oil purveyor to give you what’s best for this recipe.

Hummus goes well with pita, tortilla chips, vegetable platters, as a french fry dip, mixed with rice, as a topping for hamburgers, or just on its own. Fiddle with the recipe to make it your own; dried chili pepper flakes, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, heck, even dried raisins or cranberries can work.

Ingredients

  • 1 lb. chickpeas or 3 cans chickpeas
  • 1/2 serving of t’chi’na — see recipe
  • 2T cumin
  • 1/3-1/2C olive oil
  • plus more for plating (dirty oil!)
  • 2T lemon juice
  • Zaht’r (whole foods and a few other places have it)
  • Paprika
  • 6 oz. pine nuts
  • Salt to taste
  • 1-2 serrano peppers (optional)

Preparation

  1. Take the chickpeas and prepare them: either soak overnight with a tablespoon of baking soda, changing the water twice, or wash well, bring to a boil in 2x the water for the chickpeas, then turn off and keep the lid on for an hour. If you’re using cans, pour them into a strainer and wash well and drain. This should wash most of the salt in the liquid away.
  2. Boil up the chickpeas in a 5qt. pot with fresh water: 2x water to chickpeas. Bring to a boil, then cook for 45 minutes at a slow boil, covered. [2017 Update: I love my pressure cooker. Use that. Faster!]
  3. Drain the peas and let them cool to room temperature. Don’t refrigerate; take your time.
  4. Make the tchina using my recipe.
  5.  Reserve half the t’chi’na in a cup, keeping the other half in the food processor.
  6. Toss in 90% of the chickpeas, reserve the rest and hit high “hi” on the food processor.
  7. If you’re adding the peppers, seed or deseed as you will — since these are raw seeds will have quite the kick. Mince the peppers.
  8. Add the cumin, lemon juice, and oil while things are whirring.
  9. Watch the consistency. Adding lemon juice will give it froth, adding oil will add creaminess. Too much lemon juice will make it tart (a weird thing for hummus, I’m told, but it’s all a matter of taste, and I like it that way sometimes.
  10. Decant the hummus into a large, shallow bowl. Failing that, into a glass casserole or serving dish. Spread evenly with a spatula, leaving a depression in the center.
  11. Pour the reserved t’chi’na into the depression.
  12. Spread the reserved chickpeas around the edges of the dish. If there are extra, make it pretty in the middle. Try not to stuff any up your nose; it’s as hard as marbles to get ’em out.
  13. Refrigerate until it’s entirely cool. (I’ll eat it warm or hot, but apparently proper etiquette is to chill it.
  14. To serve, drizzle olive oil, letting it puddle around the t’chi’na. Then sprinkle liberally with paprika and zaht’r. Sprinkle the pine nuts over everything.

Serves: 10-12

Timing

Prep time: 10 minutes. Elapsed time: 50 minutes including cooking chickpeas.

T’chi’na (NOT “Tahini”)

shlomi on December 30, 2009

Backstory

2020 Update: I revisited this recipe from 2009, and tweaked it for eleven years worth of refinement).

Americans like things simple. Cheese Whiz, American Cheese, Pop Tarts. Today I saw a sealable bag with marinade in it, sold as an “incredible way to marinate meat.” It’s easier I guess to pull something off a shelf than think long enough to add marinade, water and food and seal ’em together.

T’chi’na — a sauce or dip with sesame paste as a base — is a key component of several dishes, including  hummus and baba ghanoush from the Middle East and sesame noodles from Asia. It’s fattening, but it’s good fat. It makes a great protein base for a vegan meal and goes well with a lot of things. Like rice: it’s a great ‘fill me upper.’

Yes, it can be used as a drizzled dressing on salads or in a good felafel at a central bus station in Israel. But I like it sharp, with a Texas flair, and thick and creamy. Fills all the hungry spaces in your belly, as good as a burger, without (most of) the guilt.

I make it in large batches. The longer it sits in the fridge (2 weeks is fine) the stronger the flavors get.

While purists might whine, in this particular case powdered garlic is a better flavor dispersant than dicing, mincing, or crushing garlic. Roll with it. Trust me. I also haven’t found a taste difference between bottled lemon juice and fresh for the purposes of this recipe.

Ingredients

  • 1 lb. sesame paste (I prefer toasted, but raw is just fine)
  • 2/3C – 1C lemon juice
  • 1T sesame seeds (again, toasted or raw work equally well)
  • 1T garlic powder
  • 1T Tabasco sauce
  • optional: 2t chili flakes
  • 1.5t salt
  • Water

Preparation

  1. Take all the ingredients & put them in a food processor with a blade attachment in place. By hand: bowl and whisk (that’s what I use)
  2. Spin it up/mix. Add water until it’s got a creamy consistency: at least a minute after you’ve got the color from murky brown to a light tan
  3. If the color’s too dark, at more lemon juice

Serves:

Depends. It’s an ingredient for other dishes. It can be eaten as a dip with tortilla chips (hey, this is Texas!) or pita, fresh or baked. Otherwise, use in some of my recipes.

Timing

Prep time: 2 minutes. Elapsed time: 5 minutes.

Kickass Pea Soup

shlomi on December 30, 2009

Backstory

There’s a place in town that makes a great pea soup. Okay, I know, it’s just pea soup… but there’s an incredible warmth, body and texture to that soup. (It’s also fun that it coagulates when it cools, and forms fleleh too.) My mom made a great one with oxtails for flavoring. Not having oxtails and being on a tight budget, I felt like improvising.

I don’t know what drives folks to make arcane recipes when simple works. I’ve found recipes for split peas with the following ingredients:

  • Evaporated milk
  • Spaghetti
  • Instant minced onion
  • Croutons
  • Celery sticks
  • Green food coloring
  • Chicken bouillon cubes
  • Instant bouillon granules

Oy…

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs. dried split peas
  • 1-1/2 lbs. carrots
  • Dealer’s choice: 1 lb. bacon or  1/4C olive oil
  • 1 yellow onion
  • 1 bulb garlic
  • Take your pick: 8C of water or 4C water and 1qt. low-sodium vegetable or chicken broth
  • 1T black pepper
  • 2T paprika
  • 4 bay leaves

Preparation

  1. Check the peas carefully for stones and  then wash the peas thoroughly (dirt is nice, but it doesn’t belong in soup)
  2. Chop the onion
  3. Crush the garlic cloves & mince
  4. If you’re using bacon, toss it into a 5qt. pot with the onions. If you’re going veggie, heat the olive oil to the smoke point, then toss in the onions
  5. Stir until onions are coated in grease/oil, then lid for 5 minutes, stirring to keep things from burning
  6. Add 6 cups water, the peas, the carrots and the bay leaves
  7. Bring to a roiling boil for five minutes
  8. Add the pepper & paprika
  9. Keep at boil, stirring every 3-5 minutes so nothing burns on the bottom for 30 minutes
  10. Bring it down to a simmer. Stir every 10 minutes, for another 40-50 minutes

Because of the specific gravity of the peas, it’ll look like soup on top and goop on the bottom. Be one with the pot; it’s fine. As the soup cools, the liquids will be absorbed by the peas.

First aid: If it’s starting to look too thick, don’t be shy about adding a few more cups of water. Worst case: it’ll boil off.

Serves:12-14 servings

Timing

Prep time: 10 minutes. Elapsed time: 90 minutes.

shlomi on December 27, 2009

Backstory

I generally hate sugary breads. Sugar in general in breads. But I had only a little time to get something together for two parties, so I gave it a shot. The second bread didn’t work, in the sense that I was looking for a multi-colored swirl or turducken effect. When I get it down, I’ll post it here. But the first bread was delicious, and it goes wonderfully with red wine, butter, or PBJ, depending on circumstances. I’m presuming y’all have a Kitchen Aid mixer with a dough hook, otherwise the mixing step will be 10 minutes instead of the 3 with the machine. (All hail American ingenuity!)

Ingredients

  • 5C Flour [unbleached whole]
  • 1T Salt
  • 2T yeast with 1T sugar in 1C warm water
  • 1/2C oatmeal
  • 1/2C maple syrup
  • 1/3C Almond oil

Preparation

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients, reserving 2C flour, while the yeast proofs in a bowl. When it has, add it and the wet ingredients to the mix.
  2. Add the remaining 2C flour slowly, until the dough is tacky but stays in a ball.
  3. Grease a bowl, put dough ball in it, then grease the entire dough.
  4. Cover and let rise 35 minutes.
  5. Punch down thoroughly, shape into a loaf and put into greased dish or pan in which it will bake (9″x9″ casserole dish works well). Set oven to 350° and put covered dough on top of stove. Let rise 25 minutes.
  6. Put dough in oven.
  7. For crispier crust, put a cast-iron pan into the oven when you heat it up. Then, after the bread’s in the oven, pour 2C boiling water into the cast-iron pan and close the door quickly.
  8. Bake for 40 minutes.

Serves: 8-10

Timing

Prep time: 5 minutes Elapsed time: 90 minutes.

When Latkes Go Horribly Wrong —> Casserole

shlomi on December 18, 2009

Backstory

When you want to make Latkes, go with a Jewish grandma’s recipe. Not something off a foodie site. I did what it said, doubling the ingredients. Except for the olive oil, which has a very low smoke point and I’m using an electric stovetop, so I went to canola.

Very unforgiving these recipes. A higher smoke point means a hotter oil. Crispy latkes at olive oil temps mean charred shavings at canola oil level. After two attempts at lowering temps while hungry folks waited, I gave up. Now I had a double batch of latkes goo with nowhere to go.

Into the fridge it went, covered tightly to keep it from blackening.

For the next two days it glared at me every time I opened the fridge door. I blithely ignored it and made anything but it.

Eventually I decided that three pounds of organic potatoes and a bunch of eggs was better used as an experiment than as compost. It worked out pretty darn well.

Ingredients

  • 3 lb. [organic] potatoes, washed, unpeeled
  • 1-1/2C [organic] onions
  • 4 [organic] eggs
  • 1-1/2 cups low-fat [organic] mozzarella cheese
  • 2t ground black pepper
  • A bit of olive oil
  • Optional: 1T powdered garlic, 2t [low-sodium] salt

Preparation

  1. Finely chop the onions.
  2. Preheat oven to 350º.
  3. Grease a 9″ dish with the olive oil.
  4. Shred the mozzarella cheese.
  5. Shred the potatoes into a pot with water. When you’re done, drain the water, then put the potatoes into a large kitchen towel and squeeze all the liquid from it.
  6. Throw all the ingredients into a bowl and mix thoroughly, then put into the pan. Make it all flat and pretty.
  7. Put the dish into the oven and give it 30 minutes.
  8. Open, add another layer of cheese, and give it another 10-15 minutes, or until the top is nice and brown.

Serves: 9-12 generous portions

 

Timing

Prep time: 20 minutes Elapsed time: 60 minutes

(Almost) All Things Orange Sweet Stew

shlomi on December 17, 2009

Backstory

Some things just don’t seem natural. In the spirit of not just making savory my staple, and in line with my idea that things can be put together oddly (like my cinnamon stew). So this one’s a weirdie I put together for fun. It’s oddly good, vegan and very healthy (especially if you keep the sweetener down to 1T/bowl).

This refrigerates and freezes pretty well, so feel free to make in advance and use on cold nights where a lighter fare sounds right for dinner.

Ingredients

  • 6 medium carrots. cut into 2-3″ sections
  • 2 sweet potatoes in large chunks
  • 1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and in chunks as well
  • 2 cans pumpkin (more leftovers from Thanksgiving!) I tried using a real medium pumpkin and boiling it down and then mashing it and came to the exact same taste and texture — without tedium and cheaper)
  • 1-1/2 C raw oatmeal
  • 1T allspice
  • 1-1/2T ground cloves
  • 2T cinnamon
  • Sweetener of your choice (sugar, Splenda, honey, maple syrup)
  • Cinnamon sticks (optional)

Preparation

  1. Fill a 5-quart pot 1/2-way with water and set to boil. Toss in the squash, sweet potatoes and carrots and then add spices. Bring it to a boil, then set it down to a simmer for 20 minutes.
  2. Bring back to a boil and add the canned pumpkin. From here on out you’ll need to stir the pot so the bottom doesn’t burn. Once it boils bring it back down to a simmer. Wait 20 minutes.
  3. Add the oatmeal, stirring occasionally so nothing sticks on the bottom. Simmer another 10 minutes.
  4. Remove from heat and serve in a bowl. Have sweeteners on the table, with cinnamon sticks as stirrers.

Serves: 8-12 as a soup, 4-6 as an entree

Timing

Prep time: 15 minutes Elapsed time: 70 minutes

Cinnamon Chili Stew

shlomi on December 1, 2009

Backstory

I’ve loved mayacoba beans (also called yellow or Peruvian beans). At my local store there was a recipe on the back of the bag, calling for a crock pot, cumin, onions and salt pork. Tried it, liked it, but wanted something more interesting and healthier. Given that this vunderbeans don’t have any sugars (all complex carbs), it’s replaced almost every other bean (except chickpeas). It’s great for Sunday cooking for food for the week. It’s also great for winter parties: it cooks while the party gathers, and it’s hot and ready 90 minutes after the party starts.

It’s just about fat free, except for oil used for frying or what’s in meat (if meat’s used). There’s little salt added — it can be entirely omitted so it’s even healthier. Spicing is to normal human standards; if you’re looking for something with more punch, check out my Power Mayacoba Bean Chili.

Ingredients

  • 1 lb. dried mayacoba beans
  • 2 large yellow onions
  • 1/2 lb. any solid green veggie you want: asparagus, broccoli, bell pepper (leafy veggies will not last in the pot).
  • 2 lb. frozen venison or absurdly lean ground meat or poultry / 2 lb. 2″ cubed extra firm tofu
  • Oil for frying
  • 1.5T ground cinnamon
  • 2T cumin
  • 4T chili powder (I use 90k cayenne) or 3T hot dry BBQ rub powder (it has salt in it)
  • 3T Tabasco® sauce / any vinegar-based hot sauce
  • 2t tumeric
  • 1T salt / 1T reduced sodium salt / no salt

Optional:

  • Make the beans vegan but without the tofu. When you want to eat some, toss cheese / soy cheese into the beans and stir. Yum!

Preparation

  1. Soak the mayacoba beans for at least a day, changing the water at least twice
  2. Wash the beans a final time, then toss ’em in a VERY large pot (5+ quarts) and add enough water so they’re fully covered. Start it boiling with the lid on.
  3. Chop the onions into ~2″ lengths
  4. Chop the veggies (we all need our greens) and sautè them as well, just until they’re all warmed up and glistening
  5. For meat: Take the frozen venison roll and slice it into thick patties (1-2″ thick). No need to defrost or brown. If it’s already thawed, skip this step.
  6. For tofu: chop the tofu, then fry in oil at high heat (to give it a bit of a skin)
  7. Once the beans are boiling, add all the spices. Put lid back on.
  8. Wait 10 minutes.
  9. Add the meat/tofu and veggies.
  10. Let it come back up to a full, roiling boil, then reduce it to a simmer and take off the lid.
  11. If you used frozen meat, start breaking up the frozen discs starting 10 minutes after it comes back to a simmer.
  12. Stir every 10 minutes or so.
  13. If it’s too watery, up the heat a bit.
  14. If, at the end of 90 minutes from first bean boil (#7) it’s still too watery, either pour through colander, or add arrowroot or cornflour to thicken into stew.

Serves:

This feeds a large number of people (makes 10-16 bowls of chili/stew), depending on what you put into it.

Timing

Prep time: 10 minutes.    Elapsed time: 90 minutes (not including soaking beans)

Bass-o-matic Pate

shlomi on January 28, 2006

Backstory

I did not set out to recreate one of Saturday Night Live’s fast-food recipes when my assistant handed me a styrofoam box.

“My husband is still looking around the freezer for that soup you made,” she said. “And then he asks whether you’ve made any more lately.”

If any readers want to try to make a more lactose-friendly version of that stew, I’d love to try that recipe. In the meantime, I’ve got this beheaded frozen fish in my freezer.

When in doubt: marinate! I make a salmon or steelhead trout teriyaki broiled fish dish, adorned with generous grated ginger. I figured I could probably do something similar with this. But the fish was still half-frozen when I made the marinade, and it still had its spine in, so I couldn’t really play with it much. Sigh.

After the marinating, I took it out. It smelled about right, but still wouldn’t unfold. And it was still kinda hard in the body — our refrigerator is a bit of an overachiever. (No, I don’t know how to spine a fish. Yes, I’d appreciate knowing how to do that to a 1/2 frozen fish.)

Aaaaanyway — long story short is that broiled Lake Travis bass is about as bony as a carp, or I got things really wrong. By the time I was finished pulling the !@#*!@(* bones out, all I had were tiny little gobbets of delicious fish. Looked in Joy of Cooking — no bass recipes that stood out. Glanced over at the sink, and my handheld blender was calling out to me… So here goes a wierd dish with a delicious ending!

Ingredients

Marinade

  • 1C low-salt soy sauce
  • 2t ground allspice
  • 2t ground cloves
  • 1/2t ground (not fresh) ginger

To Cook Fish

  • 1 bass, preferably from Lake Travis (lake near Austin). About 1.5 lb.
  • 1t ground (not fresh) ginger

Pate

  • 3T unsalted butter
  • 1/3C olive oil (locally made, Israeli, Greek, or Italian — with sediment on the bottom)
  • Fish, totally deboned
  • 1C white wine
  • 3 shots Drambuie (I prefer all things Scottish)
  • 1t fresh ground pepper + more to taste
  • 1/2t salt

Preparation

  1. Prepare bass: remove head, tail, fins, gut if really that fresh. Wash inside and outside thoroughly.
  2. Add marinade ingredients to thck quart freezer bag. Shake. Add fish, and squeeze out all possible air. Shake carefully (bones can puncture plastic). Put inside another freezer bag. Put in fridge for at least 12, preferably 24 hours.
  3. After you take it out of the fridge, prepare oven for broiling, and transfer fish to a pan. Broil at 500 degrees farenheit for 12 minutes.
  4. Remove, let cool, then carefully debone, placing meat and about 1/4 of the fish skin (unburned only!) into the fish bowl. (This can be real tedious — if you can start with bass fillets that will save you at least 20 minutes right there.)
  5. Put a sautee pot on the burner (either thick copper bottom or with heat distributor) and add the butter and olive oil. Grind pepper in and heat until the mixture is sizzling.
  6. Add fish and stir, breaking up any large pieces, until the entire mass is sizzling.
  7. Add wine, then still constantly over medium heat until the alcohol has boiled off (smell to check).
  8. Set to simmer, then add the Drambuie. Simmer another five minutes, or until the mixture is thick.
  9. Take your handheld mixer and thoroughly blend the mixture. If you don’t have one, pour into blender or food processor with blades and perform same action.
  10. Add salt, then add fresh ground pepper to taste.
  11. Decant into large soup bowl (should fit)
  12. Refrigerate for at least eight hours (preferably overnight)
  13. Serve with tortilla chips if you’re in Austin, otherwise some frufru cracker.
  14. Play SNL on television in background.

All that for about a pound of food. What we do in the name of our art…

Serves:

Appetizer for ten.

Timing

This thing stretches over days. The nice thing is that you can get it done during the course of a weekend day for an evening party.

Prep time: 35 minutes Elapsed time: Marinating time + 30 minutes

Hannukah Applesauce

shlomi on December 30, 2005

Backstory

Went to the supermarket to get applesauce for my strange yet lovely levivot (latkes), but they didn’t have any cans or jars that didn’t have sugar or corn syrup or some other gluch built into them.

Hannukah time is apple harvest time, so finding good apples is easy both in Israel and America. Finding a recipe was also fairly easy, but none were quite up to what my taste buds were fantasizing. So, I made this up.

Ingredients

  • 8 Macintosh apples (big, juicy apples of any type can work)
  • 10 Red Delicious apples (substitute with green apples for a tarter flavor)
  • 3T ground cinnamon
  • 1T ground cardamom

Preparation

  1. Take a large (8Q tall soup or stew pot). Pour in about 5C water and toss in the ground spices.
  2. Wash, peel and core all the apples, then cut each slice in half. Toss them into the pot. If the apples are organic, you can reserve the peels and toss them in as well.
  3. Place the pot on the stove and bring everything to a boil under a tight lid.
  4. After 10 minutes at boil, stir, recover and reduce to a simmer.
  5. Give it a good 20-30 minutes. The apple slices on top should be very, very soft when you’re done.
  6. Remove from heat. With a slotted spoon, feed the apples into a food processor with the fixed blade attached. Frappe until it’s just lumpy. Repeat until you’ve gotten all the apple pieces.
  7. If you put in the peels, they should be at the bottom with all the juice. Put the peels and some (not more than 1/2C) of the juice, then frappe until it’s ground to sludge. Mix that with the applesauce.
  8. Drink the remaining liquids: a very spicy mulled apple juice!
  9. Refrigerate and serve cold.

Yield: 2Q applesauce

Timing

Prep time: 10 minutes: Elapsed time: 40 minutes.

Hannukah Latkes a la Cajun

shlomi on December 30, 2005

Backstory

I have a problem. It’s part of the dark underbelly of my personality. It’s about distrust, about creativity in the face of tradition. It’s about, as my kids say, “daddy food.”

Hannukah has fried food: sufganiot, levivot(latkes), and just about anything else that’s oily and can contribute to heartburn.

When I was a kid, I remember the grating box and the endless pile of peeled potatoes, and wielding our family’s double-bladed chopper and matching wooden bowl (whose concavity matched the arc of the blades… I miss that one!) to chop the onions. We kept a kosher household, so using the wooden bowl meant the entire kit and kaboodle should have been fleishik, but for some reason my mom gave this little transgression a pass in favor of well-chopped onions.

When we were done we’d sit down to devour crispy patties of finely shredded potatoes, crunchy and oily, with gobs of sour cream or a soothing coating of applesauce from a glass jar.

This is not my mother’s latkes. I wanted to lighten the batter, and make it a little more interesting. So… I’ve come up with a puff-“Daddy” version of the dish. Think beniet. Think wierd. Think tasty!

See my applesauce recipe for another important piece of this holiday meal.

Ingredients

  • 6C (12-14 small-to-medium) frapped, peeled baking potatoes
  • 1 finlely chopped medium yellow onion
  • 9 eggs, well beaten
  • 1C white flour
  • 1-1/4C whole wheat flour
  • 1-1/2t salt
  • 2T baking powder
  • Canola oil sufficient to deep-fry (1-1/4Q for a deep, 12″ cast-iron skillet)

Preparation

  1. Using a sifter, add the flours, salt and baking powder into a dry mixing bowl (5Q)
  2. Peel the potatoes; I very strongly recommend organic ones! Pop the peeled potatoes into a 5Q mixing bowl filled with water to keep them from going brown, red, or whatever color they would otherwise morph into.
  3. Toss the potatoes into a food processor with both the grating blade and the frappe blade engaged. Engage.
  4. Put a large, heavy skillet (cast iron is best for heat dissipation) up on the stove and pour in about 2/3Q canola oil. Yes, heat it!
  5. I hand-chop the onion, but I guess one could frap the onion. Add it to the potatoes.
  6. Beat the eggs well in a separate dish.
  7. Dump the potatoes and onions into the dry ingredients and mix until everything is nice and coated.
  8. Add the beaten eggs and still everything around some more.At this point, it should look like an especially lumpy pancake batter. Don’t worry about small chunks of potatoes or onions. Just make sure everthing is well mixed. Don’t overmix.
  9. Test the oil. When it’s hot enough for things to froth quickly, take a spoon and ladle in about 1/4C batter at a time into the skillet. Make sure the spoon is really close to the oil to prevent excessive spatter. Once you’ve got the levivot in, wait about a minute, then roll them over. If you wait too long you’ll see a ‘hernia’ of raw dough boiling up at the surface of the uncooked side. Looks funny, but not a problem.
  10. Give it about three minutes once rolled over, then another two after you roll it back.
  11. Dump them into a bowl lined with cloth or paper towels.
  12. Important: After each batch, use a strainer spoon to pick up all the little puff balls (droplets of batter and got fried separately). This will keep them from burning and making later batter batches bitter. Broadly.

Serves 8-10 people (2 families).

Timing:

Prep time: 15 minutes Elapsed time: About 1 hour