The Jewish Festival of Hanukkah has some wonderful food associated with it,
my favorite being potato latkes or potato pancakes,
but the story of latkes begins not with potatoes nor with pancakes but with a beheading.
So thank you to Wondrium for sponsoring this video as we make that Hanukkah favorite latkes
this time on Tasting History.
"Can you guess, children what is the best of all holidays?
Chanukah of course. You don't go to school for eight days in a row, you eat latkes every day..."
That is a line from 'Khanike gelt' by the famous Yiddish author Shoel Aleichem who is probably most famous for supplying
the source material for Fiddler on the Roof.
"Tradition!"
And while I may not be Jewish I do appreciate the tradition of eating latkes during Hanukkah.
Now old recipes for latkes are really hard to find because
the term latke is Yiddish and doesn't appear in many cookbooks at least older ones.
They tend to use the term potato pancakes or whatever translation of that in German, Ukrainian, Polish
wherever the cookbook comes from and the first mention of the word latkes in an English publication isn't actually a recipe.
It comes from a magazine called 'The American Mercury' from February 1927
and while it's not actually a recipe it does give some information about latkes and what they were made of a hundred years ago.
While the author tries to explain Hanukkah to the mostly gentile audience.
"...Chanukah, to the Jewish bocher, meant not only slim, yellow candles in a glistening menorah,
but luscious potato latkes - pancakes made of grated raw potatoes
mixed with flour, and shortening and fried in schmaltz (rendered chicken fat).
Dozens of these were eaten by after-supper guests who came to participate in the Chanukah revelry."
Again not really a recipe but it's a good place to start,
and I can look at some of those older recipes for potato pancakes
to get an idea of what people were actually doing in their kitchen 100 to 130 years ago.
What's interesting is that the recipes aren't all that different from how latkes are still made today
with a few outliers, like some recipes include onion juice rather than a full onion or pieces of onion,
and one even includes ginger in the recipe but only one included ginger.
Also despite what what the article said I couldn't find any recipes that included shortening
actually in the latke usually it was just used for frying
but other than those few little changes the recipes are what we would call traditional,
and speaking of traditional now is the traditional time that I mentione
today's sponsor Wondrium.
Wondrium is the premier educational and frankly entertaining subscription service that I spend
a many an hour watching or hearing because lately I've started downloading different courses from
Wondrium to listen to as podcasts mostly when I'm making a mess in the kitchen.
Wondrium has tutorials on painting and knitting, and just about every other skill you could want to learn,
and they have courses on travel, food, science, and I of course gravitate toward history so I
I have been listening to a wonderful conversation between two Civil War historians in 'The Great Tours - Civil War Battlefields'.
They delve into specific little stories that took place on the battlefield
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but by the sheer number of musket bullets that hit it during the battle.
It really makes me want to go visit some of these battlefields. Also Wondrium is an excellent gift
especially at this time of year with all of the holidays Wondrium is the gift for anyone that you know that loves to learn.
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You could even listen to a course while you make your latkes as I did.
So for this recipe which is based on an amalgam of several recipes from around the turn of the 20th century what you'll need is:
two pounds or one kilogram of russet potatoes, a half onion, two large eggs, a quarter cup or 30 grams of matzo meal,
one teaspoon of kosher salt, and one to two cups of schmaltz for frying.
Now today a lot of other oils are used and you can use other oils, but one of the constants in these old recipes
is the use of either butter or schmaltz for frying. You can use clarified butter and that will work but
schmaltz is going to be so much easier. It's usually going to be rendered chicken fat.
You can also find rendered goose fat or duck fat, and the nice thing about it is it really just
makes the flavor of the latkes so much better than using most of the
corn oil, canola oils that they use today.
So cut your potatoes into about two inch pieces and don't peel them.
You want to make sure that they're well scrubbed and clean, but they don't need to be peeled.
Then grate them on a box grater being careful not too grate your fingers. Then you'll do the same with the onion.
Now this next part is where a lot of the old recipes differ from each other, and it is
what is going to determine how crispy your latkes are going to get.
Basically we're going to put the potatoes and the onions into a bowl lined with a cheesecloth, and then squeeze the liquid out of both.
I'm guessing this is how you get onion juice which is used in some of those earlier recipes, but I don't know.
Now today it's on almost always imperative that you get out as much of the liquid as possible
but many of the older recipes say to just "squeeze out some of the liquid..."
and their end product tends to be something more like a batter. You could actually spoon it
so the consistency is inconsistent throughout time, and throughout different recipes,
but either way the more liquid that you get out the crispier they will be. It's really a matter of personal taste.
But once you've squeezed out all of the liquid that you want to squeeze out you want to let the
liquid sit for two or three minutes while all of the potato starch falls to the bottom of the bowl.
Then you pour off all of the liquid, but keep that starch. Then mix it with the eggs salt and matzo meal
and finally add in the potatoes and onions, and mix everything together,
and here's kind of the last point that you can change the batter's consistency. If you want it to be more loose or wet
then just add more egg, and if you want it to be a little bit drier then add either more matzo meal or just a little bit of flour.
Then form them into patties about three to four inches across,
and gently add them to the melted schmaltz which should be heated to around 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
You're going to fry them for three to four minutes on one side until browned,
and then flip them over gently and fry them for another three or four minutes on the other side.
Then lift them out of the oil and let them drain on a rack over some paper towel,
and to keep them nice and crispy while you fry the rest you can put them into an oven at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit,
just warm, just to keep them from getting soggy.
So the thing with latkes is that they are all different and they're supposed to be different some are
darker brown, some are lighter brown, some are thinner, some are some are fatter, some have like pieces of potato coming out the sides,
some are very perfectly round, it's really all varied and it's supposed to be varied because
during the 20th century it became very popular to host latke parties during Hannukah
and if all of the latkes are are the same that would make for a very boring party.
Now what is not boring at all is the history of how latkes became associated with Hanukkah.
Hanukkah which means dedication commemorates the expulsion of the Seleucid Greeks
by Judah Maccabee and the subsequent rededication of the temple at which time they found only enough pure oil
to light the temple Menorah for one night,
but it was going to take eight nights to make more pure oil and so
God had to step in with the Hanukkah miracle of having that one night's worth of oil last for eight
and what does this have to do with latkes?
Not much, there is a connection between
foods fried in oil and the oil from the menorah
but many of those connections actually are are much later.
The original link between latkes and Hanukkah actually comes from a completely different story,
and it was very popular in medieval Europe and was part of the Hanukkah story
but it has taken a back seat in recent centuries.
It's honestly one of my favorite stories from the Bible and it was popular amongst
Jews and Christians alike throughout Medieval Europe. It was the focus of many pieces of art
and I don't quite know why it went away but it did.
It's not even part of the Jewish canon and it's left out of almost all Bibles today,
it's the story of Judith and Holofernes.
See when the Assyrian army led by the general Holofernes went to capture Jerusalem
they first had to pass a city called Bethulia,
but not wanting to attack the city the outright they surrounded it instead and cut off the city's water supply,
and 34 days the Israelites held out but finally they decided that they would
have to have to capitulate but they would give five more days for God to to deliver them from their fate
and Judith who was a prominent widow in the town did not like this.
"Who are you, that have put God to the test this day?... Do not try to bind the purposes of the Lord Our God
for God is not like man, to be threatened."
But at the same time she wasn't about to let this city be pillaged and her along with it and so she decided to take matters into her own hand
and rather boldly stated "Listen to me. I am about to do a thing which will go down through all generations of our descendants.
Stand at the city gate tonight, and I will go out with my maid
and within the days after which you have promised to surrender the city to our enemies,
the Lord will deliver Israel by my hand."
And the rulers of the city were basically like okay good luck lady,
and that night she and her maid left the city and walked bold as brass into the Assyrian camp
but instead of killing them as you would expect them to do
the Assyrian soldiers were like the wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon,
they couldn't get enough of these ladies so they took them straight to Holofernes tent
where Judith said that she was going to turn her back on her people and help the Assyrians
not only take Bethulia but Jerusalem as well.
For three nights she and her maid stayed in the camp and on the fourth night
Holofernes invited her to his tent for dinner.
It was the moment Judith had been waiting for.
She breaks out some wine and cheese that her maid had been holding in a bag and offers it to Holofernes,
"And Holofernes was greatly pleased with her, and drank a great quantity of of wine more wine,
than he had ever drunk in any one day since he was born. Then Judith was left alone in the tent,
with Holofernes stretched out on his bed, for he was overcome with wine."
He passes out and she has her maid come in with the bag that had held the wine and cheese. Then Judith
"...went up to the post at the end of the bed above Holofernes' head, and took down his sword that hung there...
She took hold of the hair on his head and said 'Give me strength this day, O Lord God of Israel!'
And she struck his neck twice with all her might, and severed his head from his body."
The maid sticks the head in the bag that had held the wine and cheese and they skedaddle back to Bethulia where Judith
holds the head up and says hey everyone look what I got. well the next day their army the Israelites were so emboldened
that they went out to the Assyrians who were in complete disarray and sent them away defeating them.
It's a great story and it had absolutely nothing to do with Hanukkah.
It didn't even take place during the the Maccabean Revolt that Hanukkah is based on,
but it did have many of the same themes of the Israelites overcoming a foreign power.
So during the Middle Ages it was often told as part of the Hanukkah tradition and it became tradition during Hanukkah to eat dairy to commemorate
Judith defeating Holofernes as it was with cheese and wine that she plied him,
though I'm guessing that the wine did most of the work.
And at some point, possibly in southern Italy or in Spain, the most popular dairy product to eat became a pancake
of ricotta cheese and sometimes honey and egg
and Tori Avi who has a fantastic food blog made some of these and I'll actually put a link in the description if you want to go check those out.
And they got a mention in the 14th century by an Italian Jewish poet who
says that during Hanukkah "The important women should gather knowledgeable about making food and cooking levivot,
large and round the whole size of the frying pan."
He also mentions making sufganiyot which are basically jelly donuts that are fried and they're fantastic
again tying in with the idea of frying in oil being as symbolic of the oil to light the menorah.
So we got to the pancakes but they're made of cheese not like the potato latkes
that we that we usually associate with latkes today at least in America and Northern Europe
partly because they didn't have potatoes in Medieval Italy nor in ancient Judah.
In fact latkes as we know them today probably didn't crop up until the 18th and even 19th century.
See the fried pancake tradition made its way into the Ashkenazi Jewish population of Eastern Europe
and it's they that started calling them latkes.
Latkes is a Yiddish word likely coming from the Russian Latka meaning patchwork
or Ukrainian word oladka which refers to a pancake,
and that came from a Medieval Greek term for cakes made with olive oil.
Though it's likely that those living in Eastern Europe weren't using a lot of olive oil but rather butter or schmaltz
and some may have been cheese latkes but most were probably made out of buckwheat which was
the common grain at the time in the area.
It wasn't until the 1700s that potatoes even made it onto the pancake scene.
First was in Prussia where Frederick the great popularized the potato.
Then in Ukraine and Poland there were several years 1839 and 1840
when most of the crops did not survive and so the government's there pressed
the peasantry to plant potatoes to become the new major crop of the area.
Potatoes found their way into much of the traditional cuisine in all of Eastern Europe especially Jewish Cuisine like
kugel, cholent, knishes and of course latkes.
And these are the dishes that the Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews brought to America in the 19th century.
And like I said most of the recipes from this time called for butter or schmaltz to be used for the frying.
Schmaltz seem to be most popular in and around New York City but
both butter and schmaltz had their days numbered,
for there was a new fat on the scene.
"Rabbi Margolies of New York, said that the Hebrew race had been waiting 4,000 years for Crisco."
Because Crisco was kosher but it wasn't Crisco that lit the menorah in the temple all those millennia ago,
it was olive oil and so olive oil as it became cheaper and more readily available here in the United States
became the de facto oil to use for frying latkes for many people either that
or another vegetable oil like corn oil
but since our recipe comes from a hundred years ago I'm sticking with the schmaltz.
So once all of the latkes are fried they are ready to eat but not alone,
never alone. Every old recipe says that they are served with something else.
Some old recipes say tomato preserves, one from 1951 says
"Serve hot with applesauce, cranberry sauce, sour cream and or creamed cottage cheese."
For me I like to go with what is the most common today which is either the applesauce or the sour cream.
And here we are potato latkes ready for your Hanukkah latke party.
I'm gonna go with applesauce, let's give it a go.
Still quite hot.
So crunchy yet there's like a slim layer in the middle that is creamy
almost like mashed potatoes, it's not mashed potatoes but almost.
It's fantastic.
Use the schmaltz. Please use the schmaltz just adds this richness that you're not going to get with with
any other kind of vegetable oil, olive oil it's just not going to to give you that depth and
potatoes are fairly mild in flavor. You know the onion, you can add a little bit of pepper and
everything but it's the fat that really gives you the flavor.
So whether you're Jewish or not I say make yourself some latkes.
They're a little bit of work but not all that much work and they're so absolutely worth it.
It's fried potatoes what's not to like,
and try the different toppings, sour cream I like sour cream on them, applesauce, tomato preserves maybe.
I'm up for anything! So have a happy Hanukkah
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.
Mhm. :)