Potatoes. Part 1. Latkes!

So I stopped posting "Food on Fridays" because one of my friends told he didn't like them  (YKWYA, you can skip these!).  But last week two of my lady friends requested the return of Food on Fridays.  In an attempt to catch up, and also because these are relatively easy to write and I seem to be a bit short on time these days, I'll be doing potatoes FIVE ways this week.  Also, it was just St. Patrick's Day, and potatoes are super-Irish.

You could rightly say this to me about my excitement about St. Patty's Day... =)

So, I normally love bland foods (my favorite foods are plain pasta, bread with nothing on it, and water).  So potatoes are generally right up my alley.  I'd fallen into a bit of a rut however, thinking the only thing I could do with potatoes was to bake them or mash them.  But recently I've fallen back in love with potatoes and how versatile they are.  Without further ado, our first potato recipe of the week: Latkes!

I followed Smitten Kitchen's recipe pretty much down to the letter.  I actually used my handy dandy kitchen scale to make sure I kept the ratios about right (1 lb. potato for 4 oz. of onion). 

So first, you grate your potatoes and mince/grate/food process your onion.  Then prep your flour/egg mixture.  The only "tweak" if you can call it that I made was using truffle salt instead of regular salt.  I think the oil/potato/onion flavor actually overpowers the truffle aroma though, so it might be a bit of a waste to use truffle salt.  However, I made these for a second time last night (for lunch this week along with homemade mini meatballs), and still used truffle salt, just because it felt fancy.  And also, I keep being gifted truffle salt - so I have a bit of an overabundance of it.

Potatoes and onion strained in makeshift "tea towel" and flour/salt mixture

Closeup of egg/flour mixture

Mix up the potatoes/onions and egg/flour to get this:

I omitted carrots because I despise cooked carrots (also, they're not even in this recipe, which is one reason I chose it).  But I've seen them in enough breakfast potato dishes that some of you may wonder why I don't have some beautiful orange visual interest in my pictures.  But, yea, I don't like 'em.  I even pick them out of my hashbrowns if they're in there (I'm looking at you, Community).

Dropped by big spoonfuls into a hot oiled pan.  (I used olive oil instead of peanut oil just because it's what I had on hand, and last night I used vegetable oil.  Since we're not deep-frying the smoke point doesn't really matter, that I could tell).

Flatten them down some after dropping

A view of both sides, I used a normal dinner spoon so they're kinda oblong instead of rounded.

Nice and golden on both sides now

And final plating for brunch!

Small red blob is ketchup and bigger red blob is Ikea's lingonberry jam.

 I wanted to make a big big batch this weekend so that my sister and I would have enough to take to work and I also wanted to cut down on the oil factor.  So I tried baking them using this same recipe but find instructions from recipes for baked latkes and it was a disaster (425 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes, flip, then 5 more minute).  I didn't take any photos but basically the latkes all STUCK to the tin foil (the dull side) even after I had brushed it with more than enough vegetable oil.  Basically they cooked up fine for the first 10 minutes, but I couldn't get them off the foil to flip.  I'm not sure if it's the store-brand cheapo tin foil I opted to buy, but I didn't want to chance it and after 2 FOILED batches (PUN!!!), I went back to the frying pan.  Now the house reeks of lovely fry oil (not wholly unlike McDonalds...), but at least I have yummy crispy latkes for lunch!