We Liked Them a Latke

Neither Matt nor I had ever made latkes before, but when we saw them on this irresistible website (his name is Matt, and he's obsessed with food/drink/travel/photography...I think we must all be related somehow) at 6:30 this morning (the body clock training continues, even on the weekends), we thought it was too good to pass up.

We used the Cuisinart to reduce two potatoes to uniform shreds of latke-making goodness in about three seconds. (Alas, you still have to peel them yourself.) The step about the potato starch is apparently crucial, and for us it was, at the very least, interesting: after submerging the grated potatoes in a bowl of water for a few minutes, then removing the potatoes and letting the water sit for a bit, when you pour off the water you are left with a firm, gluey mass of what is apparently potato starch. Who knew? We scraped that onto our potatoes, added a chopped onion and a couple of beaten eggs (we neither had nor missed scallions), and proceeded to fry them up in about a half-inch of vegetable oil in a cast-iron skillet.

They came out great. They're basically glorified hash browns, and we're all for that. I don't know that they're such a significant improvement over fresh homemade hash browns that we'd make them very often, but, they were very good.

In addition to eating several plain, we also crammed a few into the bottoms of a muffin tin, cracked an egg over the top, and baked them at 375 for 15 minutes in response to this particularly drool-inducing post. We minced up and sauted a few mushrooms to top it with, and...it was fabulous.
We've lapsed into the habit of generally only eating two meals a day on the weekends. We get up and make coffee to tide us over while we make a filling and relatively time-intensive breakfast (see above). Once our bellies are no longer sagging under the weight of that--generally around 3pm or so--we start in on something slightly more complex than what we usually make for weeknight dinner. Tonight, we're talking about split pea soup. Eating slightly earlier, but more, generally holds us past bedtime. While I'm usually a proponent of smaller and more frequent meals, which are better for my small (quick to fill and quick to empty again) stomach and supposedly better for your health, we've found that this is a way to find time for the recipes we might not get to during the week, and as an added bonus, lops off 8 meals a month from the menu, which ultimately saves money, planning, and prep time. Handy!

*Image is from Smitten Kitchen, which I love because their camera and photography skills--along with their culinary knowledge--are so much better than (yet so inspiring to) mine.