Eat a Little, Eat a Latke

Chanukah is here, Chanukah is here! While I've grown out of the must-give-gifts-for-Chanukah phase (perhaps because I'm celebrating Christmas this year...), there are two things Adult Me really loves about the holiday: the soft light of the chanukiah & splendid taste of fried foods. This year, as previously discussed, I committed to making latkes for our holiday party guests, but because I'd never made them before, I did a test run last night for dinner.

I plan(ned?) to make the Real Kind on Friday, the kind that require you to grate so many potatoes that you can't bend your fingers for a week, but for the sake of ease, my test run was with the boxed kind:

I mixed up the batter...

...and promptly realized I had no idea how to make latkes. Enter my good friend Daphne, coworker & food editor of ChallahCrumbs.com, who served as my Yiddishe mama & explained how the whole hot oil aspect of latke-making works. Heat it on medium, she told me, & spritz it with some water from your fingers. If it spits at you, it's hot enough. And so I did:

But oil is scary, & I am accident-prone, so I located my prescription-less hipster specs, the only "goggles" I could think of, to protect my beloved eyeballs:

Uh, deck the halls with jowls & chins. Anyway, at first it sort of worked:

And then it sort of didn't:

 And then it did again!

 

The first few came out of the oil mushy or in clumps, but when I finally plucked out these crispy little beauties, I knew it was all gonna be OK:

And then dinner happened, because what are latkes for if not to devour? My preferred condiment is applesauce, & if you doubt the deliciousness of this combo, I encourage you to reconsider.

When dinner was over, I made these:

Yes, I do believe it was a good day.