Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah, it’s time for day three of the Smart Bitches Hanukkah Festival!
Today’s prize is pretty awesome. But first, I’ve been asked for the Sweet Potato Latke recipe I mentioned yesterday. Ahoy, here it is, and the giveaway is below the fold. It’s a good thing to hold with one hand, while eating latkes with the other hand.
Sweet Potato Latkes
Makes about 24 latkes. Adapted from Taste of Home Magazine.
1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp sugar (I used Splenda bc I’m out of sugar. Worked fine.)
2 heaping tsp curry powder (MORE SPICE BABY YEAH)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp brown sugar
1 heaping tsp ground cumin
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (like hotter with slow burn as you take another bite? Add more.)
1/4 tsp pepper
scant 1/4 tsp dry mustard
scant 1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs beaten (Kinky!)
1/2 cup milk or Lactaid or milkish product of your choice.
4 cups grated peeled sweet potatoes
oil for frying
Mix the dry ingredients (flour through mustard). Stir in eggs and milk until blended. Add sweet potatoes and fold with a spatula or your fingers to coat thoroughly. Keep scooping from the bottom of the bowl to make sure there is equal potato/goo distribution. The goo contains the flavor!
Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. I used enough vegetable oil that it was probably between 1/3 and 1/2 inch deep in the skillet.
Drop heaping tablespoonfuls into oil. Let set for about 30 seconds, then press gently with the back of a spoon to flatten out. In my big honking skillet I could fry about 6 or 7 at a time.
Fry for 3-4 minutes per side until golden brown. Add more oil if you need it.
Drain on rack covered with paper towels. Try to avoid eating while they’re piping hot (ow. Good luck with that).
NOTES:
I tried making bigger than heaping-tablespoon size, and they were soggy in the middle, so keep to the smaller size for browned, crispy latkes with chewy centers. The batter will get soggy at the bottom so stir every now and again to mix the potatoes with the wet stuff. Remember: the goo contains the flavor!
We’re serving with honey mustard, chipotle mayo, drizzled honey and whatever else I think will taste good.
Happy Hanukkah!
And now: Ahoy! Contest the third!
On the Third Night of Hanukkah, Smart Bitches Gave to Me: A Generation Two Kindle, and a $25 gift certificate to Amazon!
Just leave a comment below, and tell me your favorite traditional holiday food (Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice, Kwanzaa – Eid is over, but is there traditional food for Hijra? – and you’re entered to win. Comments close in 24 hours, but fear not, there’s another book – paper or digital – giveaway coming soon. Because Hanukkah lasts for eight crazy nights, and I have more latkes to eat. NOM.
Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Reading!
Longtime lurker, first-time commenter…
Eggnog! With or without the kick, definitely with nutmeg sprinkles. 🙂
LOVE SmartBitches!
We like all kinds of food but the most wanted is the leftover juice from the turkey. We make homemade egg noodles and put them in the juice from the turkey and enjoy a second family dinner. I know a lot of people still do this, but it is a special memory in my family of my grandmother making these each year. She got to see her great-grand children doing this as well before she passed on.
Definitely eggnog. 🙂
Sorry about the multiples. Any way to delete them?
My favorite is the yummy dressing!
Tamales! My grandma’ always makes them for Christmas. She makes several kinds, pork, cheese and pepper, and the sweet ones we kids used to call Incredible Hulk tamales because she uses green dye in the masa.
I also can’t get through the holiday season without her buñuelos. It’s the only time of year she makes them. We do the rolled flat and crispy fried kind as opposed to the round ones they do in some places. We always sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar.
Shortbread. It’s the only time you can eat that much butter without people looking at you funny…
Every year since I was 4 or 5 (28 now), my family has held a family cookie bake at my favorite Aunt’s house. We bake everything from sugar to gingerbread to chocolate chip to peanut butter to experimental cookies (one of us made banana cookies one year that were epic, and I’ve experimented with maraschino cherry chocolate cookies on occasion). The kids get to decorate the sugar and gingerbread cookies and it is so much fun. My favorite Christmas food are the peanut butter cookies with Hershey kisses in them; I crave them every year until cookie bake time. My wonderful new partner has revealed to me that they are also his favorite of all time, so there will be plenty of PB/kiss cookies this year!
Sugar cookies with all that lovely icing.
Brisket. Without a doubt. The food of champions for Hanukkah and Pesach. I use my grandmother’s recipe… soooo good!
I make Christmas candy every year based on my great-grandmother’s recipes. Probably my favorite item to make is buckeyes – they’re pretty easy and everyone loves them.
Potato casserole and snickerdoodles. And my mom’s dressing. These are pretty much all I need in terms of holiday food.
Sweet potato casserole, pumpkin pies, buckeyes, and peanut butter fudge. yum
Favorite traditional holiday food? My grandmas scotch cookies. She could make them year round … but she only makes them at Christmas and I love them.
Does mulled wine count as food? ‘Cause I start making it almost every night through December. Yum.
A Kindle! Wow! I love mine and would love to have one for my daughter!
Peppermint cheesecake, sugar cookies (cut out and decorated with the kids.. that nobody eats but the kids because, come on.. they lick more than they attach), and than our surprise dinner. We have a grand meal of the non traditional kind every year. And we don’t tell anyone what it’s going to be. You have to show up or wait until you get a call from someone who did.
AND.. our Christmas eve dinner.. chili and tamales.. mmm. 😀
Stollen. My dad’s mother’s family was German-American and our recipe (for a sweet bread with fruit in it) has been handed down through generations.
Favorite traditional holiday food: apple cider with mulled spices! And cookies 🙂
Mmmmm…..pecan pie, lots of pecan pie (homemade by Mommy, of course) So that the pecan’s are toasted just right and the inside is all gooey and sticky. Then with homemade whip cream with a touch of vanilla. I think I just gained 5 pounds thinking about it.
I’m from Texas and we always waited til Christmas time to make Divinity—plain, with pecans, or with cherries. YUMMM. I think the main reason we waited was cause it was usually cool and dry enough by December to boil up that sugar and corn syrup, add it to the whipped egg whites and beat like mad til it was no longer quite so glossy and began to cool into luscious white goodness. Add vanilla and nuts and quickly drop onto wax paper. AND after that start the fudge. Then the pies—pecan and sweet potato, of course, maybe apple. Then the cornbread for stuffing cooked with celery, onions and sage, chopped apple (my Mama’s secret ingrediant) mixed with dried bread pieces, stock—double yum. Turkey was OK but its the fixin’s that I love especially the sweets.
My Dad’s traditional Mexican Christmas… Tamales, Carne Guisada, Carnitas, Picadillo, Chiles Rellenos, Homade Tortillas, Camote (sweet Potatoes), Refried Beans, my Grandmother’s Mexican Rice (mmmmm!), My Aunt’s Green Chile Enchalada and I usually make my Dad make Pozole as well as Menudo ‘cause lets just face it Menudo is disgusting!! We also have Buñeulos, Rosca de Reyes, Pastel de Tres Leches, Flan and drink down some Chocolate Caliente! And after all the eating is done that’s when my absolute favorite part of the celebration get’s brought out… The TEQUILA!!!!
Christmas Eve was always my favorite day, we celebrated it more than Christmas Day. We always have a big fish dinner – more shrimp than you can imagine, flounder, lobster tails (only we’re too squeamish to kill a whole lobster), fried calamari, baked clams… I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.
Handmade candy canes. There is a local to me company that makes them in delicious wonderful flavors like, pear, molasses, and pomegranate.
Ohhh I love the holidays.
we always have green bean casserole with the cream of mushroom soup and the fried onions. Its so easy to make I don’t know why I don’t make it other than the holidays.
Cookies. I’m all about the cookies. It’s the only time of year I bake them and I love getting out all of my different recipes and filling the kitchen. I also love those egg nog shakes at Jack in the Box.
Happy Holidays! I get excited for the Christmas cookies, making them more then eating them. They make me happy. Of course there is always the eggnog, but my heart belongs to the cookies.
Spritz cookies!
Hanukah Gelt. Any holiday that makes me eat chocolate coins is a good holiday!
The thing I look forward to all. year. is the sorrel my mother in law makes. Cloves and sugar and other spices I have no clue about get steeped and boiled with sorrel and then she adds a little brandy or rum right before giving it to you. Yum.
mmmm. holiday foods.
My absolute favorite is just the massive amounts of baked goods that happen this month. But to narrow it down, I think Lebkuchen are my favorite. (German spice cookies, similar to gingerbread) we made a huge batch last night.
Whee. Kindle.
My favorite holiday food is probably olives.
Weird, I know, but for some reason every Christmas our meal plan includes olives. Some black, some green with pimento, and occasionally green garlic-stuffed olives. It’s definitely not the fanciest part of the meal, but it sticks out in my mind and it’s kind of oddly nostalgic for me.
Also, pie. Any pie. And eggnog.
Those sweet potato latkes sound good! Thanks so much for the recipe.
Oplatek.
Now mind you, this isn’t a food meant to tickle your tastebuds. The oplatek is a wheat-and-water wafer that’s part of a tres Catholic Christmas tradition in Poland. I remember my mother, aunt, cousin, and I visiting my Polish grandmother in her tiny flat each Christmas Eve, just so she could pass out pieces of the wafer. It was a symbolic sharing of faith and familial love, the significance of which I failed to appreciate (sad to say) until I was older. It now has a special place in my heart.
In my family we make vanilla cream cheese cookies every Christmas—it’s a ridiculously simple recipe but an absolute requirement in order for me to feel like the holidays have begun.
Ginger Molasses Cookies!
Whee. Kindle. And yummy latkes.
My mother would bake the most amazing Stollen – a German bread with lots of butter, cinnamon, candied fruits and pecans. A slice heated up in the microwave and then slathered with butter was part of breakfast for many days of the holiday season.
Butternut squash apple soup, so thick and creamy and lovely…it’s a whole season of yum in a bowl. We serve it up with lamb (leg, rack, we’re not to particular ‘cause it’s lamb and all lamb is pretty much taste-bud crack) and homemade bread on the side.
And don’t think that the soup is too sweat, we add a kick of hot that balances it perfectly. Seriously. It’s perfect…And now my Pavlovian response has kicked in and I’m drooling. Ah, good food…
mmm…my favorite would have to be the naca tamales my aunt makes on Christmas. She serves them at midnight Christmas morning and I pretty much devour them.