Oh Ye Infidel!

Had the first latkes of the season last night, and my were they good.

Have I mentioned I make the best latkes on the planet? Well, yes, I do. Here's my recipe for you who might want to emulate me, the latke artist:

Take two potatoes for everyone who wants latkes. I use Yukon Gold, but suit yourself.

Peel, wash, grate by hand -- that's essential, so step away from your evil food processor! Store the grated potato in a deep bowl of icy water while you're grating the rest of the potatoes; when you're done, drain in a colander, and then rinse the grated potato at least three or four times in freezing water, soaking it between times in more icy water. Swish about while it's soaking. What you're doing here is shaking loose the starch. Starch makes soggy latkes.

Finally, put the grated potato into the deep bowl, cover with icy water, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and put in the fridge for awhile -- maybe an hour.

Drain, really well. Squeeze out as much water as you can.

Mix in some matzoh meal, some onion powder (if you don't have a kid who hates onion, you can grate in some onion here instead), some Kosher salt, some pepper, and two or three nice eggs.

(How much? Eh. A couple three handfuls of the matzoh, some of the rest. By nice eggs, I mean free range, of course. But suit yourself.)

Heat up some good-quality peanut oil in a big iron skillet. Get it hot, but not blazing. Enough so a bit of potato will pop and start to brown in a few seconds.

Form the latkes between your palms. Make them fairly flat. Squeeze out as much liquid as you can. Drop them in. Have some newspaper covered with paper towels ready for them to drain on. Have a beer or a Snakebit or some rum and coffee to drink while you work. Some friends to talk to -- that's also nice. Frying latkes takes time.

Eat with applesauce or sour cream if you're a traditional Jew. If you're an infidel like me and the kid, we have ketchup with ours. (mr. delagar threatens to make us move out every time we do this.)

Speaking of infidels, I reckon you caught Mitt's speech? The one where he says there's no religious test to be the U.S. President, but if there was it's okay cause he passes it, he believes in Jesus, not like them other guys over there (that would be us on the Left) who only believe in shit like freedom of religion?

Here's the bit of the speech I find most offensive:

Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.

The NYTimes has this to say about it, which was noble and all, but did not go nearly far enough in my opinion (I did like one of the comments on the NYT piece, a guy who suggested that, rather than posting the 10 commandments in our public places, as the Right keeps yapping that we should, we should post the Bill of Right in all our public arenas -- maybe that would do our public discourse some good. <-- now that is an idea I can get behind, particularly after fifteen years of teaching Freshmen who think the Second Amendment was put in place so that they could go hunting, and haven't the slightest clue what the First Amendment's about.) But the NYT, stern as they were, did not go far enough. See C&L for a more thorough look.