Susan Simon Says

Here's a link to last week's newspaper column: I was lucky to spend a half hour last Thursday talking to Ellen Thurston and Tom DePietro during their afternoon program on WGXC . I took an intermission from my usual monthly appearance, when I feature a single item of food , "How to Build a Pantry, One Ingredient at a Time" - and instead talked about... the delicious confluence of two joyous holidays; Thanksgiving, and the first day of Chanukah. This happy collision in time will not occur again for thousands of years. Thanksgiving is always on the 4th Thursday of November, and because the Hebrew calendar is two weeks shorter than the one we use, the Gregorian calendar, you can only imagine the numerical combinations that need to click into place in order for us to celebrate a feast to give thanks for our country, and one to give thanks for oil that lit the temple lamp, on the same day, again. During my radio chat I spoke about many recipes that are holiday-interchangeable and mentioned that I would post some of them on this blog. Pancakes are latkes - Latkes are pancakes. Latkes are the emblematic Chanukah food. Chanukah, the festival of Lights is the celebration of oil (!!!) that seemed only to be enough to light the temple for one day after it was destroyed by invading Syrians more than 2,000 years ago - but, instead, it lasted for 8 days. As a reminder of the miracle, part of Chanukah celebrations include food that have been cooked in oil. No food is more popular than potato latkes. Crisp and savory - they accompany other dishes perfectly. Latkes are classically made with starchy white potatoes. Their starch helps to hold the pancakes together. I experimented for a bit to come up with a recipe that would hold non-starchy sweet potatoes together. It's important that the pancakes are flattened so that they can cook all the way through. Make them a bit larger if you like. A platter piled high with these crunchy, sweet, salty and herbaceous latkes will be just the right addition to your holiday table. 1. In a large ...Read More