According to my friend Rita, the invention of the blender spelled disaster for the potato latke. She insists that the blood dripping from our grandmothers’ knuckles during grating is what made their latkes delicious.
My friend Larry swears that skimping on oil will produce an inferior latke; he fills the pan with 3 inches, which he regularly replenishes. He admits this makes for “an ongoing battle with grease,” but says it’s worth the struggle.
My father used to criticize my mother’s latkes for lack of salt, and he added it by the spoonful to his pancake batter. I had a cousin who reduced the amount of matzah meal to a scant two tablespoons. My sister adds flour. Martha Stewart uses scallion greens rather than grated onion.
The point is no two latkes are alike. I should not have been surprised, therefore, when my daughter Stacy, now grown and with a kitchen of her own, had definite ideas about potato latkes when we cooked them together last Chanukah. Conflicts surfaced immediately, when she lined up the ingredients, which included a 6-ounce bottle of vegetable oil. I immediately prepared to go to the store.
“We’re going to use more oil than that?” she asked, incredulous. I should mention that Stacy is a thin vegetarian who buys only organic produce and shops in health food stores. Using a large amount of oil in any dish is anathema to her. Nevertheless, I went out and bought a half gallon.
When I returned, Stacy was putting potatoes through a food processor, from which they were slithering in the shape of tiny french fries. Horrified by the strange texture, I politely asked for a blender on the pretense that we’d get done faster, and used it to mix my potatoes, onions and eggs. By the time we got to the frying stage, all hell broke loose. Stacy poured in only enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan. She was about to lower a spoonful of batter into it when I grabbed her wrist.
“You can’t fry latkes in so little oil,” I insisted. “They need to be almost covered to get crispy.” Stacy pulled free of my grip. “Ma, no way am I gonna use that much oil. It’s disgusting!”
“Disgusting?” I cried. “Grandma Sylvia is turning over in her grave.” Stacy rolled her eyes and kept arranging dollops of batter in her nearly oil-less Cephalon pan. I suggested that, as an experiment, we each fry our own latkes, she using the batter from the food processor, while I used the batter from the blender.
Thus I stood in front of one burner frying smooth-textured latkes in 2 inches of oil while Stacy stood in front of another sautéing mounds of teensy french fry lookalikes. When she left her post for a bathroom break, I peered into her pan; without more oil her pancakes were going to stick. “It can’t hurt,” I murmured, tipping over the vegetable bottle. Stacy returned from the bathroom, picked up her spatula and prodded one of her pancakes. “What the …? Ma, did you put more oil in here?” Her tone was one of wounded shock.
“Yeah, ” I replied sheepishly. “Just a teensy drop — they were sticking.”
“I can’t believe you did that!” she shouted, on the verge of tears. “I would never do something like that to you! That shows complete disrespect. You don’t have any boundaries.”
Such words have been uttered by daughters to mothers since time immemorial; I had once used them myself. As their recipient I could only murmur, “I’m sorry, bubbeleh. I only wanted to be sure your latkes didn’t stick.”
“It’s not just the latkes,” she said, tears now falling freely. “You do things like this all the time.” She lifted her arm for emphasis, spatula in hand. I raised my arms, intending to give her a calming hug, but our spatulas collided, clinking like dueling swords. Stacy stopped crying and burst into laughter. Relieved, I tapped her spatula again and we engaged in a mock duel, our laughter dispelling the built-up tension.
Later, when our separate latke platters sat side by side on the buffet table, I overheard Stacy talking to her friend Joann, a tall, extremely thin beauty. “My mom uses so much oil in her latkes,” I heard her say. “Don’t you think mine are better? They’re not as greasy.”
Joann nodded. “You know how they cook,” she said, “all carbs and grease and sugar.”
Later on, I noticed Joann standing alone by the buffet. She looked around furtively, then hastily grabbed one of my latkes and put it on her plate.
“What’s so funny?” Stacy, who’d been standing next to me, asked.
“Oh, nothing,” I said, “I was just thinking of the dueling spatulas.”
Stacy chuckled. “You’ll have to admit,” she said, “my latkes are less greasy than yours.
“Uh huh,” I nodded, kissing her on the cheek. I felt exactly the way I used to when she was a little girl and I let her win at checkers. “Less greasy. Definitely.”
Marcy Sheiner’s greasy latkes have been enjoyed by world-famous celebrities. She lives in Oakland.