Easy latkes recipe

To latkes or not to latkes...this was my question Saturday evening on the first day of Hanukkah - Jewish holidays start in the evening -, when I knew that for the next days all the food stores are closed and thus, most probably I cannot prepare a great deal of food for the next days. Relying on the welcoming invitations from friends is a great solution too, but I am stubborn enough to not accept that my Hanukkah will be latkes-less. Thus, yesterday morning, the cooking fever finally returned into my life and I decided that, among other recipes that I did - more updates in my next posts - I should also prepare for the lunch with baby D. and me some latkes. I made a short tour of my pantry and realized that, in fact, I had enough ingredients for a fresh portion of latkes. Because the baby D. is still quite sensitive to spices, I eliminated garlic or onions from the recipe, and had the following combination of ingredients:

7 small and medium potatoes, peeled and finelly grated
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 pinch of za'atar
2 small eggs beaten - one was enough also
15 gr. baking powder - it make the composition fluffy but it might leave a taste so you can easily forget about it
1 tablespoon margarine for a milky creamy taste and appearance
Mix well everything. Try to pour the extra water out by using a strainer.
Meanwhile, pour generously oil in the pan and wait to get warmer at around 250C. I used peanut oil because I tried to see how the final result comes out in terms of taste but it was not a big deal.

I preferred to fry in batches of three, leaving more space in the pan. The warm is easier distributed when there are not too many items frying. It resulted 9 small latkes, that I left to rest and get the oil out of it on a parchment paper. 

The entire preparation and frying process lasted around 45 minutes and although baby D. wasn't too keen to taste it - and it seems is his problem with latkes in general - I enjoyed my portion and the spirit of the holidays. 

Now, I wonder if I am brave enough to try some sufganiyot too. Why not? Given my passion for home made cook, a final - positive - decision may be only a matter of days, or rather hours.

Ready for Tu B'Shvat - and some funny decorations ideas

I love Tu B'Shvat because it announces the spring, my favourite season of the year. Although born on Purim and very happy to celebrate it each time, Tu B'Shvat, which starts tonight, is more a bit more far away of the Pesach cleaning.  

Usually, I don't cook too much on this day, either because we are always invited to some nice seder, or simply because I always prefer to enjoy more veggie and fruity meals. 

This time, I prepared a salad with few of the main ingredients requested for this holiday:

It has a very simple recipe: baby salad leaves, roasted almonds, pomegranate seeds, olive oil, tomatoes and cashew nuts. The preparation of the roasted almonds takes around 10 minutes, and the overall preparation maximum 15. I will continue with some special meals for tomorrow's lunch and will be back with more fancy recipes. 

Each year, we keep the tradition of buying new - and sometimes exotic fruits. As we already tried maybe too many special ones, we reached almost the limit of the choices in the old Europe. We spent the last Tu B'Shvat in London and went to Harrods for finding the unique fruits. This year we made some serious investigations at the Berlin equivalent - the glorious KDW - and ended up with some Latin American good looking fruits: mellow fruit (the yellow one) and tomate de arbol (a kind of tomato that grows in the tree). Will write more after we will taste it tonight. 

Our fruit basket looks like this:

We have there raisins, pears, dates, figs, apricots, kiwi, dried grapes.

As on the occasion of every holiday, I enjoy very much the family moments, not only when we cook and think together about the menu, but also the special gatherings when we try to make some decorations together. I did my best to calm the enthusiasm for too many of them, warning that we need more energy and ideas to be kept for Purim. 

However, we succeeded to have some colourful painted balloons, hanging some garlands over the living room table that usually is my little home office. Also, we decided to change completely a very modest basket, with some blue and red flowers adorned on all sides.

We bought the small pieces and the basket for less than 8 EUR, after a tour of the most convenient stores we found in Berlin: Strauss, Rossmann, McGeiz and Nanu Nana. It is the season of sales and thus we got some pretty good deals. 

The green wire used for attaching the flowers is both strong and looks good with the beige of the basket. With it, we hanged the flowers randomly around the edges. It was fun without taking too much precious time while giving me a relaxing time after relatively hectic last days.

The last but not least piece of decoration for this Tu B'Shvat is a colourful painting made by lovely S.: a free inspiration and cute combination of colours. 

Hag Sameach everyone!