How to Make Asian Latkes

Happy holidays and happy Hanukah, I’m chef David Grogan doing Jewish fusion food down here in Austin Texas. Today, we’re going to do a special fusion of a traditional Hanukah latke and Asian food so we’re going to get some Asian flavors going and we’re going to start right off with peeling about four medium to large rustic potatoes. To get your potatoes peeled, you’re going to put them right into cold water just because if it’s any time between when you’re peeling and shredding, they’ll turn brown. We have our medium grating disk in our food processor and we’re just going to trim these down so they fit in the tube and we are going to grate them up. After we get that blended through, we’re going to take our grated potatoes. Put them into a colander and press out as much water as we possibly can. Let’s take a dry kitchen towel and we’re going to press and try and get as much of that water out as we possibly can. You can see how much moisture comes out of those potatoes and you want to squeeze all that out or you will have exploding latkes. We’re going to take a large mixing bowl and put our extra dry shredded potatoes in there, give them more or less a dabble to get all that moisture out. Then we’re going to add in a quarter cup of crushed up roasted unsalted cashews about two tablespoons, powered wasabi. This is real strong stuff so you want to make sure you have that measured out, a half cup of flour and we’re going to add about half of it now and half after we mix it up just to make sure we get a good consistency. Two eggs beaten lightly, a quarter cup of green onions which are going to add some nice flavor and crispiness to the dish. A sprinkling of kosher salt, just a couple twists of fresh grounded black pepper and then we’re going to mix that all up to make our batter and you want just enough egg to hold these together and just enough flour but you don’t want it to be cakey because what we’re looking for is a nice crisp Asian flavored latke. So I’m going to add the rest of our flour and continue to mix that around and as soon as our batter is nice and mixed together, we’re going to pour a liberal amount of vegetable oil on our skillet and you could use peanut oil, saffron oil, anything that’s a high temperature oil that’s not going to smoke too easily because we’re going to get this up, you have the temperature setting 350 degrees is a good level for it. We’re going to take our scoop of latke mix, put it right on our oil and give it a little flattening push down. We’re going to wait a couple of minutes, probably four maybe five for that to get real brown and crispy on the bottom side before we flip that over because the goal with any latke is a nice crispy crunchy wonderful experience and cashews are really going to add to that. You’re looking for a nice latke is going to spread out and not be too big, probably portion about 2 maybe 3 per person. You can do these lots of different ways, you can make mini ones that are half this size and put a little smoked salmon and some dill sour cream or something on top. You’ve got yourself a great little appetizer. We’re going to wait till these are really nice and golden brown in the bottom before flipping them over and crisp the other side so that’s one. Yes, that’s perfect. While these are browning, crisping up on the other side and on our friolater pan, we’re going to mix up a little ginger sour cream sauce that we’re going to dollop on at the end. Maybe take your finest Asian inspired bowl, about a half a cup of sour cream or tofu sour cream is a good vegan alternative if this is is a meat or – meal and you’re keeping kosher. We’re going to take about two tablespoons of fresh minced ginger that we’re just going to mix in, maybe a little salt, a little pepper and just finish that right up. If it’s soaking up all your oil, you might have to refresh the friolater’s appetite for oily goodness. We’re going to use a copious amount of oil here because Hanukah is the festival of lights. Those being oil lights that were burning in the menorah in the temple in Jerusalem for 8 days which was the miracle of Hanukah so we friolate everything on Hanukah because it’s tasty and wonderful and it commemorates something as well. So we’re nice and golden brown on the other side, we’re going to put it on our drying, our cooling rack and let them cook down for a second. Get a little bit of the oil to drain off. There’s a spot, crispy, wonderful, got a little nutty texture in there.