Audra Lowe: Why not try a new twist to a traditional holiday dish. We went Le Marais in Manhattan to cook up some potato latkes, a little different though from the ones that grandma used to make.
Mark Hennessey: Hi! My name is Mark Hennessey. I am the Executive Chef here at Le Marais in Times Square New York City. And today we’re going to be preparing a traditional potato latke with a little bit of a twist, it’s a good celebratory dish for the upcoming Hanukkah season.
We have some grated potato, a cup and a half of grated white onions, some fresh nutmeg, salt, black pepper, some scrambled egg. Now, also for the mushrooms, as you see here, I have a wide variety of mushrooms but the idea what the mushrooms is used the best quality available. So, if the best quality available mushrooms to you are white mushroom, go ahead and use that.
So, the first step of this process is, to take your cup and a half of mushrooms, I’m going to sweat those out. Get a nice, hot sauté pan, olive oil, salt, pepper, some shallots, garlic, fresh tarragon. Release what out—whatever selection of mushrooms you’re going to use. Then set them aside.
Next step is the rest of the ingredients. Now essentially going to put them all to one bowl, combined them together before it heats the sauté pan but the important thing to remember is water is the enemy. Get to squeeze out all of your water.
For the nutmeg, I use fresh nutmeg, touch of kosher salt, cracked black pepper. The egg which I have pre-scrambled—with a little bit fresh tarragon. Don't be afraid to use your hands tossing these mushrooms like this. If you wish, you can certainly dice them up. But if you don't like to kind of—the type of a texture, I personally like the big chunky texture. I like to know what mushrooms I’m using. Move on over to the stove and we’re going to brown them off. Some—and I’m going to put a fair amount of oil here. Even though you have a nonstick pan, this is not but it doesn’t stick because obviously with the nonstick pan, it won’t. It's just so I get a really good pan fry on it. The oil I’m using is peanut oil today. I prefer peanut oil because it has high smoking point so it won't burn and get things bitter. And it has very little flavor.
So I'm just going to form the latkes into again, I though the small hockey puck because that's what I like. Traditionally they are very flat. But I would like a little bit of texture, a little bit of height and depth to that. You want a good hot pan. It doesn’t crackle like, it doesn’t sizzle. Depending in sound, any ring, you put the stuff in there then you know your pan is not hot enough.
Let’s get a nice golden brown. Now, don't rush it. A question on TV, say you don’t have to rush. It’s a nice color, just like that. It's a more—the second side, put it on our pan and then pop it in the oven.
And then we’re going to serve it with some crispy veal sweetbread and then top it with a nice—of more wild mushrooms and beautiful veal stock production.
And once again, there you have it. Wild mushroom potato latkes with veal sweetbreads and a veal stock production.
Audra Lowe: And you can find the recipe to this online, just go to bettertv.com and click on the Recipe tab.
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