Leek Latkes with Herbed Yogurt

By now you know that my mom was the primary cook in our house. She made us dinner almost every night. Still, my dad does have a few signature dishes that he'd make occasionally, which I really loved as a kid. One was apple pan dowdy. Another was matzah brei. And the third -- the marvelous third -- was latkes.

leeks and egg

My father's latkes are the best. They're lacy and delicate, well-seasoned, and unshyly fried to a (sometimes deliciously burnt) crisp, just the way I like them. I've made them his way several times over the years. I've also tried my hand at my mom's equally good sweet potato latkes, and have -- as she sometimes does -- mixed some zucchini into my pancakes. All varieties are worth making, now aren't they?

Hanukkah provides an annual excuse to blithely and guiltlessly fry things. Never one to squander such an opportunity, this year I decided to experiment in the fried-root-vegetable-pancake department. No potato latkes for us this time around; the wringing and sieving and squeezing what appears to be an endless stream of liquid from those tubers simply got the best of me. Instead, I turned to the book that now sits front and center on my new cookbook shelf: that'd be Plenty, the newish book from Tel Avivi/Brit Yotam Ottolenghi. It's like this book was written just for me: eggplant, pomegranates, tomatoes, feta, and yogurt are just about everywhere. And everything I've read about this book suggests that it's ideal when used as a starting point, a resource for improvisational cooking. That's just my speed.

Page 34 of Plenty contains a recipe for leek fritters that I've been planning to make for weeks in honor of the holiday. Encouraged to riff, I made a slew of changes to Ottolenghi's template. Most notably -- and I know this departs from the Hanukkah zeitgeist of frying everything in oil -- I swapped half the olive oil out for butter. Sorry, I couldn't resist. I also found that a bit of water really helps the leeks soften more quickly, so I added that along with the butter and oil. Out of shallots, I used half an onion. It works; shallots would be wonderful, though. Also, I skipped the whipped egg white. Less fuss, and the pancakes were still plenty fluffy. You can thank me later.

leek latke batter

You know what's great about this latke batter? It requires no squeezing. Leeks don't leak. They just stay put, incorporating seamlessly into a batter scented with tumeric and cinnamon, coriander and cumin. I might add a tiny pinch of ground cloves next time, for a base note.  Other than that, not much I'd change. The latkes are shockingly light, aromatic, and a really nice change from the usual potato variety.

leek latkes 3

Improv cooking, again a success. Though that yogurt sauce? I actually made it according to the recipe. And after devouring half with a spoon tasting it, I wouldn't change a thing.

Happy Hanukkah, friends.

Leek Latkes with Herbed Yogurt

Serves 4

Right, so about that whole "by the recipe" thing. I actually swapped in creme fraiche for the sour cream Ottolenghi calls for, and I used a lot less of it than of yogurt (recipe says half and half). I liked the tang of the creme fraiche, but I've come to the purely speculative conclusion that this sauce would be great with any mixture of yogurt, creme fraiche, and/or sour cream that you like or can make based on what's in your fridge. Go forth and improvise!

When you do fry these up, use either a nonstick or cast iron pan. I test-fried a batch in a regular stainless steel pan, and with enough oil or butter they won't stick, but make your life easier and use something nonstick.

For the latkes: 1 lb. leeks (about 6 medium), quartered lengthwise, sliced 1/2-inch thick, rinsed, and dried 5 shallots or 1 medium yellow onion, diced 1 stick (4 oz.) butter, divided 2 T olive oil 1/4 cup water 1 small serrano or Thai red chile, seeded and diced 1/4 teaspoon tumeric 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander 1/2 teaspoon cumin 1/2 cup chopped parsley 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon sugar 2 eggs 2/3 cup milk 3/4 cup flour 1 scant tablespoon baking powder olive oil for frying

For the sauce:

1 cup greek yogurt, sour cream, creme fraiche, or a mixture (I used 3/4 yogurt, 1/4 creme fraiche) 1/2 cup coriander leaves, chopped 1/2 cup parsley leaves, chopped 2 garlic cloves, crushed 2 tablespoons lemon juice 3 tablespoons olive oil 1/2 tsp salt

In a large skillet, melt 4 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat. Add leeks and shallot or onion, toss to coat with butter/oil, then add water to pan. Cook about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until water has evaporated and leeks have softened. Remove from heat and add chile, parsley, spices, sugar and salt. Set aside to cool completely.

While leeks cook, make the yogurt sauce: blitz everything in a food processor until fully combined into a uniform, light-green sauce.

Melt remaining 4 tablespoons of butter.

In a separate bowl, combine eggs, milk, melted butter, flour, and baking powder to form a loose batter. Add cooled vegetable mixture, and fold together just until combined.

Set up a platter next to your stove, and line it with 1 layer of paper towels.

Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Test oil heat by dropping a small bit of batter in; if it sizzles when it hits the oil, you're ready to fry. Use a standard ice cream scoop or 2 large spoons to scoop batter into the pan. My large skillet fit four latkes at once. Fry latkes for 2-3 minutes per side, until golden brown. Transfer to towel-lined platter when finished cooking. If doubling the recipe, you can store finished latkes in a warm oven (275 degrees F will do) while you make a second batch.

....Oh. Consume.

Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes

I'm back, in the nick of time, with one last side dish to grace your Thanksgiving table (because really, can you ever have enough sides?) By now, you're probably squared away with your stuffing, your Turkey, and those pies. So here's an idea for what to do with all those sweet potatoes. I wouldn't call it a traditional dish, but it's certainly a play on tradition.

I've always loved twice-baked potatoes, with their crisp skin and just enough potato inside to cushion the cheesy filling. So why not twice-bake sweet potatoes? Yes, their flesh is less starchy, and their skins are harder to crisp up. But when you succeed -- and you will succeed - you will reap the rewards of hot, sweet, crunchy, soft, sweet 'taters like you've never had'em before.

raw sweet potatoes

Here's the beauty of this dish. Have a favorite filling for twice-baked potatoes? It'll go great here, too. I'm talking sour cream and cheddar and chives, or parmesan and sage, or whatever you usually use. But you could also take these in a totally different direction, as I did last night. Instead of trying to balance the sweet flesh with a more savory filling, I succumbed to the sweetness. Boy did I ever.

sour cream and maple

Here's what we're doing: we're filling 'tater halves with a mix of sour cream, maple syrup, and crunchy demerara sugar. When I made them, I simply mixed the ingredients together - but I'm recommending that you sprinkle the sugar over everything else. That way you'll have a crunchy, burnt-sugary gratinee topping. You'll know they're done when you've had to fight yourself at least 3 times from opening that oven, pulling out the sweet potatoes, and eating every last one, right then and there. Now that's what I call a successful Thanksgiving side.

twice-baked sweet potatoes-2

Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoesserves 4

4 sweet potatoes, scrubbed very well and left unpeeled 2 tablespoons sour cream 1 tablespoon maple syrup 2 tablespoons demerara sugar pinch flaky salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line the bottom of the oven with foil.

Prick sweet potatoes in several places, and set on a rack in the middle of the oven for about 35-40 minutes, until they do not resist when pricked with a knife.

Meanwhile, combine sour cream with maple syrup, and stir until smooth. (It's ok if there are a couple lumps.)

Halve sweet potatoes lengthwise, and use a spoon to scoop out most of the flesh, leaving a 1/4-lining of flesh on each of the skins. Transfer skins to a lined baking sheet.

Spoon the sour cream mixture evenly into each of the skins, and top with a generous sprinkling of demerara sugar and the tiniest pinch of flaky salt.

Return to the oven, and bake about 20 minutes more, until skins are crisp at the edges and sour cream mixture is bubbling. Serve hot.

In the Small Kitchen: Noodles with Peanut Sauce

When a package arrived at my office earlier this week, I could hardly wait to tear it open. Inside was this gem:

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Cara Eisenpress and Phoebe Lapine, the lovely ladies behind Big Girls, Small Kitchen, recently came out with a cookbook, and people? It is beautiful. The book charts Phoebe and Cara's first year of cooking "in the real world," offering recipes, tips, hosting ideas, and more for the just-out-of-college crowd. I can't think of a better gift for new grads.

Naturally, the night it arrived, I read In the Small Kitchen cover to cover. The book is organized by occasion, rather than by type of recipe, which is surprisingly utilitarian: finger-food and drinks are grouped together in the cocktail parties section, while grainy salads and sandwiches can be found in the very comprehensive section on potlucking. Thinking back to my years as a recent college grad, I'm pretty sure the ladies cover basically everything I wanted to know at that time: how to host a good party, get drunk, and eat enough good food to keep down the liquor.

But this book isn't just for the post-college crowd. Over the past couple years, I've cooked many of Phoebe and Cara's recipes -- mostly from Food52, where we met, but also several from their blog. From secret ingredient beef stew tochicken tagine and more, these ladies know how to cook. They write thoughtful, funny recipes, and their book puts that talent on display.

Eager to cook from the BGSK book, I thumbed through, looking for something I could make with ingredients I had on hand. Noodles with BGSK Peanut Sauce jumped out at me: I had nearly everything in my larder, and what I didn't have, I could improvise. That's another thing about this book: if you follow the recipes to the letter, you'll make great food -- but you certainly don't have to.

I had just used all my scallions (two bunches!) to make scallion oil the night before, so I didn't have any left to slice fresh for the noodles. I also didn't have any cucumber (which, by the way, I recommend not skipping: it keeps the noodles light). I did, however, have loads of asparagus and a nice bag of pea shoots, so I used those instead.

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Lacking fresh scallions, I added some of the scallion oil to the sauce, which perfumed the noodles with that green, onion-y flavor. I started with about 3/4 of the sauce, which was plenty for me, and now I've got the leftovers in a jar for another day. Lots of the recipes in this book will make enough for leftovers, and when was that a bad thing?

College students everywhere are graduating. For those on the precipice of their first apartment, their first full-time job, and their first kitchen, I can't think of a better gift than In the Small Kitchen. Buy it, people!

...Ok. One of you won't have to buy it. We've teamed up with the awesome folks at HarperCollins to offer one lucky reader a copy of this book! Just leave a comment below describing your favorite post-college meal, and we'll select a commenter at random this Friday, June 3rd. Good luck!

Update: Julia E., you've won In the Small Kitchen. Congratulations! Hope you enjoy the book as much as I have.

Noodles with BGSK Peanut Sauceadapted from In the Small Kitchen

1 tablespoon fresh ginger, minced 2 cloves garlic, chopped 1/4 cup sugar 2 teaspoons chile paste/sauce (I used a mix of sriracha and sambal oelek; if you have neither, use 1 teaspoon chili flakes) 1/2 cup smooth natural peanut butter 1/4 cup soy sauce 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar 2-3 tablespoons sesame oil (start with less and add to taste) roughly 1/4 cup water

1/2 bunch asparagus, trimmed and sliced into 1-inch coins about 3/4 pound spaghetti, udon, or other noodles (soba would work well here too) 1 bunch scallions, chopped or 1/4 of a red onion, sliced into thin quarter-rings 1 large cucumber, julienned (I didn't have this but recommend including it) 1/2 cup coarsely chopped pea shoots (optional) 1 tablespoon sesame seeds

In a food processor or blender, pulse together the ginger, garlic, and sugar. Add the chile paste, peanut butter, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, and water and process again until smooth.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil (no need to salt the water - the sauce is plenty salty). First, blanch asparagus: add to water, cook about 2 1/2 minutes, and use a slotted spoon to transfer to a small bowl. They'll cook a bit more out of the water, but still retain some of their crunch.

Next, cook noodles according to package directions. When noodles are al dente, strain, transfer to a large bowl, and add about 3/4 of the sauce to the noodles. Stir to combine, and taste. Adjust sauce quantity as desired.

Add asparagus, onions, cucumber, and pea shoots, and toss to combine. Portion noodles into serving bowls, and top with sesame seeds. Serve with additional chili paste on the side.

Party Wings

I may seem delicate, with my ginger-infused biscuits and meyer lemon streusel muffins, and you know what? Maybe I am. But boy, do I love a good chicken wing. Whether battered and fried or sauced and crisped, great wings have become something of an interest. The crunchy skin and juicy meat, the sheer mess of it all, allures me.

I make wings on the rarest of occasions, so I get quite picky about which recipes to try. Last time, I made David Chang's Momofuku wings. They might have been the best chicken wings I've ever made. But they also were the most work-intensive wings I've ever made, requiring all manner of pots and pans and way too much time. Frankly, they were too complex to post.

Back to the drawing board I went, in search of savory, juicy, flavorful wings without so much effort. I found one from none other than Cathy Barrow, aka Mrs. Wheelbarrow, a core member and anchor of the DC Food52 crowd and one of my favorite new friends. Cathy has a fantastic blog, and is also at the helm of Charcutepalooza, a yearlong charcuterie-making project. Needless to say, she's a force.

Cathy's recipe for party wings reminded me of things I cooked in college. Chicken, marinated in brown sauce, simply baked until crisp outside and tender within. A simple, no-fuss recipe. Of course, one look at Cathy's recipe and I realized this actually was nothing like my dorm room fare. I didn't have any fermented black beans in my college fridge. And in fact, I didn't when I made these, either. I don't think they suffered, but I guess I won't know until I've tried to make them with the beans.

I wanted a spicy wing, and sriracha was a welcome addition here. While I worried that the flavor would be a bit muddled given how many ingredients are called for, they really weren't at all. The horseradish and mustard come together to balance the sweetness of the molasses, hoisin, and brown sugar (which I reduced, since I omitted the beans), and the garlic and sesame oil give a strong undercurrent to the marinade. The bake-and-baste method is so easy, it seems almost like a fluke when perfectly moist, crispy wings emerge from the oven. That's Cathy for you - always hitting it out of the park. D proclaimed these the best wings she'd ever had.

In the next couple weeks, I hope to make the Charcutepalooza founder proud; I'm planning to make my own corned beef. Supposedly a very easy task, though I have a keen ability to mess up even easy things. Wish me luck; assuming all goes well, I'll have a recipe for ya' soon.

Party WingsAdapted from Cathy Barrow

6 pounds chicken wings 1/4 cup fermented black beans (I omitted these) 1/2 cup soy sauce 1/4 cup toasted sesame oil 1/4 cup unseasoned rice vinegar 1/2 cup brown sugar (I cut to 1/4 cup) 1/4 cup molasses 2/3 cups hoisin 1/4 cup horseradish 1/4 cup dijon mustard 1 tablespoon minced garlic 1/2 cup ketchup 2 tablespoons sriracha

How's this for an easy recipe? Cut the wings into three parts, reserving the tip for stock.

Combine all the other ingredients in a deep bowl or (easy!) a plastic bag. Add chicken wings. Marinate for several hours (I left them in there for two or three days).

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil (a must, since the sauce sticks to everything) and arrange wings in a single layer, drizzling some of the sauce overtop. I stopped adding sauce when there was a small pool around the wings but they weren't drowning.

Bake the wings for about 45 minutes, basting and flipping them halfway through. Serve hot or at room temperature.