Dreidels, Latkes & Toas-Tites

‘Tis the holiday season!  With Thanksgiving and turducken Toas-Tites behind us and Christmas a-coming, we find ourselves keeping with the celebratory theme with this week’s Hanukkah Toas-Tite.  So with a l’chaim and a happy Hanukkah (particularly to Girl’s step mom, little sister, and sister-in-law), we give you latke Toas-Tites!

Hanukkah (or anytime) Latke & Applesauce Toas-Tite

Ingredients

• 2 large latkes
• Dollop of applesauce
• Sour cream

Directions

To start, make your latkes.  We more or less followed the latke recipe from Allrecipes.com.  It was our first time making latkes and we didn’t really scour around for the best recipe but figured it couldn’t be all bad with 256 reviews.  Needless to say, if you have a favorite latke recipe, go with that one.  Here’s what we did:

• 2 cups (or so) of shredded potato – to get this, we used one large potato
• 1 Tbsp. of diced red onion
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 2 Tbsp. of flour
• Salt*
• Canola oil for frying

So what’s the deal with the * by the salt?  Well, Allrecipes said that for 6 servings (with 2 cups of shredded potato), we should use 1.5 tsp of salt.  For our tasters, that was a little too much salt.  It wasn’t inedible, but it was definitely on the salty side of the scale.  Next time, we’ll likely scale that back to 3/4 tsp of salt or maybe even just 1/2 tsp of salt.

To make our latkes, we did the following:

1. Shred 1 large potato
2. Beat 3 eggs
3. Mix the potato, flour, eggs, salt, and onion in a bowl
4. Pour oil into a non-stick fry pan
5. Heat oil over medium-high heat
6. Dollop 1/3 of the potato mixture into the fry pan and cook until golden brown on each side
7. When the latke is cooked, remove from oil and let cool on a paper towel

That gave us 3 large latkes – one extra just in case something happened (and also for snack while the Toas-Tite toasts).

Once your latkes are made, you’re ready to toast them up!  We placed one latke in one side of the Toas-Tite iron (no butter since the latke still had some oil – making it plenty non-stickable) and then dolloped a goodly amount of applesauce onto it.

We carefully place the other latke on top, closed the Toas-Tite, trimmed the extra latke (which we also ate), and started toasting.  Once toasted up a bit, we removed the sandwich, let it cool, and finished it off with a bit of sour cream on top.

Kitchen Notes

When we were toasting our latke sandwich, we were actually pleasantly surprised at how well the latkes seemed to be sticking together on the edges.  In this case, “seemed” is the operative word.  Unfortunately, when we removed the Toas-Tite from the iron, the edges started coming apart a bit.  Next time, we’ll likely try using a bit of beaten raw egg to coat the inside of the latke edges.  Hopefully that bit of raw egg will help glue the two latkes together.  Our slightly less “stuck” Toas-Tite had to be eaten with a fork and knife but it still tasted great.

Another thing to keep in mind is that when you make a latke Toas-Tite, the ratio of latke to applesauce favors the latkes.  If your guests prefer more applesauce and more sour cream, keep in mind that when you serve, you may want to have extras of each on the side.

All in all, we had a great time making the latkes and the Toas-Tite and an even greater time eating them.  We definitely have to give it another try to see what we can do to get a better stick, but it’s one we’re happy to eat…err…experiment with any time.

By Girl & Boy