AlwaysHolidays: The Latke Recipe
Jeff Zalaznick — December 15, 2009
AlwaysHungry’s latkes being fried.
It is very important that you have a good latke recipe to accompany your Hannukah candlelighting. Everyone has their grandma’s recipe that they love, but if you are looking to hone your craft a little bit further, this should be of assistance.
There are many different ways to make latkes, but after a variety of attempts I think that we have found perfection. The variables that we looked at included onions, eggs, oil type, grate/purée, size, matzoh meal inclusion, and potato drying technique. Our conclusion was to caramelize the onions in chicken fat, go half and half with the potatoes in the grater and food processor, dry the hell out of the potatoes (first through a strainer and then by utilizing the “jelly roll towel” technique), and finally, to fry the pancakes in a combination of chicken fat and peanut oil.
Nothing groundbreaking, but a few minor tweaks that can take your pancakes to the next level. And of course, you should listen to this while you make them.
AlwaysPartying: Loving the L.E.O.
Jeff Zalaznick — June 03, 2009
It’s National Egg Day today. Yay. So let’s celebrate it with a classic New York staple: The L.E.O. (For the totally uninformed, this stands for lox, eggs, and onions.) At this point in time, it should probably be called a N.E.O (with Nova), since lox is really too salty to use in the dish, but for the sake of history, and the ability to call my favorite breakfast and my uncle by the same name, let’s stick with L.E.O. Now, in my opinion there is only one restaurant that makes an acceptable L.E.O., and it is the finest in class. This is Barney Greengrass, and there is no reason to ever discuss any other restaurant when it comes to this topic. A N.E.O, sliced tomatoes, sturgeon and bagel. It’s a Molotov cocktail, baby. It could kill you it is so good.
Since there is only one place worth eating it out, the best thing to do is make it yourself. The guidance I’m going to give you below will be extremely helpful in your quest to achieve the ideal L.E.O.
AHNY: Top 5 Matzoh Balls? Nope, Just Three
Jeff Zalaznick & Arthur Bovino — April 07, 2009
In honor of Passover, AlwaysHungry set out to find New York’s top five matzoh balls. What we discovered surprised us: there is no Top 5. New York City, despite having the world’s second largest Jewish population outside Tel Aviv, has only three knaidlech contenders. Sure, it was close between the top two but for the most part, outside these top three contenders, everything else was for the birds.
Noodles and dill, carrots and celery—we decided not to consider these varying soup ingredients as determining factors. This is about matzoh balls. After all, competing philosophies on how best to construct them are distracting enough (seltzer or water? oil or schmaltz? how long should the eggs be beaten? seasoned inside or out? boiled in salt water or chicken broth?). For Top 5 purposes, we judged based on three criteria: texture, flavor and appearance.
Continue Reading About Matzoh Ball Mania… >>
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