Pancake Travels

O.K., so in my head, I sang the title of this post to the tune of Oh Christmas Tree.  Try it, it works! Unlike last year, we didn't attempt to make latkes every night of Chanukah; however, we have made them three nights out of four. We made traditional latkes for the first night.  We don't have any pictures of them, but here's the recipe we used if you'd like to make them: Ingredients ·          4 medium Potatoes, peeled ·          1/2 lrg Sweet Onion, diced into 1/4 ″ pieces ·          3 cloves Garlic, crushed or finely minced ·          3/4 T Sea Salt ·          fresh cracked Black Pepper, to taste ·          2 large Eggs, beaten ·          2 teaspoons potato starch ·      ...

As usual, we once again find ourselves behind on pancake blogging.  Darn life!  You always get in the way!  We still find ourselves trying to get our photos up, posted and shared from our trip to Ecuador in August.  Hopefully we'll get everything caught up soon. Anyway, after visiting Dominican Republic we finally made it to the Es, and we found ourselves visiting Ecuador in our kitchen this time.  The pancake of Ecuadorian choice is llapingachos, or cheesy potato pancakes.  While we were actually in Ecuador, we did eat llapingachos, which was good because it gave us an idea of what they were supposed to look, smell, and taste like. We decided to make the pancakes along with a tomato onion curtido to top it off.  I have to thank Layla for our recipes this week.  She has some yummy looking recipes on her blog , so check it out if you have a chance. So here is what you will need to make llapingachos: 3 lbs. of russet potatoes 2 tablespoons of oil 1/...

We've now reached the third night of Chanukah, and I think my tummy might not make it to the 8th night.  Latkes are VERY filling when eaten night after night.  Here's a cool picture Sam took of the chanukia tonight. So we were going to make a "modernist" (as it was described by Saveur magazine) style latke tonight, but we had some trouble tracking down potato starch.  We DID (key word being did) have a box of it in the cupboard, but we somehow used it all up.  I thought it would be readily available at the grocery store, but I was sadly mistaken.  After the second grocery store and no luck.  Sam informed me that he bought it at the Vons/Pavillions store the last time he bought it.  Oh well!  The one grocery store I didn't go to. While at the second grocery store, I decided to pick up a couple of sweet potatoes and come up with my own version of a sweet potato latke.  I say it's sort of a sweet potato latke because I did use some regular potat...

Moving on to night number two of Chanukah, we decided we needed a protein packed latke.  Thus we ended up making quinoa pancakes.  I had discovered a recipe awhile ago for these, and it called for a poached egg on top.  What could be better than quinoa pancakes and a poached egg?  Well, we decided to poach the egg my favorite way, which is in tomato sauce instead of water.  Keep reading and you'll see what type of latke meal we had for the 2nd night of Chanukah. Before beginning the explanation of this recipe, I have to admit that we were not very good at taking pictures this time around, so sorry if it seems like there aren't enough.  We'll try to do a better job tomorrow night. There are several steps to making these latkes.  The first thing you'll want to do is cook the quinoa.  Thoroughly rinse 1 cup of dry quinoa.  Place it in a pot with 1 1/4 cup of water.  Bring to a boil, and immediately turn down to low and cover.  Simmer f...

Welcome to our eight nights of pancakes, or rather, I should say latkes.  We decided to prolong our break from our "travels" since it's Chanukah, and instead we are exploring the many different types of latkes that people are making during this time of year. Traditionally latkes (yiddish for pancake) are made out of potatoes; however, as often happens over time with many things, the view of latkes as always being potato pancakes is being challenged and changed.  Because of this, we decided to devote each night of celebration to a newer idea of what a latke can be. For the first night of Chanukah we decided to stay somewhat traditional in our latkes in that we did make potato pancakes.  However, we used a slightly different recipe than what we would normally use.  Generally speaking, we usually grate the potato in large shreds, but this year we did the smaller shreds.  We also opted to leave off the traditional applesauce or sour cream topping.  You may reca...