The first night of Hanukkah falls on Sunday, Dec. 14. At this time of year, my Jewish heritage comes out in a few ways. I light my menorah when I can — although, admittedly, I miss a night here and there. I make sure to sing a Hanukkah song or two at my annual holiday concert.
And I ponder my Jewish background. Long ago, when I was in graduate school, I went to a lecture called “It’s Jewish, You Don’t Look Funny.” The title was of course a play on the old saying, “Funny, you don’t look Jewish.”
I can’t recall the name of the speaker or too many details of his speech. I vaguely remember that he was talking about the ways in which Jewish people use humor both to bond with the world at large and to stand slightly apart from it. The Jewish half of me could relate to that process.
My strongest memory of the day is of looking around and realizing that I was pretty much surrounded by people who were Jewish … or at least who, like me, looked Jewish.
It was a unique experience at the University of Texas. I had met exactly one Jewish person there, a student who took one of my classes and was a member of the campus’s Jewish sorority, Alpha Epsilon Phi.
She had joined the sorority, she told me, because she felt isolated on campus and wanted a sense of belonging. I think she took my class because she wanted a Jewish (or at least half-Jewish) teacher.
At the end of the lecture on Jewish humor, I told my friend Maria Cristina Garcie, “I don’t think I’ve been in a roomful of Jewish people since I went to Temple with my Jewish grandmother as a little girl. It’s a strange but comforting feeling.”
Maria Cristina smiled and said, “Welcome to the wonderful world of ethnicity.”
She knows a lot about ethnicity. She was born in Cuba, although her family came to this country when she was very small. When we met she was writing her dissertation on Cuban immigrants to the U.S. She has since written extensively about the history of immigrants and immigration policy here.
I still think about the experience of being surrounded by Jewish people, even though I haven’t been in a roomful of them since the afternoon of the lecture.
Even when I returned east after graduation and started sharing Passover seders with my father once more, those evenings were generally parties that had more non-Jews than Jews. There aren’t a lot of Jewish people in Hawley.
The lecture reminded me that Americans — particularly those of us who, like me, come from mixed ethnic backgrounds — have all sorts of different ways of celebrating our heritage and of belonging, including telling jokes.
One of my favorite ways to celebrate my Jewish background is of course cooking. I make latkes at least once during the eight days and nights of Hanukkah. These classic potato pancakes are a standard Hanukkah dish for those of us descended from European Jews.
Readers of this newspaper may recall that each year I try to come up with a new variety of latke. My favorites are the Sam-e-kes, which add spices and vegetables associated with Indian samosas to basic potato pancakes.
I am also proud of my Holy Guaca-latkes (potato pancakes with guacamole), my Wafflatkes (potato pancakes prepared in a waffle iron), and last year’s Southwestern Latkes (potato pancakes with seasonings like chiles, cumin and cilantro).
This year, I almost reverted to Plain Old Latkes. I love a traditional latke. Nevertheless, the other night I was thinking about Hungarian foods and decided to put a Hungarian spin on the latke.
I almost called it the end product Goulasha-Latkes, but my friend Peter counseled me to try the more elegant (and accurate) name “Latkes Paprikash.”
The basic ingredients here are characteristic ingredients of Hungarian cuisine, paprika — I used sweet, but smoked might be very tasty — potatoes and carrots. I also tried caraway seeds. More on those later.
I don’t know whether Jewish people in Hungary put paprika in their latkes, but I do know that there have been Jews in Hungary for centuries. They suffered persecution over the years, particularly during World War II, but they have rebounded since the holocaust.
The Jewish News Service calls postwar Hungary “a Jewish success story.”
I like to think that my (extremely) distant Jewish countrymen in Hungary are getting ready to make their own latkes with paprika. The recipe below should give you an idea of how I think those latkes might taste.
A note about caraway seeds: I tried my latkes both ways, with and without them. I found that they added a depth of flavor to the latkes that I loved. On the other hand, I also loved the stronger paprika flavor of the latkes without the seeds.
I counsel you do to what I did: Add a few caraway seeds to individual latkes just as you are about to put the batter into the oil. That way, you can enjoy both versions.
If you’d like to hear me sing a Hanukkah song (along with some Christmas tunes and a couple of tributes to winter), come to my concert this coming Sunday, Dec. 7 at 2 p.m. at the Federated Church on Route 2 in Charlemont. I’ll have cookbooks there available for sale in case people are looking for holiday presents.
Latkes Paprikash
Ingredients:
2 eggs, beaten
2 generous teaspoons paprika (make sure yours is fresh; paprika can lose color and flavor over time)
2 to 4 tablespoons flour (start with 2)
1 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt
lots of freshly ground pepper
2 large baking potatoes
1 large onion (or 2 large shallots), finely chopped
1/4 cup shredded carrot
extra-virgin olive or peanut oil as needed for frying
caraway seeds as needed (optional)
sour cream and more paprika as desired for garnish
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. In a medium bowl, combine the eggs, the paprika, the salt, and the pepper. The mixture will look very red. Don’t let this bother you. The color will get spread out through the potatoes.
Wash the potatoes well. Dry them. Grate them with a box grater or with the grater attachment of a food processor.
Wrap the potato shreds and the onion pieces in a dish towel. Carry it to the sink, and squeeze it to get some of the water out of the potatoes. (Potatoes seem dense, but they contain a lot of water.)
Add the potato/onion mixture and the carrots to the egg mixture. Stir well.
Coat the bottom of a nonstick skillet with oil and heat it for a couple of minutes. Scoop out some of the latke mixture with a spoon. Use your hand to flatten the batter onto the spoon, add a little caraway seed if you want to, and lower the mixture gently into the hot oil.
Repeat as needed, making sure not to crowd the pancakes in the pan.
The size of your latkes may vary. I like tiny ones, but my nephew Michael likes them substantial. They taste great either way.
The latkes should be a little ragged. If they don’t hold together and are hard to turn, however, add a little more flour to the batter.
Fry the latkes a few at a time, turning each when the first side browns and is easy to flip. Drain the cooked pancakes on paper towels and pop them into the oven to stay warm until you have finished cooking the rest.
Garnish each latke with a little sour cream and a sprinkle of paprika.
Serves 6 to 8 as a side dish. If you have leftovers, feel free to freeze them and reheat them in the oven later during Hanukkah’s eight days.
Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.