Potato Thing

t is no mean feat to feed and fill 12 children and two parents. Back when I still had all of them at home, there were days when I told my husband that lunch would be creatio ex nihilo. Sometimes the meals I served were less than stellar from a nutritional point of view, but my kids never went hungry in our home.

A neighborhood child, the friend of my eldest daughter, developed a sort of crush on me. To my mind, she was at the age where the blinders were coming off and she was seeing her parents’ faults for the first time, and contrasting these to my qualities. She was coming up wanting.

Shoshanna’s* mother was a good cook, but disorganized and dirty. The mother of a large family like my own, she simply had a set of priorities that differed from my own. I think she attended a lot of classes and was probably more learned than I. She went to a lot of concerts. She was from a wealthy background and had grown up with a nanny and other help that cooked and cleaned. Her husband had grown up in South Africa with slaves.

Not Coping

In Israel, where every man does for himself, this family was all but dysfunctional. In fact, stories came out later that proved they WERE dysfunctional. It was more than just the externals of how the house looked (and smelled). This was a family that was not coping.

On the other hand, my need to be completely organized was standing me in good stead as the babies came. Shoshanna was jealous but in a good way. She would come over and offer to help me clean or cook. She wanted to learn from me.

I liked having her around and I felt it was a kindness to steer her through this much of her adolescence, if I could. But sometimes, our grinding poverty was so mean that I found it hard to feed her alongside my own brood.

Large Potato Pancake

Something I made quite often in those days (and still do today) was a kind of very large potato pancake that was quick to make, tasty, and satisfying: Rösti. In our house we called it, “Potato Thing.” 

One or the other of the kids, or Shoshanna, to whom my house was a second home, would beg me to make the potato thing and I’d drag out the skillet. But sometimes even potatoes were hard to come by and I’d send Shoshanna to go get some potatoes from her home and bring them to me to cook for her. She was always very happy to do so.

I could only make one potato thing at a time, or two, if I had two skillets going. It was a lot of grating, also, since in those days I had no food processor. But Shoshanna and the other kids would take turns grating and it was a very satisfying way to pass a wintry afternoon. It always felt warm and cozy in our crowded but neat little home. I think that even the sound of something frying was somehow comforting to us in those lean times. 

Hit The Spot!

The potato thing was hot and huge and filling: the tastiest thing going. With or without ketchup, the potato thing hit the spot and made us feel that all was right with the world (and still does).

Potato Thing (Rösti)

One very large serving

3 large, unpeeled potatoes, scrubbed clean

3 Tablespoons oil, butter, or a combination of the two (my current favorite combination is 2 Tablespoons olive oil and 1 Tablespoon unsalted butter)

Salt

1. Grate potatoes in the food processor or on the large holes of a box grater.

2. Place the oil or butter in a large, nonstick skillet and heat over medium-high heat.

3. Add the grated potatoes to the hot fat, pat down a bit, sprinkle generously with salt, and cover with a lid. Cook for around 12 minutes.   

4. A nice golden brown bottom crust should have formed. Give the pan a little side-to-side shake to loosen and slide the potato thing onto a dinner plate.

5. Turn the potato thing into the pan so that the bottom crust is now facing up. Salt generously, cover again, and cook for 10 minutes.

6. Slide the potato thing onto the plate and turn it over into the skillet for a further two minutes to crisp the now slightly soggy top.

7. Slide it onto the plate and dig in. Ketchup is good with this, but it’s also good plain.

Enjoy!

*Not her real name.

Shaken not Stirred

he kids have school off for Chanuka which turned out to be useful for me. I am under doctor's orders not to pick anything up above a certain weight and I wanted to buy a sack of potatoes. Chanuka means potato latkes (pancakes).

I brought Asher along to the store to pick up the sack of potatoes, put it in my shopping cart, lift it onto the cashier's conveyer belt, put it back in the cart, and then transfer it to the little cart I use to shlep the groceries home. Kids are useful that way...Besides, I knew he was dying to spend some alone time with me. He is of an age where we need to find excuses to spend time together.

It was nice having him along. He asked me to buy him stuff at the store, but that's par for the course. I had allowed for that in my budget.

The only catch was that the store was out of microwave popcorn. I'd wanted to stock up because the kids are home for the week and they enjoy making popcorn and watching movies. Asher and I looked up and down all the aisles twice and didn't find any. I said, "Well, maybe I'll just have to make popcorn from scratch."

Asher turned a quizzical face to me and said, "How do you MAKE popcorn?"

"OMG," thought I. "What had I wrought? Did I actually have a child who didn't know how popcorn was made??"

That settled the matter right there and then: I was going to buy and make popcorn. This was quite clearly a necessary aspect of my son's education.

You see, in the days before microwaves, I was actually the popcorn queen. I used to make a kilo of the stuff every single Friday. This was the family treat for Shabbes. It was filling, crunchy, satisfying, and most of all: inexpensive.

We had a lot of kids and deemed Shabbes treats an important part of their Jewish education. We wanted our kids to love Shabbes. Popcorn served us very well as a way to make our kids feel the joy of the day without us having to spend a fortune.

Making popcorn had been a part of my week for so many years that I was shocked to discover that Asher didn't have any recollection of homemade popcorn in his memory bank. But you see, it's like I raised more than one generation of children. My eldest turns 31 tonight. Asher is 11. My daughter's memories of childhood are by nature, going to be vastly different than those of Asher.

Still, I was appalled that he really didn't know how real popcorn was made. It was like growing up in the city and thinking that milk came from the supermarket rather than from cows. It was akin to forgetting how to play with Lego because of spending too much time on the computer. It seemed my duty as a parent to show Asher that popcorn can be made with love by a mom.

So even though it was the last thing I needed to add to my to-do list for today, I bought a bag of popcorn. We brought it home and I showed Asher how to check the kernels for signs of infestation as per Jewish law. Then I got out my big heavy pot and showed him how I do the popcorn thing. It involves a lot of heavy-duty shaking. The heavy pot and the shaking: those are the two big secrets to popcorn making.

I made so much popcorn that it filled a large plastic dish basin. The kids were amazed at how much better it tasted than the microwave stuff they're used to eating. And I cooked it up in no time flat.

On Chanuka, the custom is to eat foods fried in oil, to commemorate the miracle of a small amount of oil lasting 8 days; the length of time it took to get more pure olive oil to light the Temple Menorah. It seemed fitting that in addition to potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts, the Epsteins also had low-tech popcorn, cooked in a pot with canola oil. Much more fitting than a cellophane wrapped bag you zap with microwaves.

Chappy Chanuka!