SPUDDY!

To me — a mottled mutt of German, Irish and Hungarian — the potato isn’t just a tuber, it’s a life continuum. Mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, skillet potatoes, au gratin potatoes: Have potato, will eat. But there is one potato permutation that stands alone. It is usually delivered unto me on days dreary and weary when my world is flat and the dust motes blot out the sun. Thusly pummeled, I gaze into the potato basket (the bottom one of the three-tiered wire number that hangs above the sink, onions in the middle and garlic on top, thank you very much) and find three old potatoes, gnarly with eyes and kind of soft. Another woman might sigh in defeat at such a vision, throw them in the garbage and pick up the phone to dial Domino’s.

Dumb broad. She doth not recognize the salvation before her! Three
over-the-hill taters are the impetus for potato pancakes.

No, I am not going to tell you to shred those spuds with your
miserable knuckle-busting hand grater. This is a recipe that you have
to be able to execute when you’re exhausted and plumb flat out of
everything, or after having several adult beverages. Because although
you always make potato pancakes when you have three old
potatoes, you also make them at 11 p.m. or later when everyone’s sauced
to the gills and starving.

This is what I call a pedestrian recipe, suitable for the simple
everyday people who understand simple everyday things: chocolate
frosting, not ganache; beer, not pilsner; and (oh, for
chrissake already) pickle, not cornichon.

Wash those tired old potatoes and cut out any bad parts and eyes.
No, you don’t have to peel them. Cut the spuds into quarters or eighths
(you’re talking about 2-inch chunks) and schlep them to your blender or
that maddening metrosexual of an appliance: your
safety-mechanism-laden-slices-and-dices-flawlessly-every-goddamn-time
food processor fitted with the steel S blade. Then pluck a regular
cheapo yellow onion from the middle basket, peel it and cut it into
quarters, and toss them in with the spuds. Next in are two raw eggs,
three tablespoons of flour, and some salt and pepper. Now pulse all
that until it gets mixed up proper, but is still lumpier-than-oatmeal
lumpy.

Get a big ol’ bottle of your regular vegetable oil and get ready to
use about half of it. Attention oleic acid freaks: DO NOT reach
for the olive oil. It smokes too much for this recipe. If you no likey
getting down old-school with the Wesson or Mazola, then get the hell
out of the way. Go sit next to the broad with the Domino’s pizza, frost
your cornichon with some ganache and wash it down with a pilsner.

For everyone who’s left, start with three glugs of oil: That is,
pour the oil into a 10- or 12-inch skillet until it goes “glug glug
glug.” Heat it up over a medium flame, then drop about a quarter cup or
so of the batter into the oil per pancake. It should sizzle gently. If
it lies there like a batter cadaver, your oil’s not hot enough. And I
never try to do more than four in a pan, due largely to my poor
flipping skills.

I wish I could tell you how long to cook these potato pancakes, but
the sad fact is, I don’t really know. Sometimes I flip them too soon
and they’re too light. Sometimes I flip them too late and they’re a
little burnt. Sometimes I get them just right and they’re golden brown.
Maybe if I didn’t constantly fiddle with the temperature control and
timed them for about three or four minutes per side, I wouldn’t have
such troubles, but I am what I am. (Hey! That “sizzle gently” directive
is tricky.)

There is nothing neat about potato pancakes. The oil splatters all
over the place, and the batter tends to get all wiggy when you plop it
in the pan. But by some miracle, you’ll still end up with a pretty
good-looking potato pancake. Sometimes they’re round, sometimes
amoeba-shaped. Who cares?

When they’re done, I put them on a plate lined with paper towels. To
hell with Alton Brown and his cooling racks. I am happy with my
delusion that the paper towels wick off all excess oil and practically
render the fried cakes into health food.

Put those bad mothers out for everyone to nosh. I’m all about a
drizzle of hot sauce on top, but sour cream and applesauce have their
place as well. While everyone else eats, you’re back at the stove for
rounds two, three and, oh hell, however many rounds there are. (You
will not believe how many potatoes pancakes you get from three lousy
spuds, two eggs and an onion.)

You’ll need to keep adding oil for each batch, as the cakes soak it
up like a sponge (until you put them on the magical fat-leaching paper
towel, of course).

When you’re the maker of the potato pancakes, you never sit and eat
them; you’re relegated to lean against the counter, dithering over
whether to flip or not to flip whilst you eat the burnt or botched ones
out of hand. Everyone will agree that your potato pancakes are as
perfect a thing as they’ve ever eaten — crispy and hot and rich.
So swig your beer and laugh at everyone’s jokes. You can vanquish the
dust motes tomorrow. For now, throw a shake of salt over your shoulder,
and bask in creating something brilliant out of almost nothing.

eobnow@cox.net; erin-obrien.blogspot.com

This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2009.