Latkes!

I used to loathe potatoes (the devil's tuber!) but I really love latkes. Mashed potatoes are still gross unless they're filled with garlic or a gallon of sriracha sauce to make them taste not nasty.  But latkes are awesome.  This recipe comes from my mother in law.  My husband is the primary chef for this recipe, he's in charge of the frying pans.  That's right, pans.  He's so badass that he uses two frying pans at once!

Before I looked at her recipe, I had issues with my cut potatoes turning brown.  She suggests soaking the potato pieces in a bowl of ice water to preserve their color and it works really well!  These are great when they're crispy, I would definitely err on making them too crispy versus too soft.  I prefer my latkes with some sour cream mixed with fresh dill and topped with sliced green onions.  I served them with a salad so I could pretend that at least part of this meal is healthy.

My husband and I don't make these terribly often.  Usually we make them right when the weather starts getting colder.  At the bottom of this post, you can see a comparison picture of the first latkes we made.  These are much improved!!  The first attempt was crispy around the edges and kind of mushy in the center.

This recipe supposedly serves two people.  We did eat all of the latkes we made.  However, I'd argue that this recipe serves three or four people because it made eight latkes and I completely stuffed myself because I ate four.

"Kibbeh" Meatballs

I've been away for a while, I went to Japan for vacation and it was fabulous!  Once I raid my local Japanese market, I'm definitely going to try and make some of the amazing food I tried while I was there.  Real ramen! Katsu! Sushi!  Well, maybe not sushi.  From what I hear it's expensive to ride in an ambulance.

But until then, here is a dish that was almost a colossal failure until my husband suggested we turn it into meatballs. It turned out to be a great tasting meal that made enough meatballs for me to freeze some extra.  I topped it with some super easy muhammara sauce and served it with a side of tabbouleh.

The plan was to make this recipe for baked kibbeh.  I don't know if it was because I ground my own lamb (Wegman's was out), if my onions were too watery, or my food processor juiced up on steroids while I was away, but it turned my kibbeh shell mixture into a sticky, runny pile of gloop that was impossible to roll into a uniform sheet and even harder to cut into rounds with a cookie cutter.  As I sat with my lamb gloop in one bowl and my delicious smelling filing in a frying pan and attempted to figure out how exactly I was going to turn it into kibbeh, my husband had an idea.  Why not just stir the filling into the meat disaster and make meatballs?  Brilliant!

Man Can Cook - Spaghetti and Meatballs

It's still winter in DC, blech!  It's cold and gross out, which means it's time to make comfort food!  I have an awesome husband, David, who can fend for himself in the kitchen.  He even makes his own tomato sauce from scratch! This dish is one of the main comfort food meals we eat.  Dave normally makes a ton of sauce (way more than one serving each) and then we garnish it with pasta.  :)

The recipe for this sauce has evolved over the years that Dave and I have been together.  I think it's finally perfect, now that we switched from plain diced tomatoes to San Marzano tomatoes. Back in law school, when I still considered adding a packet of soy sauce to my ramen noodles to be "cooking," Dave and I decided we wanted to make spaghetti sauce.  We found a random recipe that involved adding some kind of dried soup mix to several cans of tomato sauce.  We made that a few times and it was meh.  Dave eventually found a basic recipe in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook.  It called for more tomato sauce than we had.  So, we used what sauce we had and substituted a can of petite diced tomatoes and a can of tomato paste.

Later on, we started toying with the spices.  At first, we used separate basil, oregano, *and* Italian seasoning.  But we eventually decided that a ton of Italian season worked the best.  In the summer, we grow basil, parsley, and oregano.  Fresh herbs are the best, but Italian seasoning works perfectly fine if they're unavailable.  Even when we use fresh herbs, a little Italian seasoning makes in into the sauce.

For a long time, the sauce was nice and thick on top of the pasta and watery on the plate, which was annoying.  We mostly solved this by draining the tomatoes really well.   When we finally made the switch from petite diced tomatoes to San Marzano tomatoes, we got rid of the watery issue entirely.  I handsquish (it's a technical term!) the tomatoes to get the juices out and then strain them really well.  This keeps the sauce from being watery. When handsquishing, make sure to do it with your hand down in your sink.  The first time I did it, I neglected to do so and splorted tomato seeds and juice all over my shirt, the counter, and floor.

The meatballs, I confess, are not home made.  Dave's mom makes AWESOME meatballs, and whenever they come visit, we demand politely request that she bring some frozen ones out for us. I've included her recipe in this post.  It's for a huge amount of meatballs, but they keep very well in the freezer.  I normally eat 4 and Dave eats 5.