Passover cuisine is, first of all, potatoes, if you, like me, are European Ashkenazi Jews. Potatoes with chicken, potatoes with fish, potatoes with meat and potatoes with potatoes - that’s what Easter cuisine is. But there is no need to despair, because potatoes are tasty and varied, do you know how many dishes can be prepared from them? French fries, potato pie - these are chips that are fried in a pan in boiling oil. No, not all. Potato pies with meat, mushrooms, cabbage and so on, potato pancakes. Somewhere we only heard about such cuisine in movies, but here in Belarus we lived and ate this way. I know an endless number of recipes for potato pancakes and potato pies, but I’ll tell you about the most important ones.
First place and a gold medal, of course, went to potato pancakes. Each family has its own signature recipe for these pancakes, the ideality of which I do not recommend challenging. The base is potatoes ground into an almost homogeneous mass. The rest of the ingredients, including onion, egg and matzah (in Passover) flour, were added by everyone as they wanted and as much as they saw fit. In our family, only salt and a little ground black pepper were added to grated potatoes; the rest was considered unnecessary, because potato pancakes should be made from potatoes. Very thin, lacy around the edges, the pancakes were fried in boiling oil on both sides until golden brown. As a rule, they ate it with sour cream, and I don’t remember a case when pancakes were left over for tomorrow.
They ended immediately after they began, although my mother fried them in two frying pans at the same time. After dinner, each of us went to the stove with an empty plate in our hands to check if by chance there was another pancake left unnoticed by anyone; no one ever found it, but everyone followed the ritual of searching for the last pancake.
The next most popular potato dish was sorcerers. These are potato pancakes with meat. Again we grated the potatoes on a fine grater, a lot, a lot. The fact is that all the liquid was squeezed out of grated potatoes using ordinary gauze; after such a squeeze, its amount decreased significantly. Then we made minced meat, ground chicken or beef in a meat grinder; you can, of course, use ready-made meat.
The salted and peppered potato mixture was spooned into a well-heated frying pan with hot vegetable oil, a heel of minced meat was formed onto it, and grated potatoes were placed on top again. Fry until golden brown on both sides. The result was fried potato pies with meat hidden inside - sorcerers.
They were usually served with a tomato and cucumber salad.
At the very top of the pyramid of potato cooking lie zeppelins. Cooking them is a little more difficult, but the result is elegant. If in previous recipes proportions are not important, then zeppelins require more respect. There is a recipe. You will need approximately 1 kilogram of potatoes, of which we boil 300 g and mash them into a puree. Grate the remaining raw potatoes and squeeze dry through cheesecloth. Then mix the puree with raw grated potatoes, add a few tablespoons of potato starch and salt. You should get a homogeneous potato mass.
Finely chop the onion and mix with the already prepared minced meat or chicken. We make cakes from the potato mass and wrap the minced meat in them. Place in boiling water and cook for 18-20 minutes. While the zeppelins are boiling, we prepare a fry of chopped smoked sausage or pastrami and onions; many people add champignons. Ready zeppelins are served sprinkled with this delicious and very aromatic roast. Fans can add mayonnaise.
Bracha Huberman