Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Potato Pancakes and Art Fairs

I tried to spend every waking moment of last weekend outdoors. It was the first consistently gorgeous weekend that Chicago has seen this season and I just couldn't get enough. Saturday was spent strolling (and sometimes shoving) up and down Wells St. for the Old Town Art Fair. Unfortunately, the art was pretty expensive - and a lot of it was those cheesy pictures of ballparks and cityscapes - but we found other ways to entertain ourselves, namely beer and food.

Vendors from Old Town had set up stands along the street, so you could choose over-priced mini-portions and sample the cuisines (I'm not exaggerating here, they were really charging $3 for one egg roll). Kind of like the Taste, but without the tickets and on a much smaller scale. I did, however, stop at the booth of a Polish restaurant that had huge Polish sausages on the grill, pierogies with potato filling and the largest potato pancakes I have ever witnessed. This was not something I was expecting.



















In my mind, potato pancakes are reserved specifically for Hanukkah at which time I try to consume as many as possible to hold me over until next year. But as soon as I saw these 8-inch latkes, I simply had to have one. Actually we had three, because that's how they were selling them. Three 8-inch potato pancakes with sides of sour cream and apple sauce. I was in heaven.

The consistency was a little thick for me, I think the potatoes had be chopped too finely, but the flavor was nice and oniony and the outside was crispy and brown. It was an unlikely surprise on a hot day in June, but now I only have 6 more months until I get them again!

Just in case you can't wait, here are some of Recipe4Living's favorites:
Potato Latkes
Sweet Potato Latkes
Hanukkah Latkes
Grandma's Potato Latkes with Ginger Apple-Pear Compote
Authentic Potato Pancakes

Photo courtesy of Matt Terski on flickr

1 comments:

Hillary said...

Mmmm...I want latkes sooo badly now.