I am really not sure why she still calls me. I don't even remember how we met, but somehow she has my phone number and dials it - it's down to about once a week now. Usually it's around midnight and I'm winding down for the evening. I used to just screen, but lately I realize it's more efficient to just talk to her once than to spend energy silincing ringers and running to check the ID and deleting voice mail. Besides, sometimes I am just curious.

She's, uhh, in a mental hospital. Or something. At least some of the time. There are two numbers in the Bay Area that appear on my cell. One, I know is a house in San Francisco, the other, she tells me, "is this place I have to stay once in a while with doctors. And, like, I don't think I should have to go there but I do."

Think about this. How low do you imagine the threshold for a forcible mental health commitment is in a state that sent Sonny Bono to Congress? Or how it never ceases to be remarkable what passes for "sane" in a state where twelve thousand of its citizens recently voted for Gary Coleman as governor.

In other words, she is not "endearingly quirky." She converses with certain species of houseflies, is convinced that I, along with her father, are working with the CIA, and she is Buddhist, Muslim and Mormon. She is obsessed with (among other things) silicates, Penta water, Classmates.com and "Who's the Boss," (which her Uncle wrote most of the scripts, under a secret Pseudonym, btw).

Amazingly, our telephone conversations do not follow a narrative structure germane to any literary tradition or interlocutory protocol with which I am familiar. But that's all okay. Because I will say she is the only person on earth I really don't talk about food with. I don't mention that I do my own stock and have, oh, eight* kinds of flour in my pantry and that, well, I cook and think about food. Like, a LOT. Again, I am usually just so confused by what we DO talk about that I cannot seem to find the language to tell her, well, basically anything.

Anyway, this is why this conversation was so interesting: out of the blue, the little mynx asks me if I was hungry and then tells me that I should go to my kitchen and make potato pancakes according to directions that she would provide. All it took was potatoes, flour, salt, a bit of butter, and some paprika.

Now, I could think of things far worse than listening to a woman talk to me about carbs, butter and salt. In fact, that's basically phone sex. So I indulge her.

I mean, hey, it's research.

I do like the idea of potato pancakes, but I've never been able to get them right. I don't really like the taste of pan-fried leftover mashpots, I don't like adding a bunch of eggs and milk to shredded potatoes. Sometimes they just turn green and I can never quite get the "raw" taste to disappear. So I usually don't make them at home.

She tells me that the key is to grate the potato, squeeze the mass dry with your hands (for obvious reasons I changed the recipe SLIGHTLY after hearing that), and sprinkle in just a little bit of flour to help hold them together. She also told me not to try to "mash" them together. Let them cook in the pan and slowly work them together. Mashing just makes it harder for the entire mass to cook and you wind up with raw potato.

So I do it her way. And I will be damned if these were not the best potato pancakes I have ever tasted. The consistency was a BIT loose, but they tasted great. Crispy, salty and rich, with a browned outer layer and insides that yielded to my teeth. A little sour cream and I was set.

Potato Pancakes ala IAG

1 large Yukon Gold potato (a fist-sized potato should yield you about two pancakes)
1/2 cup onion, finely diced
2 T butter
1 T flour
1 t salt
1/2 t paprika
sour cream and chives (optional)

Grate the potato on the largest blades of your grater. Place the grated spud into a tea towel and squeeze as much moisture out as humanly possible. Dab potato mix dry with a paper towel and place (the mix) in a bowl.

Add the onion, salt and paprika. Mix. Sprinkle on the flour and mix thoroughly.

Melt the butter on a nonstick pan over medium heat. Sprinkle on about half of the potato mixture - all over the bottom of the pan. Do NOT crowd or press. Allow the potato to cook for about three minutes until it starts to brown.

Slowly move the potato together into a loose mass. Start to tamp the edges of the mass LIGHTLY. It will slowly become a unified pancake.

Flip. (You can use a large spatula if you have one, or you can butter up a large lid, place the lid on top of the skillet, and then, while holding both pan and lid, invert the pan so that the pancake falls onto the lid. Then, slide the pancake back onto the pan, raw side down.)

Cook the other side, extract to a plate, garnish if desired and devour.

Makes two.

*All Purpose, Bread, Cake, this bootleg mix of AP and Bread I use only for biscuits, Corn, Blue Corn, King Arthur Whole Wheat and a little bit of this artesianal wheat flour I bought in Metamora.
Posted by Jeff at 12:38 AM:: Permalink :: (Comments Closed)

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