Carrot Latkes with Yogurt Stuff

Recipe and Words by Bria Berger

Sometimes life presents unfathomable, even insurmountable complications, like when you wake up to find your CSA (shout out to Tomato Mountain Farm) left you 50 giant carrots in your weekly box of vegetables. Or when you try to teach Yiddish to the goyim in your life and they already know the requisite schmooze, verklempt, etc. so you have to drum up something else to remind them of your patrilineal Jewish ancestry.

The solution to both of these problems: LATKES.

For the goyim (non-Jews) among us, latkes (Yiddish for small pancake) are most recognizable when made with shredded potatoes and served with applesauce and sour cream à la Hanukkah. The original latke was likely deep-fried ricotta (!) and subsequent versions were grain-based and fried in schmaltz (Yiddish for chicken fat) but none of this is as interesting as my latkes so let’s get to it.

These latkes were made with carrots, plus a few carrots and a dash of carrots. Continuing the trend of the coconut almond flour pancakes in the last post, this recipe is 100% gluten-free and under control. In fact they were so under control that by the time the designated pancake flipper (colloquially known as Steph) came over to take photos of beer next to my perfect succulents (#greenthumb), I’d already shredded all of the carrots and most of my fingers.

It was at that time I realized that on top of being used for my greenery and professional-quality hand modeling (#unpaidlabor) I’d been roped into making this elaborate meal from scratch because I am not a skilled negotiator.

Luckily Steph brought green juice Diet Coke which gave me enough energy to mix up the corresponding aperitif, based on my DIY ferment of 50% kombucha and 50% ginger beer that had been hanging out with the leftover hoppy raspberry syrup situation for a week [editors note: kombucha exploded with a blast zone that spattered the entire kitchen and left raspberry chunks in both of our eyebrows and eyelashes]. After adding gin and an overly ambitious shake of bitters, the resulting drinks were perfectly carbonated and aromatic and acidic and way too alcoholic because why was I in charge of making drinks?! 

Steph also had a beer but what more could possibly be said about that? It was dark and full of gluten and probably tasted beer-y. [editors note: all beer consumed was full of gluten and tasted beer-y, but not all beer that was consumed was dark, oy vey.]

Cilantro, scallions, and a ton of kosher (get it?) salt transformed Fage Greek yogurt into a slightly more interesting Fage for dipping the aforementioned latkes. After Steph did the hard manual flipping labor, we were left with a crispy stack of fried circle-shaped vegetables topped by a savory yogurt companion and washed down with a glass of pink, punchy fermented joy.

We ate, saw, conquered, and then Steph didn’t do the dishes and we [redacted] for five hours. byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

[editors note: I don’t like oxford commas but I’m too lazy to go through and remove them. Apologies to other oxford comma protestors.]