[2] A champagne cocktail with blue curacao and a gold sugar rim. You can substitute edible gold glitter (photo courtesy Living-On-Cloud-Nine.com).

Just as many of us “drink green” on St. Patrick’s Day, you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy a blue cocktail on the first night of Chanukah (December 12, 2017; the date varies each year according to the Hebrew calendar).

You can use any cocktail recipe with blue curaçao. Add a white accent and you have the colors of the Israeli flag.

This cocktail recipe* (photo #1), from The Breakers in Palm Beach, is a riff on the Piña Colada, with orange flavor (from the curaçao) substituting for the pineapple juice.

Don’t like coconut?

Here’s another blue Chanukah cocktail recipe without any coconut flavor.

Want something elegant? Pour blue curaçao into a champagne flute, add sparkling wine. You can create a rim with sparkling sugar.

RECIPE: BLUE & WHITE CHANUKAH COCKTAIL

Ingredients Per Drink

 
Preparation

1. PREPARE the rim of the glass. Set down to shallow dishes: one for the agave, one for the coconut. Dip the rim of the glass into the dish of agave; then twist in the dish of coconut.

2. SHAKE the other ingredients with ice and strain into the glass.

TIP: If you want to save calories, use coconut milk instead of Coco Lopez.

More blue cocktails: Create a whole cocktail menu!
________________

*They didn’t intend it as a Chanukah cocktail, but as one matching the beautiful blue ocean around The Breakers. They call it the Coco Snowball.

This year, Chanukah, the Jewish Festival Of Lights, begins the evening of December 12th (the 25th day of the month of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar). And we’ve got some great latke recipes to celebrate.

But why celebrate with latkes only during Chanukah? While the date on the Gregorian calendar changes slightly at the end every year, usually in December (it’s based on Hebrew calendar months, which are of different lengths than our Gregorian calendar months), there is a National Latke Day on March 7th. It was established in 2017 by latke lovers who wanted an excuse to have latkes beyond the Jewish holidays.

> The history of latkes is below.

> So are latke recipes.

> The history of potatoes and the different types of potatoes: a photo glossary.

> All the potato holidays.
 
 
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHANUKAH

In ancient Judea, the Syrian King Antiochus ordered the Jewish people to abandon their religion and worship the Greek gods. In 165 B.C.E., Judah, leader of the band that called themselves the Maccabees (Hebrew for hammer), drove the Syrians from Israel and reclaimed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, removing the Greek statues.

When they finished their work, on the 25th day of the month of Kislev, they wanted to rededicate the temple by lighting the eternal light (N’er Tamid), a candelabra that is present in every Jewish house of worship. Once lit, the light should never be extinguished.

But there was only a tiny jug of lamp oil—enough for a single day. There was no more purified* oil to be had. A miracle occurred: The light burned for eight days.

This is the origin of Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, which is celebrated for eight days. The word Chanukah means “rededication.”
 
 
THE HISTORY OF LATKES

Potato latkes are a Chanukah tradition, but they are enjoyed year-round by Ashkenazi† Jews during.

To begin at the beginning, potatoes, which originated in Peru, arrived in Spain in the mid-16th century via Spanish explorers. By the 17th century, they had become a staple crop in Eastern Europe and, among many other recipes, were turned into grated potato pancakes in Jewish cuisine.

Latkes are not an ancient food (the word means “fried cakes,” i.e. pancakes, in Yiddish, derived from the Ukrainian oladka around 1830). The fried potato pancakes of European Jewish cuisine descend from sweet Sicilian ricotta pancakes that appeared in the Middle Ages (and evolved in Jewish cooking into cheese blintzes).

They traveled north to Rome, where the Jewry called them cassola. Here’s a recipe for ricotta latkes.

While traditionally sweet, you can make a savory version with herbs instead of sugar.

To acknowledge the miracle of the oil, foods fried in oil, like latkes, are celebratory fare for Chanukah; as are sufganiyah, jelly donuts; and loukoumades, deep-fried puffs dipped in honey or sugar (oy, the carbs!).
 
 
Modern Latkes

For centuries, potato latkes were the rule. Toward the end of the 20th century, adventurous cooks bucked the tradition with sweet potato latkes.

Then, anything was possible: latkes from beets, carrots, celery root, parsnips…If it’s a root vegetable, it can be turned into latke. You can also use non-root vegetables, like summer and winter squash.

Whether or not you celebrate Chanukah (in our upbringing, we celebrated every holiday that had a food focus, regardless of religion or nationality), if you like fried potatoes, Chanukah is your opportunity to try eight days of different recipes and toppings.

The latter range from the traditional sour cream or apple sauce, and luxury toppers like smoked salmon and caviar (photo #4).

They can be served as a first course, a side, with the salad course, and as mini-bites with cocktails (photo #2).

Or, serve breakfast latkes with poached eggs: the Chanukah version of home fries (photo #5).
 
 
LATKE RECIPES

 
But wait: There’s more!

Here are 30 modern latke recipes including such gems as:

[2] Mini latke bites with creme fraiche and a seasonal cranberry sauce garnish (photo Great Performances | Facebook).

[3] Potato latke with caviar: If only we could afford it (photo Tsar Nicoulai).

[4] Gluten-free carrot-scallion latkes. Here’s the recipe from Elana’s Pantry.

[5] Breakfast latkes, with a poached or fried egg. Here’s the recipe from IdahoPotato.com.

*For temple lamps, ritually pure olive oil was required. It took time to prepare: By religious law, the olives could not be pressed. Instead, choice olives were pounded and left to sit for several days, enabling the oil to drain out naturally—but very slowly. The yield for this special olive oil was (and is) very low [source]. So the Maccabees had to wait for new batches to be prepared.

†Askenazi are a Jewish diaspora population who coalesced as a distinct community in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium. They settled along the Rhine River, in Western Germany and Northern Franc [source]. Sephardim (Sephardic Jews) are the other major Jewish ethnic division. It emerged as a distinct community on the Iberian Peninsula, around 1000 C.E. They established communities throughout Spain and Portugal, and, exiled in the late 15th century, migrated to North Africa, Anatolia, the Levant, Southeastern and Southern Europe, and the Americas [source].

[2] Crosnes serve as the roots of this flowering plant (photo Wikipedia).

[3] Close-up (photo courtesy Cuisinons Les Legumes.

[4] Crosnes with grilled swordfish at Il Goto | Paris).

[5] Crosnes and peas. Here’s the recipe from Honest-Food.net, photo Holly A. Heyser).

Do you know about crosnes (pronounced crones)?

We didn’t until about a year ago, when they were served to us as a main course vegetable at Petrossian in New York City.

From the order Lamiales, the botanical family Lamiaceae, commonly known as the mint or deadnettle family, has lots of flowering plants, many of them aromatic.

The family includes culinary herbs such as basil, hyssop, lavender, marjoram, mint, oregano, perilla, rosemary, sage, savory and thyme.

But there are other family members that don’t fit in that group. One interesting member is crosnes (photo #1), pearly little tubers, the root of the plant.
 
 
WHAT ARE CROSNES?

Crosnes are rhizomes, edible roots of a flowering plant (photo #2). Crosnes have the unique look of larvae (photo #3) (as does malloreddus pasta from Sardinia), which can be cool or creepy, depending on your disposition.

It is an aesthetic perspective: Chinese poets have compared crosnes to jade beads.

They are harvested in the fall, like potatoes (which have similar nutrition but are from a different order, Solanales, and family, Solanaceae).

The name references the French town of Crosne, a suburb of Paris. The root was brought to the area by local chefs returning from travel through Eastern Asia, in the 1800s.

Local farmers grew the crop as something of a delicacy, and the vegetable was quite fashionable across Europe for some time, before declining in fashion (source).

Depending on how they’re cooked, crosnes are crunchy, with a flavor and texture reminiscent of water chestnuts (order Poales, family Cyperaceae or jerusalem artichokes (order Asterales, family Asteraceae).

(We provide this botanical information to illustrate that vegetables that may seem to be related actually have no kinship at all. )

Originating in China, crosnes (genus and species Stachys affinis) are also known as Chinese artichoke, Japanese artichoke, artichoke and knotroot.

The thin skin ranges from a pale beige to ivory white in color, with white flesh inside. It is not peeled before cooking. The nutty flavor is delicate.
 
 
HOW TO SERVE CROSNES

Crosnes can be prepared similarly to poratoes Jerusalem artichokes; but they require extra soakings and brushings to remove all the dirt from the small, convoluted shapes.

Crosnes are used as a general vegetable or starch, in salads, and as a very interesting garnish.