Happy Low Salt Chanukah!

My mother came to visit this weekend for Chanukah. She is on a low salt diet, which always makes going out to restaurants a bit of challenge. However, we promised her that everything I cooked at home would be as low in salt as possible. Since Saturday night was designated "Latke Night," I had to come up with a tasty low-salt latke recipe.

Now one tack is to add savory spices to the latkes to create a new latke entity. Possibilities include:

Indian spices - curry powder, cumin, garam masala

Mexican spices - chili powder and picante

Italian spices - basil, oregano, thyme

Dill and mint

Now that I think about it, I should have tried dill, mint, parsley, and onion powder. The onion powder would give it a rounder, saltier flavor to balance out the bitterness of the dill. And hopefully, this could all be done without any added salt.

However, I didn't try any of the above. Instead, I substituted half of the russet potatoes with sweet potatoes. This gives the latke a slightly sweet dimension that makes up for much of the missing salt without making the whole dish noticeably sweet. One caveat...sweet potatoes do not bind together like russet potatoes, so you need to make sure you have enough egg in the mixture to hold everything together. I think the only way to make the dish using only sweet potatoes (and no white potatoes) is to add extra egg. Furthermore, it helps if you squeeze and shape the patties before frying them instead of simply ladling the potato mixture into the oil (which you can do if you only use white potatoes).

I must say that the latkes came out pretty well. Or at least I thought so. Shirah took a bite and immediately reached for the salt. The kids put ketchup on them. Of course, they put ketchup on everything. That's what happens when you are born in Minnesota. But I digress...

Yesterday at religious school, I taught the 5th graders how to make latkes. It was an interesting experiment in project management: trying to distribute tasks among 20 10-year olds. I divided up the room into four tables: two tables grated potatoes, one chopped onions, and one mixed the egg, matzah meal, and salt together. We only had one "grating" injury requiring a Band-aid (well, a couple of Band-aids in rapid succession) which really wasn't too bad considering that these were young children wielding sharp knives with a 1:7 adult:child ratio.

Personally, I thought the recipe had WAY too much salt in it. I'm not sure whether the kids read the recipe wrong, or if they read the recipe correctly and I just need to adjust the 2 tsp. to 1 tsp. However, my wife tried one later in the day. She commented, "They were really good. I noticed that they tasted a little different from the ones you make at home...but I couldn't pinpoint the difference."

"They had salt in them," I told her evenly.

"Ah..." she said with a voice that suddenly understood every dish I ever made in the past ten years.

I'm going to buy her a salt lick for the 8th night of Chanukah.