#4 Hanukkah

The evenings are drawing in, the rain clouds gather and covid continues to strike. So we enlisted the heaviest guns in our arsenal - music, stories and carbs - and came to banish the dark.

We brought chef and farmer Hedai Offaim with the musician Karolina, for an intimate conversation that ranges between fires and light, between the expectations of the heart and the destructive wait.

For the holiday, the two cooked rosti (a Swiss potato pie) with sour cream and oranges, and finished off with a wonderful acoustic rendition of Karolina's song “Don't Be Late”. Cheers to a delicious and illuminating holiday.

Mediterranean rosti instead of a pancake for Hanukkah 

for 4 rosti, 22-24 cm in diameter

In the market:

5-6 (1 kg) potatoes of the Desiree, Vivaldi or Charlotte variety

100 g ghee

Sea salt, ground black pepper

1 small onion

1 small hot green pepper

8 sardines preserved in olive oil

12 bitter crushed olives or Kalamata olives.

In the kitchen:

Rinse and peel the potatoes, and transfer them to a bowl of cold water to prevent blackening and to obtain a firm and crispy texture. Grate the potatoes on a grater with small holes, or using a food processor with a fine disk. Add salt and black pepper, mix and leave for about a quarter of an hour, while the potatoes lose their excess liquid. Add 3 tablespoons of ghee and mix well. Meanwhile, heat a heavy skillet over medium heat and add half of the ghee. Slice the onion into ½ cm rounds, and separate into rings. Slice the green pepper to taste.

Cut the sardines lengthwise and remove the pits from the olives. When the skillet is hot and the butter has melted, place 2 sardines, a few onion rings, hot green pepper and olives onto the pan, and immediately cover with a quarter of the quantity of grated potatoes but do not press it down. Fry the rosti until the edges are slightly browned. Turn the pan over onto a flat plate and slide the rosti back into the pan to fry the other side. Continue according to the basic recipe with the rest of the fish and the potatoes. Serve with a sour cream dip with garlic, hot green pepper, a little ghee and tomato sprouts.

*** Bonus: To make ghee *** Melt 400 grams of butter over a low heat while stirring until completely dissolved. During cooking, use a spoon to gently remove the light foam that forms on the surface. When the butter has melted, let it cool for about ten minutes until the milk solids sink to the bottom and its color turns from cloudy to clear. Carefully pour the liquid into a jar, without also pouring the sediment at the bottom, and close tightly. Although the liquid can keep at room temperature, it is recommended to store it in the refrigerator anyway to extend its use time.