Loving Local: Potato Pancake Picnic

Back home in Pennsylvania the end of summer always brought one particularly festive event, the annual Potato Pancake Picnic held at the Sportsman's Club. A traditional Potato Pancake dinner includes 4 foods that are perfect for using the delicious produce so bountiful at this time of year: mountains of crispy potato pancakes, accompanied by bowls of freshly stewed tomatoes, sweet creamed corn, and spicy applesauce. You can't have a proper potato pancake dinner without them.

Potato Pancakes

Grate 3-4 large potatos. Mix with:
2 egg

1 medium grated onion or 3-4 shredded scallions or ¼ c. chopped fresh chives
1 cup flour
½ tsp salt
Mix well.
Heat oil in a heavy frying pan and when it is very hot drop the mixture in by the spoonful. Flatten out. When crispy on one side, flip and fry until golden. (This recipe is from my cookbook, Fry Bacon, Add Onions, my cookbook/memoir of growing up Pennsylvania Dutch. )

Stewed Tomatoes

Wash 4-5 tomatoes and bring a pot of water to a boil. Stick the tines of a fork into the stem end of tomato and plunge into boiling water until skin begins to crack and peel. Do this to each tomato. Hold under cold water and peel skin off. With sharp knife remove stem. Cut tomatoes into pieces, place in a clean pan with small amount of water, cover tightly. Heat on medium for 15 mins. stirring occasionally. Add 1 tsp. salt, ½ tsp. white pepper, 1 tablespoon sugar. You can add 1 tablespoon minced onion, chopped green chilies or minced green pepper if you like.

Creamed Corn

Once you make home-made creamed corn you'll never be happy with the canned kind again. Butter and sugar corn is the best!

Make a roux from 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons four. Add in 1 cup milk and simmer until thick. Add 1 cup heavy cream, 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp. cracked pepper. Stir in 4 cups corn cut fresh from the cob. Simmer over medium heat until corn is cooked through.

Applesauce

The best applesauce is made by using 2-3 varieties of apples. Make sure you have some Macintosh but also try Granny Smiths, Red Delicious, Gala, Jonathans, etc.

Peel and cut 3-4 lbs. of apples and cut them into quarters. Place in heavy pot with 1 cup water, juice of 1 lemon and a few strips of the lemons peel. Stir in 1 tablespoon cinnamon or 3” of cinnamon stick, ½ c. brown sugar and ¼ c. white sugar, ½ tsp. salt. Simmer until just tender. Remove lemon peel and cinnamon sticks. Mash with potato masher or leave chunky.

Speaking of cooking with fresh corn once, when I was living in State College, PA my Dad called me on a Friday afternoon and asked if I could come home for the weekend. Seems a farmer friend of his had an abnormally large corn harvest that had to be brought in ahead of an early frost that was predicted. Dad and my brothers were picking corn as fast as they could and the farmer was giving everyone several bushels of corn to whoever helped pick. Dad said they were going to need help putting up all that corn.

So I drove home and discovered my parents in their kitchens (my parents' house had two kitchens, Mom's, and Dad's downstairs next to his shop). They were boiling up the corn and it was my job to cut the kernels from the cob and pack them in to jars to be processed. Well, we worked all night and we sure had plenty of corn for the winter. But I didn't realize how much juice I was getting splashed with as I cut the corn! By the time I was finished my hair was standing straight out from my head and was stiff as boar bristles! It took three washings to get all the corn starch out of my hair! Ah, the joys of a bountiful harvest!

This post is part of Loving Local, a blogathon to support Mass Farmers Markets, a non-profit that helps farmer's markets. The blogathon was the idea of Tinky over at In Our Grandmothers' Kitchens. 

Thanks for reading.