“You can always tell the cook at a Hanukkah party.
Because he or she will be the one whose oniony fragrance can make your tear ducts swell, whose knuckles are scraped raw from the box grater and whose eyes have the glazed look of one who has spent the last two hours hunched over pans of bubbling oil, jiggling spheres of loose batter that threaten at any moment to explode into disfiguring sprays of hot grease.
“You are eating hot latkes — potato pancakes — with sour cream and warm, buttery applesauce; drinking red wine; and perhaps watching small children cheat at dreidel games. If you are at certain houses, there will be warm sufganiyot, Hanukkah jelly doughnuts, straight from the fryer, although substituting product straight from the closest Winchell’s is not unknown. Perhaps there will be brisket later — we Jews are programmed to make brisket on all festive occasions — although it is not guaranteed. You are happy. We, the cooks, are probably in the kitchen, grumbling through the 13th batch of latkes, but in our way, we are happy too. We don’t want you to starve.”
“I will not be cooking sweetpotato latkes, or latkes with refried beans and caviar, or Paula Wolfert’s Gascon potato pancakes stuffed with leeks. I will not sneak cranberries into the applesauce or replace sufganiyot with pumpkin pie. If there is meat, it will be brisket, as the great rabbis intended.
“And I will stagger into the dining room, knuckles bloodied, and hand you another platter of latkes. You will eat them until you plotz. This is the bargain we have made.”