Dalo makes a worthy substitute for potato in latkes. Unlike potato, dalo doesn’t hold a lot of water, so your latkes will never be soggy. They are also naturally sticky, so will always hold together.
Though I typically squeeze the water from the grated potatoes for potato latkes, I’m used to the latke mixture weeping while I’m frying the latkes. By the end there is a wet mess at the bottom of the mixing bowl. With dalo, there is no need to squeeze anything. The dalo hasn't wept.
For those after a vegan gluten free dalo latke, it’s simple: leave out the eggs. Dalo is sticky enough that you don’t need eggs to glue it together.
Ingredients
1 dalo
1 onion
1 cup chickpea flour
2 medium free range eggs
salt
oil
preparation: 15 minutes
cooking: 1 hour
makes at least 20 latkes
Steps
1. Select and peel a dalo.
2. Cut the dalo into large chunks, then grate. We used a little under two thirds of our dalo for this batch.
3. Dice the onion.
4. Mix the onion and grated dalo in a large bowl, then add chickpea flour.
5. Crack the eggs into a separate bowl, whisk briefly with fork, and stir eggs through the dalo mix.
6. Now is the time to add some salt, if you like. Your mixture should look like this:
7. Coat the bottom of a frying pan in oil and heat it. Olive oil is imported here, and costs too much, so we use an inexpensive local soybean oil instead. Once the oil is heated turn the temperature down lower. Soybean oil on high can burn the edges of the latkes before the body is cooked through properly.
8. Spoon some dollops of mixture into the frying pan, and flatten them with a fork.
9. Fry the latkes until the edges turn golden brown, then turn them over, as here.
10. Fry the other side for an equal length of time.
11. Slide out the cooked latkes, refresh the oil, and add more mixture for cooking.
12. Repeat the process until there’s no mixture left in your bowl.
13. Serve, and top with whichever condiment/s you prefer.
