Annie Does Leek Fritters

Annie cooked for me! For a couple of weeks, she had been talking about making dinner for me and asked me to get some leeks and sour cream for her from the store. She wanted to make a recipe from Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen cookbook, Leek Fritters with Garlic Sour Cream. It's not often that Ann cooks. I love it when she does because she's a great cook! Her dinners always make me happy.

Leek Fritters with Chive Sour Cream

I was happy, but surprised when Ann asked me to help her in the kitchen to cut the leeks, green onions, and garlic. It's tough for her to be in the kitchen with me because sometimes I forget that I am no longer a chef and no longer in charge of the kitchen. As a chef, my job was always to be checking up on things, tasting, giving feedback, and instructing on technique.

In a home kitchen, when addressed to your wife, no matter how well intentioned, this stuff comes across as patronizing and irritating. I get it and I am trying to keep my mouth shut. After all, as Ann says, we're cooking dinner at home, not running a restaurant. I think I'm getting better, but old habits die a slow, slow death.

Poaching the Leeks

The original recipe called for finely minced garlic for the sour cream and lemon topping for the latkes. Ann had asked me to mince garlic for her and I did so, thinking it would have gone into the latkes, because that's what I would have done. But then she put it in the sour cream, saying, "I don't know about all this raw garlic in the sour cream."

Ann made it, tasted it, and wasn't very pleased. After some hesitation born of wasting food, she ended up pitching it and making a chive sour cream instead, a much more pleasing sauce.

Mixing in the Flour and Egg à la Latkes

After cooking the leeks and mixing in the green onions, flour, and egg, Ann started cooking the fritters using my old cast iron skillet, latke style, two by two. Any idea how hard it is to watch them cooking and smell their delicious aroma, yet having to wait for them to be done to dig in?

Cooking Leek Fritters

When the fritters were cooked, we ended up on the front patio dining al fresco. It was worth the wait! These leek fritters were so awesome that Ann vowed to make them again. But next time, she's going to sweat the leeks instead. We agreed that poaching dilutes flavor, while sweating concentrates flavor.

My Griswold #8 Skillet from the 1930s

For years while I was in the restaurant business and did not really have time or energy to cook at home, my old Griswold cast iron skillet stayed in the cabinet. Every now and again, I'd rub it down with a bit of oil, but it went unused for years.

Now that I'm retired and cooking all the time, the old skillet is back in action once again where it deserves to be. I've never seen a finer, flatter, and more well-seasoned skillet in my life. This skillet is in immaculate condition and will long outlast me, as long as it has an owner who will take care of it as it was before it ever came to me.

I am vague on the provenance of this skillet. I am certain that my mother gave it to me, probably after I had graduated from college and was setting up my first post-student kitchen, back in the mid-1980s. But where did she get such a treasured gift?

Was it a family heirloom? Certainly all the women on her side of the family were great cooks and every one of them had such a pan, if not several. I know that Mom had a range of pans from small skillets to vast chicken fryers. For all I know, it could be her mother's or one of my great grandmothers'. I will never know for certain, because there is no one left alive who could tell me.

It's not a unique pan in any way such that perhaps one of my living aunts might recognize it as belonging to someone in particular. The Griswold #8s were among the most highly produced size and therefore the most common and now the least valuable on the collector's market. Still, I find it amusing that a pan that I have used for all of my adult life is now a collector's item.

But because it is a collector's item, it is easy to date and value the pan. This pan was cast in the 1930s and in perfect condition as it is, could fetch $75 to $250 dollars. A pan that cooks this fine is of far more value in use in our kitchen, however, than it would be sitting on some collector's shelf gathering dust.

I hope one of our children will adopt this pan some day. But who knows how much their generation and subsequent generations will value such a venerable and untrendy workhorse?