Happy Chanukah all!  I’m not Jewish, but man is their food good! Bagels, Knishes, Lox, Brisket, Kugel….some of my favorite foods are Jewish.  I lived in New York a long stretch of my life so I feel that I have had the best version of many of these foods.  Avocado cream on top is where four years in California meets my New York roots.  And honestly I had some greek yogurt in the fridge along with some avocados ripe on the counter and I figured, why not?

First of all, I am really glad that I got to utilize just about the craziest looking sweet potato in this dish.

I grew three different types of sweet potatoes this season, the georgia jet, porto rico and the murasaki.  I used a Porto Rico (the long skinny one on the left) and a Murasaki (the purple white fleshed one) on the right for this recipe.  It made 8 small sized latkes, which I would say would be plenty for 4 as a side with other dishes for dinner.  The Porto Rico sweet potatoes are orange flesh but a lighter orange color.  I think next year I would like to try growing darker orange varieties, as those are my favorites.  This whole sweet potato patch was purely experimental as in California we couldn’t grow them and Katee, my fellow farmer, and I had bother NEVER grown them!! They are fun to grow, they vine out so much they didn’t really require much weeding since they covered the ground in no time!

Sweet Potato Latkes with Avocado Cream

For the latkes:

2 generously sized sweet potatoes, peeled and shredded with a box grated or large microplane

1 egg

1 small onion, diced small

1 tablespoon fresh sage, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

salt

grape seed oil

In a medium sized bowl, combine all the ingredients.  Mix well.  Take the sweet potato mixture and ball it together tight in your hand and then kinda mash it flat.  Try to get it pretty thin because you want it to get crisp and be cooked all the way through at the same time without burning.

Heat grape seed (or any high heat oil) in a large cast iron.  Gently place latkes in hot oil,  when they are browned deeply on one side (about 2-3 minutes) flip them and evenly brown them on the other side.  Remove to a paper towel to drain excess oil.

For the Avocado Cream:

1 ripe avocado, pitted and peeled

1 small clove garlic

1/4 cup fresh cilantro

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 cup greek yogurt (full fat!)

salt

In a food processor, combine avocado, garlic, cilantro and lemon juice.  Blend until minced well.  Add yogurt and blend well.  Salt to taste.

I made this dip before I was done with latkes and I had some crackers lying around and started dipping them and I have go to say, its seriously addictive.  I love when culinary ideas are born out of not having something you need/want in the house (sour cream) and being too cold/lazy to go out and buy it.  I also don’t see the need to spend more money on food when you already have plenty to work with.

Serve the latkes hot and crispy with avocado cream on top and cilantro to garnish.