Recipe: Potatoes Oh My God!

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For this recipe, you will need:

* A peck of thinly sliced potatoes,
* A bushel of thickly sliced potatoes,
* A hundredweight of chastened potatoes,
* A slug of gunpowder
* A tisket of cumin
* A tasket of smelling salts
* A green and yellow basket
* A skosh of something borrowed
* A pinch of something blue
* A half measure of the finest stone-ground meal
* three ephaphs of the finest oil
* a skin of wine
* a quantity of manna (from Heaven --not from Streits or Goodman's or Manischewitz)
* a she-goat
* A ram caught in the thicket
* A village
* A rabbi, a priest, and an imam walking into a bar
* Four archers straight and true
* 16 ounces of Kraft-brand processed American cheese (shredded).


My mother used to make this recipe when told at the last minute that guests were coming to dinner. She learned it from her mother, who learned it from her mother, who probably stole it from a cooking demonstration at the Magyar Shtetl Konyhafőnök-Express, a famous chain of her day, and purveyor of mortars, little gift bags of paprika, and over-priced pepper mills. At the Konyhafőnök-Express, the help all wore aprons, even though the only thing they were doing was wrapping stuff in boxes with tissue paper.

The dish is said to have originated with the Khazars in the 7th century C.E., but oblique references to it in the "Antiquities Recipes of Josephus" (circa the First Century C.E.) suggest that it is in fact, much older. Schlemmer notes that substitutions almost certainly were made in key ingredients from era to era and region to region. "For one thing, there were no potatoes in Josephus' time, as these are indiginous to the Western Hemisphere, and were not introduced to the Middle East and the Mediterranean regions of Europe until centuries after Josephus' death."

Finkle, on the other hand, has remarked: "Who is Schlemmer? I've never heard of him, and vice versa."

"Be that as it may," says Schlemmer, there were no potatoes."

"But the recipes of Josephus Miller are chock-full of potatoes," says Finkle, particularly his "Best Potato Recipes of Grosse Point, Ever."

"I'm talking about Yosef Ben Matityahu (Joseph, son of Matthias) and, after he became a Roman citizen, -- Titus Flavius Josephus -- apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in CE 70," notes Schlemmer.

"Ohhhhhhhhhh. That Josephus," concludes Finkle.

Charlegmane favored POMG at court. So did Pepin the Short and all the other Pepins. Not that this should matter to anybody, because who cares what Pepin thinks, anyway?

Somebody once told me that they knew of a variation on this theme in a cookbook put out by the Sisterhood of Temple Shalom, Y'all in Charleston, South Carolina. But when I leafed through the yellowed and stained pages of the aging tome, I found only the usual suspects, things like: "Jello Hoo Ha!" and "Crumbled Matzah with Collards;" nothing even remotely resembling the subject of this discussion. When I confronted the friend who gave me that Southern cookbook, she said: "just kidding."

The famous dough-boys of World War I were never introduced to this meal, which is not why they were called dough boys. Ditto, the dough boys of World War II, who, incidentally, were never called "dough boys," although their war was called "World."

We can see from the foregoing that, due to variations in local weather conditions and the vagaries of Trader Joe, ingenuity is the hallmark of this dish, as, indeed it is with all cooking a la casa. But for some things, there is no compromise: if you're going to use manna in a can, instead of from Heaven -- just forget it.


Preparation:

Over the Millennia, the actual instructions have been lost, but they involve digging a large pit, and talking to the potatoes sternly to let them know what's what. The role of the priest, the rabbi, and the imam, is somewhat unclear, but it has something to do with skull caps and garlic.