The Great Latke Bake-Off

Davis, Bob

THE GREAT LATKE BAKE-OFF OTSEGO COUNTY NEW YORK BOB DAVIS If there is a likely spot on this planet for a yearly latke festival, it is not Oneonta, New York. A college town of 15,000, which...

...Authorities searching for the origin of the latke have found the following early Chassidic tale: "A young man came upon Reb Gedalia of Cracow one morning...
...Belfer had prepared enough batter for hundreds of latkes the night before and in the process burned out his blender...
...After only one year as champion, Gooen placed third in the 1978 competition...
...As anyone here can tell you, he lives a few miles away in Pindars Corners...
...Located in the northern foothills of the Catskill Mountains, Oneonta is known chiefly for a segment done on "Sixty Minutes" about a Long Island co-ed who was murdered while hitching at school...
...Gooen, on the other hand, used only potatoes, onions, eggs and spices...
...He was taught in a kitchen in the Lower East Side by his mother who is still employed making bialeys in a neighborhood business...
...Enter Pat Carey, a life-long Oneonta resident who had read about the first event in the local newspaper and decided to enter...
...He carries a scar of that encounter on his thigh to this day...
...The great Otsego County Latke Bake-Off began last summer at a party as a dare...
...No special credentials were required, only an appreciation of good food...
...People loved him and he was a sentimental choice, but again the judging was blind...
...Posters announcing the event were hung all over town and the local media was alerted to try to drum up attendance...
...The rest of the story may seem progressively unreal but I swear to its accuracy...
...The chosen "experts" selected among three latkes that were simply labeled one, two and three...
...Also living in Oneonta at that time was Irwin Gooen, a gremlin of a man who worked as a mail carrier...
...But, again, remember this is Otsego County—bake-offs, usually of the apple pie variety, are immediately comprehensible...
...I knew I made the best potato pancakes in the world," she said later...
...A college town of 15,000, which numbers few Jews among its full-time residents, Oneonta is about four hours by car from New York City...
...No one was charged money to eat, but donations were encouraged...
...She grated her potatoes long and stringy, mixed in white flour and cooked in Crisco oil...
...it got the organizers half-way home...
...Gooen, using a gas camping stove, grated his ingredients fresh for each batch...
...The once lowly latke, a delicacy whose overconsumption can keep you greppsing in bed for days, became a symbol of peace, an idea to unite all peoples...
...No rabbi.' " 'Been in the Pesach wine?' " 'We finished it months ago,' the young man said mournfully...
...He had cooked latkes at parties and several fund raisers throughout the country...
...Each contestant cooked for several more hours and an impromptu hora was organized under the bright skies of Oneonta...
...Main Street is surrounded by sloping green hills and during the winter an enthusiast can cross-country ski almost to his door...
...Rebbe,' he said, T am confused...
...My soul is free, but my hind parts leaden.' "The great rabbi thought for a moment " 'Are you married?' he asked...
...But with latkes, you never know...
...The best, or at least the most popular latke, not latke-maker, would win...
...Belter's latkes included matzo meal, which aided consistency and even browning...
...There is a core of city expatriates in this town—students, teachers, merchants and modern luftmensch (those who seem to exist in bars and country homes without ever having to work for a living...
...As with most city expatriates, he was tired of the push and drive of New York and felt he c.mld finish his novel in more easy-going environs...
...It is difficult at times to keep in mind that much of what we have achieved has been brought about only through the composite efTort of great numbers of individuals of varied background and diverse origins...
...What would become of civilization...
...Ecstatic at her selection, she invited the crowd to endless rounds of food...
...Belfer turned out at least 300 latkes for the assembled guests, Gooen included...
...The morning of the Latke BakeOff was overcast and cold but by mid-afternoon it was wonderfully warm and sunny...
...The invitation that went out to about 200 people in Oneonta and New York City explained a latke like this: "A latke is a traditional Jewish dish served mostly at Chanukah...
...At the end of the party, he looked Belfer in the eye, took a latke, and threw it on the floor in front of him...
...In my estimation it is Yiddishkeit...
...Still, Jewish culture, if it exists, is subterranean...
...t-shirts emblazoned with the logo "Latke '78" and an artistic rendition of a potato peeler were put on sale...
...They would go like this (he crouched and made a chopping motion with his teeth, like a squirrel), 'Ptuy, take dis avay...
...A word about Pat Carey's latkes...
...Something, almost indescribable, is missing from their lives...
...Bill Belfer, a young, would-be novelist, had just arrived in Oneonta from his cold-water loft in Brooklyn Heights...
...Like the year before, several local businesses supported the cost of the event...
...You know I was one of the few to push for Irwin," the roly-poly, bear of a man said...
...Gooen was crowned the 1977 Otsego County Latke champion...
...Belfer also used a blender, which, understandably, struck an emotional chord in Gooen...
...Both Gooen and Belfer were primed for a rematch...
...My heart is light, but my stomach is heavy...
...There are at least 1,000 Jewish students, teachers, and staff at the local state university college, a good seven percent of the town's population...
...It is a ham and cheese sandwich with a glass of milk, "Jaws II" and a Walt Disney movie playing in the town's only theaters and nowhere to go for espresso...
...And so on...
...Although Belfer was favored by many to win (his latkes seemed more uniform and "professional" compared with Gooen's individualistic batch) Gooen won, four votes to two, with one vote for a tie...
...He had once been arrested for marijuana and he now lives with a lovely young woman...
...The great Otsego County Latke Bake-Off was on...
...Dare not cookt.' " Levine, however, was one of the few judges to pick Irwin Gooen's latkes as the best...
...You know I'm a shikse," she said when the contest organizers reached her...
...Belfer, who cooked perhaps 800 latkes over an open flame for more than four hours, was hospitalized with third-degree burns...
...A bluegrass fiddler playing "Hava Nagila" wandered through the crowd...
...She had taken to using a blender to prepare her batter and Gooen, ever the purist, continued to grate by hand...
...Pat Carey, of half-Irish, half-German descent—the Shikse Queen— would challenge the Latke King...
...On hearing that Belfer made latkes professionally, his friends, always on the lookout for at least the trappings of city life, persuaded him to cook at an upcoming party...
...The invitation asked the recipients to bring friends, beer and wine and set the event for Sunday, July 31, 1977 at a local park...
...Nate Levine, a jazz musician from Syracuse who spent many years in borscht-belt hotels put it this way...
...To the casual eater they were sweet and delicious and she put her own generous heart into each batch...
...Explaining a latke would be the problem...
...Make no mistake about it, Oneonta is bucolic...
...Bill "always-a-bridesmaid-never-a-bride" Belfer (as he called himself) was second and Pat Carey, the Shikse Queen, was champ...
...No matter, she was in...
...Temple Beth El in Oneonta claims about 60 families as members, but this is a paltry estimate of the number of Jews in town...
...It is also mistakenly identified as the official residence of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan...
...Most importantly there was a new contestant...
...But there were several new wrinkles...
...The lumpiness, he claimed, was true to his family recipe, which came from Galicia...
...This year's Latke Bake-Off was scheduled on Labor Day...
...Oneonta is hardly known at all and is reasonably content that way...
...Not the type of culture described by Irving Howe and other Lower East Side biographers, which is dead and gone forever, but the type of Jewish flavor that sweetens New York City's air and gives it pungency and roil...
...The festivities did not end, however...
...Gooen also makes wonderful latkes and was famous for cooking them at parties...
...You know what would happen if I fed those latkes to the bubbas at the Nevele...
...The celebrants were a joyful combination—young, old, Christian, Jew, city-born and long-term resident...
...Call it assimilationkeit, but the fact is you couldn't buy a bagel in Oneonta until August, and after awhile that hurt And so a latke bake-off, a way to keep up the ties to the homeland— not Israel, or Cracow, Poland for that matter, but New York City...
...A year earlier his mother had conceded that Gooen was the latke-maker in the family and he had cried...
...But for a city boy (BA, 1972, from Queens College, which included a year abroad in Israel), it can be enervating...
...Now first off, the contest organizers realized that "bake-off" was a misnomer...
...It was a glorious day...
...The local newspaper reported the event under the headline, "Latke King withstands challenge...
...And just like Rosh Hashanah, the Bake-Off was held on the most beautiful day imaginable...
...Like residents of Queens talking about Manhattan, Oneontans refer to New York City as "the city...
...You must have been eating latkes,' he said...
...Hours after the judging, after each participant had cooked close to 1,000 latkes and the organizers were clearing the ground of beer cans, paper towels and applesauce tins, Levine was philosophical...
...Originally a photographer for New York University, Gooen, now 50, had been a priest in good standing in Timothy Leary's Boo Hoo Church and a commune member in nearby Walton...
...If I had the chance to show my stufT I could win...
...The New York City of Isaac Singer, or, strangely enough, Jimmy Bres-lin—a city of neighborhoods and people who are cultures in themselves...
...Bob Davis is a freelance writer and a reporter for the Evening Press in Binghamton, New York...
...After tasting the fare, Gooen remained haughty...
...and a golden spatula award was designed for the winner...
...Why, just think of it, where else on this planet can you, in a single day, have a big plate of lasagna in Naples, South Carolina, a fresh moussaka in Athens, Georgia, crisp tortillas in San Jose, California, fried rice in Canton, Ohio and potato latkes in Otsego County...
...But there was a complication...
...For Oneonta he is faintly notorious...
...Could "potato pancakes" beat Galiciana latkes...
...There is a dearth of education...
...More than 250 people crowded the contestants, who this year all cooked on outdoor gas stoves...
...But it was not a day without sadness...
...Fry-off, sizzle-off or fry-in, for that matter, were more appropriate...
...Two hundred people ate, drank, danced and caroused—brought together by crisp, brown latkes sizzling in oil in the summer sun...
...A thought passed through the great rabbi's mind and his countenance was as rich as the ages...
...They were not the stuff of purists...
...He cooked over an open wood fire...
...At its most vulgar (goyishe) translation it is, loosely, a potato pancake—or at least one without soul...
...After a few hours of feeding the crowd, seven judges were chosen from those who volunteered...
...Gooen was the favorite...
...But there were skeptics...
...He hooked up with a group of ex-New Yorkers and mentioned that he had cooked latkes for a restaurant in the city...
...Greek and Israeli folk dancing, as well as Polish polkas, went on all day...
...As Belfer pointed out at length in the proclamation he wrote specially for the festival, "Labor Day serves to remind us both of the importance of our individual work in our daily lives and the tremendous energies which have gone into building this great nation of ours...
...It is the sort of town where the local residents have successfully defeated every attempt at building an apartment house, where there is no more than a three-minute wait at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and where the city planner is young enough to chase college girls without embarrassment...
...All this is by way of explaining— if explanation is indeed possible— the Otsego County Latke Bake-Off (Otsego is the parent county of Oneonta...

Vol. 4 • December 1978 • No. 2


 
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