It's been over six months since my last post. This is because my long-standing back problem finally decided to go critical. I twisted it in March last year and throughout the summer and well into the autumn I was unable to walk more than a couple of hundred yards or even stand up for a few minutes without experiencing severe pain down my left leg. And I also found that sitting at the computer for any length of time caused problems. I didn't completely stop cooking but I generally focused on the quick and easy end of the culinary spectrum and didn't have much energy left for blogging (or much else besides). On 28 December I went into hospital for a micro-discectomy, and three weeks later I am pretty much pain-free and mobile.
Although it's been a long nine months, there have been quite a few positives: I have certainly learned to appreciate some of the simple pleasures I had been deprived of, such as walking, standing and blogging, and I've also learned how to chart a middle path between an unconvincing stoicism and constant whingeing.
In the meantime, our veggie box has continued to arrive and as autumn turned to winter parsnips have featured with increasing regularity. Last year, I turned the parsnip glut into some rather fiddly oven-baked fritters but this year, in the wake of Hanukkah, I was inspired to make some parsnip latkes.
Ingredients
1 kg parsnips
300 g onions
3 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
Method
- Peel the parsnips and grate finely by hand or using a food processor. Squeeze out the excess water.
- Peel and chop the onions, and whizz in a food processor with the eggs and salt. Add parsnips and whizz again briefly.
- Heat about 1 cm vegetable oil in a large frying pan. Use a tablespoon to shape the mixture into fritters, add to the oil, fry until golden-brown, turn carefully and fry the underside.
