I loved to watch my father cook.\u00a0 He was as patient as a scientist, as skilled as a musician playing a piece he\u2019s performed more times than he can remember. Sometimes he even made what he called a potato babka<\/em>: pouring the batter into a large loaf pan and baking it. The word itself still makes my mouth water decades later, though my own kitchen will never be filled with that aroma.<\/p>\n Did he consult a cookbook or was he remembering a recipe he had learned at home in eastern Czechoslovakia before the Holocaust? No, he just worked instinctively with the onions and potatoes, the flour, eggs, salt and pepper.<\/p>\n Years later, in a college course where we read Castiglione\u2019s The Book of the Courtier<\/em>, I learned a wonderful Italian word: sprezzatura<\/em>. It was the art that concealed all art, the ability to do things flawlessly without betraying any effort. While my father was no Renaissance man \u2014 I don\u2019t remember him ever cooking much of anything else \u2014 perhaps sprezzatura<\/em> was a secret ingredient of those latkes<\/em>.<\/p>\n And perhaps I tried too hard to equal him, longed too deeply to recreate a moment in time that looked like magic and felt like a feast. These days, I don\u2019t worry about equaling what he did, I just enjoy the memory of the love and dedication, the patience, and the sights and smells of my taciturn father loving his sons without words.<\/p>\n Lev Raphael is the prize-winning author of The Vampyre of Gotham<\/a> and 24 other books in genres from memoir to mystery. You can study creative writing with him on line at writewithoutborders.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even though Father\u2019s Day is about six months off from Hannukah, it always makes me think of my father’s rare times in the kitchen making potato pancakes. Fried in a large, battered cast iron pan, these latkes were always perfect: crisp outside, juicy inside, delicious whether served with sour cream, sugar, apple sauce–or just plain. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1379],"tags":[9,1374,1376,1375,1312,1377,1259,1378,1381,1076,1380,1000,1219],"class_list":["post-3642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fathers-day","tag-cooking","tag-fathers-day","tag-fathers-day-2018","tag-fathers","tag-gratitude","tag-hannukah","tag-http-writewithoutborders-com","tag-kitchens","tag-latkes","tag-love","tag-potato-pancakes","tag-the-vampyre-of-gotham","tag-writewithoutborders-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3642"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3667,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3642\/revisions\/3667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/potato-pancakes.jpg\")
<\/a>I\u2019ve used all kinds of pans, potatoes, and onions over the years, but have never been able to duplicate his latkes<\/em>, not even with his advice. I\u2019m not just being nostalgic and romanticizing the past. Back then, my mother said her latkes<\/em> were never as good as his, and she was a gifted cook.<\/p>\n