At Riverdale Temple’s first-ever latke cook-off,

By Marie Villani-York
Rachel Radna was clearly looking to tempt a sophisticated palate when she decided to forgo potatoes and instead make what she had hoped would be award-winning latkes entirely out of carrots, beets, cauliflower and an array of spices.

Donning an apron — a necessity when frying up latkes, as any good chef knows — a cheerful Ms. Radna was among the first contestants to step up to the starting line in Riverdale Temple’s kitchen Sunday morning to compete in the temple’s inaugural Great Latke Fry-Off. She had already made several batches of orange, purple and yellowish latkes before many of her fellow chefs had even arrived, giving her time to ponder how she would fare against a more traditional potato pancake.

“I might win the color wars,” she speculated, flashing a big smile.

By 10 a.m., with several more cooks at the stove, the distinct smell of frying oil and onions hung in the air like a cloud and clung to the clothes of anyone who had stepped into the kitchen even briefly to check out the action, lend a helping hand or steal a bite.

The contestants’ culinary prowess ranged from the professional, like Michael Newman, who teaches a cooking class at the Riverdale Community Center, to the novice, like Valerie Zucker, who was making latkes for the very first time that morning.

“We thought it’d be fun,” said Ms. Zucker, who hovered over a garbage pail as she and her husband Peter peeled potatoes.

Some got their latkes out of a cookbook, while others, like Otto Kucera, a funeral director at Riverside Memorial Chapel who is married to the temple’s rabbi Judith Lewis, consulted an old family recipe. Recreating a traditional dish isn’t always easy, Mr. Kucera explained. “If you try to get a recipe from my mother, it’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that,” he said. “There are no set measurements.”