Potato Pancakes

I ought to say “Welcome to the New Year, all the best!” I ought to. But to say it with pancakes? And potato ones at that? At least it’s Friday, so this meatless dish is getting a dollop of sour cream.

Hang on, damn it, you know about my Mission Impossible 2014? Potato pancakes fit the bill perfectly, don’t they? Just the thing for losing weight…

Then again, think about it: every action hero gets the shit kicked out of him before he picks himself back up. And getting to know your enemy is just as important to the plot as the fighting. Look what Bond, James Bond, had to go through in the latest instalment, “Skyfall” (BTW, the best of the lot in my opinion, and Craig is hands down the best Bond ever and ever), only for things to end… well, not terribly well. Could’ve gone better, at least.

So let these pancakes be my chance to size up the enemy (as if we hadn’t met already ;). Let them give me a good beating. I’ll get back up and accomplish my “Mission Impossible 2014: keep the blog and lose weight”. I’ll get up because “I’ve got the power”, since we’re being so cinematic.

And I don’t just mean the power that “drives me into the face of the cold” (I’ve definitely got that one). I hope I’ve got the power to carry out the 2014 mission too. Where did that idea come from? I’ll admit I don’t like every film my little girl likes. But this one, “Kraina Lodu” (Frozen), I really, really do (Mozil is brilliant, Ninka’s fallen for Olaf the snowman thanks to him, and for me the scene at the mountain man’s shop is priceless). Yesterday Ninka and I were at Empik buying new books when we thought we’d look for the soundtrack on CD. And bingo. We sang our way through the whole thing in the car 🙂 and Ninka listened to it another 3 times that evening. So yes, we’ve got the power. I wish you that same power in 2014. May any obstacles just be something you need to “figure out”.

Back to the pancakes. Dad gave me the recipe yesterday because I’d got a craving for them. So no experiments. We’re doing it Dad’s way.

[While I was writing this post, I added a tagline to the site to explain what I mean by “recipe”: light as Grochola, dry as Coelho 😉 Hope I qualify.]

At a glance:

Preparation time: 40 minutes

Serves: 4 people

How many calories? If you’ve made one of those New Year’s resolutions about losing weight, you’d better clear off over here

Ingredients for some mighty potato pancakes:

• 15 medium potatoes (pyry in Poznań, kartoszki out east)
• 2 medium onions
• 2 hen’s eggs
• 5–6 tablespoons of wheat flour
• salt
• ground black pepper
• olive oil
• thick sour cream

Method (the first in MI: 2014):

I started the usual way, by peeling the potatoes (kartofle, pyry, call them what you like). I peeled the onions too. Now here’s where you’ll be surprised, because normally I’d grate the potatoes and onions by hand (if you know my e-book “The Primitive Cookbook with Recipes, Part 1”, you’ll know why). But I’m still down south after Christmas, so I’ve got heavy machinery at my disposal. Perfect for Mission Impossible 2014.

So I grated the potatoes and onions in a food processor (with some monster attachment from another planet). A piece of cake. Once everything was grated (potatoes, and don’t forget the onions), I tipped it out of the processor into a big bowl and poured off some of the water the potatoes had released. Into the bowl went two hen’s eggs, a little salt and pepper to taste, and I gave it a good mix. Then I added about 6 tablespoons of wheat flour and mixed again. You want the batter a bit thicker than crêpe batter. Voilà.

Oh, and here Dad pointed out that these proportions are fine now that the potatoes are no longer young and very watery. But if yours are too watery, it’s worth adding half a tablespoon or even a whole tablespoon of potato starch to the batter. No need just now (unless your spuds are from Morocco).

I poured the batter into a frying pan with nice hot olive oil (my first question for Dad was “Do I have to fry them in lard?” Fortunately olive oil works). Make them whatever size you fancy. I wanted mine on the large side, so that’s how I shaped mine. The important thing is to turn them when the top starts to set. A big potato pancake takes a fair bit longer to cook than a crêpe, for instance. Before serving, I drained off the fat on a plate lined with a paper towel. I topped the pancakes with sour cream and gave them a good peppering to taste. Pretty good, though next time I think I’ll make them with Hungarian-style sauce (probably sometime in 2015 though ;). Enjoy!