Monday, September 07, 2009

Potato cake


I have not found the ideal recipe for potato cakes. Ones bound with flour - as in a Simon Hopkinson recipe in Roast Chicken and Other Stories - taste too floury, in my experience (though perhaps I should have made them smaller and flatter, like Scotch pancakes). Mashed potato simply formed into patties and fried tends to fall apart. But the one above worked pretty well.

It is bound with beaten egg. I used just enough egg to bind the potato, which became alarmingly squidgy. However, once placed in hot oil in the frying pan, it cohered.

My daughter complained that the texture was too dry.

2 comments:

emma said...

This is exactly how I make them and my mother and grandmother before me. I think your daughter will not find them not too dry if there's plenty of butter in the basic mash!

Nicholas Clee said...

Thanks, Emma. I'm sure that's the solution. I didn't put any butter in the mash, reckoning that the oil in the pan would provide enough fat. But the egg seemed to act as a kind of seal.