Cooking made easy – Potato pancakes

Potato pancakes are very simple to make. They are great for breakfast or any other meal. With this particular recipe, I have added onions, but you can leave them out if you’re not partial to onions. The onion flavor tends to be a background taste and doesn’t detract from the main ingredient. As with all my recipes, you can adjust this one to suit your family’s tastes. If served as an evening meal, the pancakes can be flavored with herbs and spices, or you can add other vegetables. If you are adding other vegetables than onion, try to pick harder, dryer ones, like egg plant or leeks. Just chup them in the same way I have done the onion.

Time taken is roughly ten minutes preparation time and twenty minutes cooking time.

This recipe makes four large pancakes.

• You will need:
• Equipment:
• A grater
• A sharp knife
• A bowl
• A skillet or heavy frying pan
• A spatula or fish slice
• Ingredients:
• 4 medium potatoes
• 1 onion
• 2 tablespoons corn flour
• 1 egg
• salt and pepper to taste
• olive oil

First, peel the potatoes and keep in a bowl full of water.

Next, grate the potatoes and put the grated potato back in the water in the bowl.

Next, peel and finely chop the onion.

Drain the water out of the bowl the potatoes are in and squeeze the grated potatoes to get all the moisture out. When the potato is dry, add the grated onion and mix, then add two tablespoons of corn flour, salt and pepper to taste and mix again.

Now add the egg and mix one last time. Use your hands to shape the mixture into balls. Don’t worry if they are a little messy and falling apart, as they cook, they corn flour and egg will hold it all together.

Put the skillet - I usually use Le Creuset cookware for this type of work - over a medium heat and add two table spoons of olive oil. When the oil is hot, turn the heat down low and add the balls of potato. If you have a lid for your skillet, you can cover it but if you don’t, that’s alright, this will still be fine. Flatten the pancakes with the spatula and cook slowly for about ten minutes until the pancake starts to go brown on the bottom. Turn and cook the other side. When the pancakes go dark brown, they are ready.

This is a wonderful change from hash browns for breakfast, especially served on high quality glass breakfast ware - but these I served for supper with roast chicken and wild garlic pesto and a home-made ratatouille a la Provence.

Bon Apetit!