cook.

Draniki (Belarus)

Name: Draniki (Belarus)
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Belarusian
Ingredients: 800 g floury potatoes; 1 onion; 1 egg; 2 tbsp plain flour; 1 tsp salt; 0.5 tsp black pepper; 4 tbsp oil or lard, for frying; 200 ml sour cream

Grated potato pancakes, fried crisp at the edges, with sour cream on the side

Ingredients

800 g floury potatoes

1 onion

1 egg

2 tbsp plain flour

1 tsp salt

0.5 tsp black pepper

4 tbsp oil or lard, for frying

200 ml sour cream

Method

Grate the potato and onion together on the coarse side of a box grater. The onion is not only for flavour - its acid keeps the potato from going grey while you work.

Squeeze the mixture hard in a clean cloth over a bowl and keep the liquid. Squeeze harder than feels necessary; wet batter steams instead of frying.

Let the liquid stand for 5 minutes. A white layer of starch settles out. Pour the water off and scrape the starch back into the potato - that is the binder.

Mix in the egg, flour, salt and pepper. The batter should just hold its shape on a spoon. Fry one now and taste it for salt before you commit the lot.

Heat the fat properly - a good 3-4 mm in the pan, hot enough that a shred of potato sizzles at once. Shallow, cool fat is what makes them soggy.

Fry in batches, flattening each spoonful thin, 3-4 minutes a side until the edges are lace-brown and crisp. Do not crowd the pan.

Drain on a rack, not paper, so the undersides stay crisp, and serve hot with cold sour cream.