I don't know the reason but on my morning dog walk I found myself thinking of an elderly neighbour, now passed on, who introduced herself as 'from Donegal where they eat spuds skin and all' and then followed that with a rhyme which went;
Boxty in the griddle, Boxty in the pan, If you can't make boxty you'll never keep a man.
So it had to be boxty to go with supper - basically baked potato cakes. The recipe I had called for 2lbs of grated potatoes, a generous handful of flour, salt and pepper to taste. This is mixed and pressed into rounds and baked in the oven on an oiled pizza tray, 200C for 45-50 minutes until golden.
Next time I'll add chive and parsley to the mix and squeeze more water out of the potatoes to see if they bind using less flour (I've seen recipes calling for a 50/50 mix of grated potatoes and mashed potatoes). They were good though, a nice crunchy crust giving way to a soft centre.
I'll try them cold with a yoghurt dip to see if they make good picnic food and over the weekend I'll reheat them topped with a fried egg. I've also frozen some to see how early potatoes cooked in this way store when they would otherwise be starting to soften and go off around now.
Yummy - I shall be trying that this weekend.
Posted by: Sue Swift | December 06, 2007 at 04:16 PM
I had this several times as a kid, and really loved it.
I've tried several times to cook this, but I guess my logic was messed up by having McDonalds hash browns, and I always thought they had to be fried or you had to buy frozen preformed ones that cooked in the oven. I've never thought of baking them and since I didn't know what they were called, I couldn't look up a recipe.
I couldn't figure out what to use to hold them together. The best I could come up with was mixing eggs with them!
The next time I have some nice tasting potatoes, I'm going to give this a try!
Posted by: Patrick | December 07, 2007 at 11:59 AM