There's a little history behind this: Years ago I had subscribed to the "Time-Life Good Cook" cookbook series, where they send you a book each month or two with recipes and techniques. I mean, we're talking 30 or 40 years ago. And most of the books weren't very useful. Not very interesting recipes and the techniques weren't too informative. And nowadays of course you can get help on techniques all over the internet.
However, their "Vegetable" book had a recipe for Potato Pancakes that I really liked, but somehow I lost that particular book, probably because I set it aside for that specific recipe. Over the many years since then I've tried other recipes for potato pancakes and also latkes which are basically potato pancakes from Jewish cuisine, but I didn't think any of them were as good. A lot of recipes are flat out stupid - they're not potato pancakes at all, they're simply hash browns. Anyway now, probably 15 years after I lost the book, I'm cleaning out my library and find it. So here's the recipe. It's probably not as particularly special as I remember it.
They recommend serving it with applesauce or preserves. Me, I butter them while hot (so the butter melts) and then do sour cream.
Ingredients
6 medium-sized potatoes (about 2 lbs), preferably baking potatoes
2 eggs
1/4 cup finely grated onion
1/3 cup flour
1 tsp salt
Bacon fat or lard
Instructions
1. Peel the potatoes and, as you proceed, drop them into cold water to prevent their discoloring.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs enough to break them up, add the onion, and gradually beat in the flour and salt.
3. One at a time pat the potatoes dry and grate them coarsely into a sieve or colander. Press down each potatoe firmly into the sieve to squeeze out as much moisture as possible, then immediiately stir the potato into the egg and onion batter. (Note from Joe: many recipes for handling grated potatoes say to pile them on a dishtowel, fold the dishtowel over them and wring it to squeeze out the moisture. I think this works really well. I also do it with the onions, which actually contain more moisture than the potatoes.)
3. Preheat the oven to 250F. In a heavy 8- to 10-inch skillet, melt 8 tablespoons of bacon fat or lard over high heat until it splutters. Pour in 1/3 cup of the potatoe mixture and, with a large spatula, flatten it into a pancake about 5 inches in diameter.
4. Fry it over moderate heat for about 2 minutes on each side., When the pancake is golden brown on both sides and crisp around the edges, transfer it to a heated ovenproof plat and keep it warm iin the oven.
5. Continue making similar pancakes with the remaining batter, adding more fat to the pan when necessary to keep it at a depth of 1/4 inch. Serve the pancakes as soon as possible with applesauce or ingonberry preserves. (Note from Joe: As I said above, lots of butter and sour cream).