Roesti- a potato fantasy

The other day my neighbor dropped by with some vegetables from her garden. She had way too much, so she gave me several tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchinis. Over whelmed by the amount of the produce- much more than I usually consume in a given week- I decided I would try out a few new recipes. I used the cucumber for everyday salads and sandwiches and with the tomatoes, already overly ripe, I made a simple sauce for pasta. More on that some other time! That still left me with three enormous zucchinis.

A few days ago I stumbled upon a funny food blog with cheap, simple to make recipes. It’s called recession-ipes which makes use of the word pun rec-ession and rec-ipe. Among a few good recipes on the blog, I found one that is a variation of a dish I used to eat all time when I was little. The potato-based recipe is fairly popular in Switzerland and Germany. I guess while it’s traditionally eaten for breakfast, I prefer it for lunch. The original Roesti is only grated potato, which is fried and usually accompanied by either applesauce, or my favorite ketchup. I usually add an egg, flour and chopped onions to the grated potato before I fry it. It is truly delicious but it is sort of on the heavy side, it is still fried potato. This brings me to this recipe I found on recessionipes because this variation uses half zucchini and half potato.

I tried it last night, and it is just as tasty as using only potatoes, maybe even better. While I think you shouldn’t skimp out on the oil in this recipe, because this is necessary to get that crunchy crust and the soft inside, it is comparatively healthy.

As always I’ve changed the original recipe to the ingredients that I have available at home. Also because I was only cooking for myself, I halved the recipe. Here it is:


Ingredients:
1 medium potato
1 zucchini
Salt & Pepper
1 egg
¼ cup flour (original recipe calls for whole wheat flour)
2-3 tbsps canola or olive oil
½ onion, chopped


Clean and scrub, but do not peel, the potato and zucchini. Grate potato and zucchini into a colander and toss with a teaspoon of salt. Let sit for about 10 minutes, then scoop up about a handful into a clean dishcloth. Wring out over the sink. Place dried grated vegetables into a large bowl. Repeat, switching to a clean dry dishtowel if need be, until you’ve dried all the grated vegetables. You want the potato and zucchini to be pretty dry at this point.



Add the chopped onions, beaten egg and flour. Mix well. In a skillet, heat oil over high/medium heat. Pick up about a handful of veggie mixture, and shape into patties and put it into the skillet. Cook about 3 minutes, until the bottoms are golden, and the patties have set, being careful not to burn the bottoms. Flip the patties over and continue cooking approx. another 2-3 minutes. Remove to a plate lined with a paper towel. Serve immediately!