Irish Potato Pancakes - Boxty

From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...This is a reprise of a recipe I featured in 2009. It was part of a series that featured foods associated with festival of light celebrations that occur in December. I'm still not sure how boxty, Irish potato pancakes, ended up in that arc, but these pictures are undeniable proof they did. Here is how I saw the connection back then.

The winter solstice is nearly here and since recorded time we've tried to beat back its darkness with celebrations of light and fire. We adorn our trees and windows with lights and flickering tapers fill our homes with an artificial warmth and glow. The Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah, begins next week and I realized I had posted no recipes for those who enjoy this wonderful celebration. I don't have many, but the ones I do have should be shared with others. My plan was to post recipes for latkes and tzimmes. Then, in what my Mother would call a flight of fancy, I started thinking of my paternal grandmother. Grandma Maude was Irish and more Catholic than the pope. I've mentioned in other posts that she spent her year traveling to the homes of her many children. She managed to rotate the dates so we all got to enjoy her company for one holiday or another. Well, today, in the middle of solstice preparations, memories of Lent with Grandma Maude came flowing back. Very old school, she was into what we, years ago, called the Black Fast. The particulars of that practice are best left to those of us who lived through it, but memories of Maude and days of fast and abstinence were triggered by, of all things, latkes. Grandma Maude had a very Irish recipe that she was convinced would carry the most egregious heathen through the Lenten season. Her weapon was boxty, an Irish potato cake that is far more dense than a latke. I'll tell you up front that it is delicious, but the only thing it has in common with a latke is its main ingredient, the potato. I learned to make latkes in the German and Scandinavian kitchens of my childhood. The goal was always a lacy, thin creation that when held to the air would allow the passage of light and not bend. Sounds easy, but it's not. My knuckles were regularly rapped until I perfected the technique. Maude's pancakes were thick and heavy and more likely to break a toe than emit light. The thing was, they were delicious, and as good in their own way, as the lacy cakes that came from the kitchens of others.

So, I have retrieved the recipe for boxty from my archives in hopes that you will make these clunky, but delicious, cakes part of your St. Patrick's Day celebration. Here is how they are made.

Boxty - Irish Potato Cakes...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite

Ingredients:
1 cup unseasoned mashed potatoes
1 cup peeled and grated raw potatoes
2 cups self-rising flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups buttermilk
2 to 4 tablespoons butter
1 to 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Sour Cream

Directions:
1 ) Combine mashed and raw grated potatoes in a medium bowl. Mix well. Stir in flour and salt with a wooden spoon. Stir in buttermilk. Mixture should resemble a light bread dough.
2) Heat 2 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon oil in a large heavy bottomed skillet. When mixture is sizzling, drop batter by 1/4 cup measures into pan. Working in two batches, brown cakes, about 4 minutes per side, until they are a rich golden brown. Serve hot with additional melted butter and sour cream. Yield: 12 potato cakes.

                    

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