Dorie Greenspan describes these as fluffy mashed potato pancakes. I’ll give you that. They are fluffy. And made from mashed potatoes. Apparently she’s made quite the project of perfecting them. I’m guessing that this is another one of those “you had to be there” recipes.
To be sure, I’m really neither a potato pancake person, nor am I really a pancake person at all (give me those crispy edges on a waffle any day). But, hey, you gotta try something new from time to time. As usual, I was kind of late to the party, not really reading the recipe, and wondering how I was going to manage a full day of work, 1-1/2 hours of baking a potato, and then all of the other stuff – it was going to be a long evening. After a long weekend of a houseful of guests for the holiday
, and many (many) meals to be served, it wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping for.
Then again, who doesn’t like potatoes, so…. the potato gets baked in it’s bed of kosher salt, presumably to extract as much moisture as possible.
It gets scooped out, and then put through a ricer.
Once that’s done, then it gets added to the eggs.
Egg whites get whipped until there are peaks,
And then they are folded into the potato mixture (folding in about a quarter of the whites to lighten the mixture, then folding in the remaining until just barely incorporated).
Once that’s completed, the batter is ready for baking. From here, just the same process as any pancake, though you can see that the batter is definitely fluffy.
I served mine with a pork tenderloin with that wonderful balsamic-honey sauce we made for the duck breasts.
These were tasty, but I’m not certain that they were worth the time and effort required – or the dishes that I had to clean up after! I did, however, put the leftovers in the freezer as suggested, so one of these days, I’m sure I’ll be happy to pull them out and heat them up for a much faster version. They did have a nice, subtle potato flavor, and they were in fact, light and fluffy as promised.
These will not be something that I can’t wait to make again. Plenty of other options for that. But interesting, and something different.
dulceshome 
I will try the balsamic/honey sauce on pork tenderloin – I still need to catch up, or rather make over, the duck breast recipe. I liked the pancakes but am wondering what shortcuts can be taken. 2 hours is a lot of time!
I like the menu you paired the pancakes with. It is a bit of work for sure.
I’m with you – I’m not sure they were worth all the time I put into them. I think boiling and mashing would’ve given just about the same result.
We served our with pork also. I wasn’t a huge fan, but I might give them one more try.
I’m with you! These were fine, but I didn’t think they were worth the time. The pork sounds awesome, though!
I’m glad I decided on a faster cooking method for the potatoes. I thought it worked well and I would do it again…yea for the microwave! Because this recipe was fairly quick and I did add lots of flavor ingredients to my batter, I liked this recipe, but I thought it sounded bland as written.
Yes…but if you had leftover potatoes you could always do this, right? My guess is Dorie had them too and also needed a few more pages for her book. 🙂
They were a lot of work for the results. Especially since we don;t really eat potatoes either. (And my D agrees with you – crisp waffle edges any day.). Yours turned out well though, nice brown edges and the pork with the balsamic vinegar sauce is a great idea!
It was time consuming – I made mine in the blini size so I was able freeze some for future use which made the labor somewhat more palatable.
Yours look terrific!