Potato Pancakes

Source: I remember watching Julia Child as a teenager and being as amused by her as the rest of the nation. One important thing, though? She really, really could cook. I got this recipe by watching her old PBS videos and scrambling to take notes as she cooked. Naturally there's a lot of "and perhaps a little more butter...," and for this recipe it's essential. I could eat this every day. Then I'd be a whale, but a very happy whale.

Rating: Exceptional

Notes: As I say below, you gotta squeeze as much water as you can out of your shredded potatoes. Otherwise, your pancakes are going to fall apart and it will be a sad dinner. Use any hard cheese you'd like. We used a leftover chunk of probably-too-hard manchego. And I recommend the whipped cream cheese over the bar of cream cheese. It'll make your mixing much easier.

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INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups potatoes, shredded
• 4 oz. whipped cream cheese
• 1/4-1/2 cup hard cheese, shredded
• 1 egg
• salt & pepper

METHOD:

1. After shredding the potatoes, squeeze the water from them. This is essential! Mix all the ingredients together well until it looks like cole slaw.
2. Add butter & oil to a large frying pan. Make sure there's plenty of fat in the pan for frying, at least 1/8 inch. Make pancakes by adding 1/2 cup of the batter to the pan for each pancake, and patting these down into disks. Fry each side for about 5 minutes. They should be nicely brown on each side, not golden brown.
3. Makes about 9 pancakes.