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12/08/2017

A heritage -- Lokse #MFRWauthor

The 52-week challenge is winding down. It has been a wild run, with revelations into my writing life and insights into the world of other writers. This week's challenge is to share a favorite recipe. Various recipes were considered and tossed aside. Finally, to go with the end-of-year and end-of-challenge theme I settled with a heritage recipe. Lokse is a potato pancake from my Slavic coal-country ancestry that was traditionally cooked on a cast-iron stove. It can still be found at holiday festivals with different toppings, although my favorite and the one most used by my family is just plain butter.

The following instructions have been modified for modern cooking. Instead of cooking atop an old-fashioned, coal-fired, cast-iron stove, a good substitute is a cast-iron frying pan. (Note: these don't work well on a ceramic cooktop.) It is suggested to make small batches at a time unless you are like my Old World grandmother who could create the dough, roll it out to the right thickness (that of a tortilla) without using so much flour it got too soft, place the pancake into the flying pan without it falling to pieces, and spin and flip the pancakes using her fingers.


So here's an actual recipe.
  • Boil potatoes until soft. 
  • Coarsely mash and let cool. 
  • Mix in 2 eggs and 1/2 cup flour. Add additional flour as needed until a soft dough forms. 
  • Roll out by 1/4 cup balls on a floured board. 
  • Sprinkle a pinch of salt in the bottom of an iron flying pan, and place the pancake in the pan. Prick with a fork.
  • Brown on one side, spinning occasionally.
  • Flip over and brown on other side.
  • When done, rub with a stick of butter on both sides. Fold into a roll and eat. (For those more elegant circumstances, you can cut the roll into inch-long sections and eat with a fork.)
To avoid a rush, they can be wrapped in foil and kept warm in a toaster oven. That is if you can stop them from disappearing as soon as they come out of the frying pan.

Thanks for allowing me to share my heritage.

~till next time, Helen. And be sure to visit the other authors to see their favorite recipes.




 

18 comments:

  1. I love it! Now I seriously want to try making them. Thanks for sharing :)

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    1. The ingredients are simple, the challenge is getting the rolled pancake which is about a tortilla thickness into the pan. Variants can be found at http://www.slovakcooking.com/2010/recipes/lokshe/ .

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  2. My mother used to make potato pancakes from leftover mashed potatoes. These look good--and I bet my husband would love them. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Although traditionally made from the end of season potatoes which were a tad drier than ones just out of the ground, we made them all year around. Leftover potatoes were never enough, when grandmother announced she was making lokse we boiled a BIG batch of potatoes just for them. Then the crowd gathered. thanks for stopping by.

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  3. Sounds tasty! Thanks for sharing, Helen.

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    1. Thanks for stopping by. Some of the variants on the slovac cooking site above also look tasty.

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  4. thanks for sharing! Sounds good!

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  5. They are a lot like latkes, which I make for Channukah. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. A difference is that the latkes I've had either in private households or in restaurants were made with shredded potatoes.

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  6. Exactly what I was about to say, Shari! I LOVE potato latkes, only they're more like exotic hash browns. I once went through an entire 10-pound sack of potatoes in a week, I craved them so much. I was also 4 months pregnant, ha ha!

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    1. Had to laugh at going through 10 pounds of potatoes. Sometimes I think we went through that much straight from the pan to a mouth without it ever making it through to the platter.

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  7. My Mom use to do something similar with leftover mashed potatoes but they weren't rolled. I have to try this it sounds yummy

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    1. The rolling is what flattens then enough that once slathered with butter you can roll them up. Kind of like those who like to fold their pizza. :) Thanks for stopping by. Be sure to check out the slovak cooking.com website which link I gave earlier.

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  8. One point that wasn't clear in the recipe is that when using leftover potatoes make sure they weren't whipped or had milk added.

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  9. These look interesting. They make me think of the potato pancakes my German grandmother used to make us when she came to visit (we put applesauce on them).

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    1. Am thinking of trying applesauce on the next batch as a sweet treat instead of having the lokse as a side dish. Thanks for sharing.

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  10. Thanks for sharing Helen. I'm getting some very yummy options to try out on the family.

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  11. My mom made a different type and called them potato patties. They didn't have eggs and we didn't roll them. I'd like to try your recipe. Thanks for sharing a bit of your heritage.

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