This week's French Fridays with Dorie almost never got made - we received the recipe list fairly late, and I have been away on business for the last two days. I squeezed in this week's recipe, Matafan (mashed potato pancakes) the day that the list was posted.
I had hoped that Matafan would be quick and easy, but unfortunately, they are a bit of a pfaff. You need to salt-roast potatoes for an hour and a half, then push them through a sieve, then mix them up with eggs, milk and flour, and after seasoning them, add separately beaten egg whites, and then fry them. Good grief!
As I do not have a potato ricer, and pushing the not really soft potato through a sieve didn't work very well, I just ended up trying to mash the roasted potatoes, and ended up with lumpy pancakes. Now this is not bad - think frittata and its ilk - but these probably would have been better if the potato was smooth. (I don't think an hour and half roasting time was quite enough for my potatoes.)
Lumps aside, these pancakes were rustically good - batter + potato + seasoning is rather good, but not better than bunging a pierced potato in the microwave for 5 minutes, cutting it open and slathering it with whatever you fancy. For my money, I will stick with the latter, but I am glad that I learned aboutt matafan (which are totally new to me - never heard of them before).
To see what the other Doristas thought of matafan, check out the FFwD LYL link for this week when it is up.
