Scallion Potato Cakes

I've made potato latkes and a potato roesti before with excellent results, so I was very excited to try Thomas Keller's Scallion Potato Cakes too. The recipe is incredibly simple, and the results are amazing: a crisp, flavorful potato cake. I had to cook mine a little longer than the suggested times in the book in order to get it to brown evenly, and I did have to add a little more oil while it was cooking, as the recipe suggested. (Oh, and I cut the recipe by a third to just make one 8- or 9-inch cake instead of three.) The best way I've found to flip it is actually to slide the cake onto a baking sheet with no sides) and then place the skillet on top of the cake, and holding the baking sheet against the skillet, turn the whole thing over. There's virtually no chance of breakage.

I wanted to try this recipe because we had received a bunch of scallions in our farm share this week. I love making potato pancakes that are similar to this recipe, but include eggs, so I was surprised by the simple ingredient list. The potato cakes held together very well and the scallion flavor complements the potatoes nicely, but without being overwhelming. I used a "generous pinch" of salt and pepper as Keller suggested, and it added wonderful flavor.

As another review mentioned, I also had to cook the cakes for quite a bit longer to brown them enough on the outside and to make sure they were cooked through in the middle. Turning the potato cakes was no trouble with my fritatta set that has two interlocking pans, but I learned to make tortilla espanola by inverting a pan onto a plate and then sliding the tortilla back into the pan and I think that method would work here for the potato cakes, similar to the baking sheet method Keller suggested.

I would definitely make this recipe again!

These potato cakes were good - but suffered because we have become big fans of the sweet potato hash from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook.

I found these to be not so challenging to flip - I used my bench knife to assist the spatula. I liked the addition of scallions, and the potato starch was genius - they really did make cakes that stuck together. But I didn't like having to use as much oil as is needed to keep the potatoes sizzling.

I will try applying the potato starch technique to sweet potatoes - a hybrid Ad Hoc/Zuni sweet potato cake.