Latkes! Encore!

Since we're all unabashed potato lovers in this house (that's right, I even PEEL them half the time), I'm often looking for new flavors to pair with earthy-starchy.

We still had several pounds of VA apples from our camping/foraging trip last weekend, so I started off by simmering them with a little molasses and brown sugar, a la this recipe. And since we'd also brought home 3 pounds of the biggest, gnarliest taters I'd seen in many moons, well, Latkes were on the menu again. What a tragedy, eh?

The fun thing about these was surely the secret filling - folded slices of brie, all melty and creamy. Man. I think I ate 5 before I realized what I was doing. Add a little applesauce on top, and there's some serious flavor play happening here. Yum.

Brie-Stuffed Latkes

4 large potatoes, parboiled and peeled
2 large eggs, scrambled
1 medium onion
3 cloves garlic
2/3 pound Brie, rind on
Handful of all-puropse flour
1 tsp baking powder
Dash of milk, soymilk, cream, or water
Salt and pepper, to taste

Vegetable oil, to shallow-fry

We're following this technique almost totally - the only difference is the stuffing part, which happens in the pan, so procede as decribed - parboiling, peeling and shredding your taters - shredding the onion over the same disc, adding your minced garlic, salt and pepper, then mix. Add your eggs, flour, baking powder, mix, and then a tiny pour of milk, until you see batter thinly coating each shred of tater.

Heat about 1/2 inch of oil in a heavy iron skillet to medium. Have your cheese at the ready. We're keeping the heat a little lower than usual to give us time to make and stuff three latkes at a time.

Fork about a tablespoon of batter into the pan and flatten it with the back of a spoon. Quickly press a piece of brie into the batter, leaving a border of pancake free from cheese all the way around it. Fold it to fit if need be. Fork an equal portion of batter over the cheese, making sure to enclose it completely. Procede to make 2 more latkes in this way - by time you finish the third, it'll be time to flip the first.

When you flip these babies, press down slightly to compress, but be gentle. You don't want to squash your cheese out of its pocket.

Continue making latkes until the batter is gone. You'll have 10-12 large pancakes.

The cheese replaces the traditional sour cream accompaniment, at least for me. I didn't have any on hand, so I didn't try. Could be magic, who knows?

Enjoy.