In our theme of elevating modest ingredients, it's the starchy tuberous nightshade's turn today - yes, that's the humble spud. Potatoes feature in an amazing array of cultures and dishes, allying themselves with all sorts of flavours, subtle and bold, not bad for a comparative newcomer: the potato only arrived on our shores around 450 years ago, and has only been popular for less than two centuries.
Especially popular in warming winter dishes, we present three ways of celebrating spuds, good for light Christmas Eve food, or warming you up after a winter walk or browse around an outdoor market.
This is a traditional Scandinavian recipe. Because it doesn't contain meat (only fish) it's suitable for Christmas Eve, if you're following the Christian tradition of fasting before the big day. Plus it's filling and warming, a bit like a Scandi version of tartiflette or dauphinoise.
Feeds 4 as a main dish or more as a side.
The key to this dish is finding the right sort of anchovies. Don't get the excessively salty dark brown ones in glass jars. What you want is fresh, lightly pickled anchovies that are still white. Lidl and Aldi, being continental European supermarkets, are more likely to stock these than Tescos and co. Or Il Principe deli or Meli on the Cowley Rd have them.
7-8 medium large potatoes
2tbsp butter (or 1 each oil and dairy-free margarine)
1 onion, finely sliced
about 20 fresh anchovies in their brine/vinegar juice
150-250ml single cream (or soya cream)
150-250ml whole milk (or almond milk)
2tbsp breadcrumbs (dark sourdough is nice, gluten-free works fine)
Preheat the oven to 200C or gas 6.
Peel the potatoes or not as you wish. Chop them fine - you really want matchsticks here, so if you have a mandolin slicer in your cupboard of 70s kitchen equipment you never use (next to the pasta maker) then dust it off - it'll make things quicker. Otherwise, slice the potatoes finely then chop into sticks. Thin french fry size is what you want.
Melt the butter/oil and marge. Cook the onion till soft but not coloured. Add potatoes, and cook for a few minutes. You'll need to keep stirring.
Layer half the onion and potato in an oven-proof dish, top with ten of the anchovies, and season with salt and pepper. Go a bit easy on the salt - the anchovies are already salty.
Repeat with the rest of the potato and onion, the other anchovies, and pour the anchovy juice over.
Pour in milk and cream so the potato is covered. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top, and season with more salt and pepper.
Bake until the potatoes are cooked and soft (even the ones on the bottom). This will take somewhere between 45m and 1h30, depending on the size of your potato matchsticks and also the overall density of your dishful. During cooking, pour on more milk and cream to stop the top from burning while the underneath cooks. You'll need to check it 2-3 times.
This is a simple dish, which you can eat as a supper perhaps with brocolli/cabbage or something green, or as part of a full Smorgasbord.
For veggies or vegans you could make a version of this replacing the anchovies with something else that is piquant, salty and sharp, like feta or capers, though we can't say whether or not it would still tempt Jansson.
Notwithstanding their earlier voyage from the New World, potatoes bind up a lot of European social history from more recent times. This particular dish is one of many, many potato pancake recipes, and these spring up independently all across Europe from the minute potatoes began to be seen as a useful starch rather than a poisonous and suspicious horror.
But the Deruny is a Ukrainian version of Latkes, that most traditional of Jewish foods, eaten during Hanukkah. It spread from one festival of light in the darkness across to another. Hanukkah usually falls somewhere in late November or December, and you can imagine the path that carries Deruny across into traditional Christmas food. It's especially good for warming you up at Christmas markets or after a blustery family walk.
Deruny can be savoury or sweet, made with onion and served with smoked salmon, or onionless and eaten with sour cream and applesauce (in a weird non-kosher equivalent of pomme de terre and pomme of the tree!).
Unlike Latkes or Rosti where the potato is grated quite coarsely, Deruny involves very fine grating, even using the star-shaped holes of a box grater. It'll give you a newfound respect for Ukrainian chefs. Things are going to get messy, and you might be best blitzing the onion in a food processor unless you're especially hardy about onion tears.
1 large onion
2lb/900g potatoes
1 large egg
3 tbsp flour (gluten-free fine)
1 tbsp sour cream / yoghurt
salt and pepper
cooking oil eg sunflower
Peel onion and grate it finely or whizz in food processor to small shards.
Peel potatoes and grate on star-shaped grater into the onion juice. Mix fairly regularly, and the onion should stop the potato from browning. (This saves you grating into water and having to drain the potato out in cloth afterwards!)
Add the other ingredients (except the oil). The batter should be liquid enough to ladle. You can add another egg if it's too stiff.
Warm up the pancake pan, non-stick frying pan or skillet wiht 2-3 tbsp oil over medium heat. Add 1 heaped tbsp of pancake mix at time. Fry on one side until golden brown. Shaking the pan tells you when the pancakes are cooked on one side and loosened - this stops you trying to turn them too early so they stick. Flip over and cook on the second side.
Serves 6-8. Unless your toppings are very lavish (caviar?) this is a very inexpensive dish.
In England, potato salad is a polite dish for a summer buffet, involving potatoes, Hellmann's mayonnaise and perhaps a chive or sprig of limp parsley. In Eastern Europe it's a very different and more substantial affair, and every household has their own recipe.
Popular additions might include apple, gherkin, tinned (or precooked) peas or carrots, ham or chorizo, celery, onion, and dill. Out of these you might pick three or four for each different recipe.
It is important to chop everything very fine. UK potato salad might well boil salad potatoes and leave them whole. But for this dish you want all the vegetables chopped into 1/4 inch cubes, and even finer for onion or pickles. To reduce the harshness of the onion you could just put a couple of wafer thin red onion slices on top as a garnish.
For a refined version, go to Moya restaurant where the potato salad starter is very much in this tradition, and comes served with a tiny heart cut out of red pepper on the top!
The season of giving
For those looking to give something back this festive season, here's our charitable suggestion of the day:
Welcome to Daily Info’s 2024 Advent Calendar – 24 days of events to celebrate the festive period and get ready to ring in the New Year!
This year's calendar offers a mix of Christmas activities - pantos, comedy shows, carol concerts etc, taking in traditions in Oxford and the wider area, as well as free diversions in December and some of the best happenings to book ahead for in 2025.
