Potatoes: Mash based Rosti and Croquette inspired dish

One of these recipes I don’t quite know how to title. The fact is – there is no proper name. But it is the perfect example, of how to use left overs in a completely new dish…!!

I while back, we had a huge bowl left over whole baby potato salad mixed with a beautiful pesto. We didn’t finish it and I was already on to the next “menu”. And therefore, I just put the potato salad in a bag and stored it in the freezer for better times.

Defrosted potatoes are not that great however, as they turn soft. I figured, I would do a mash – reheat them, add cream and butter and mash. They were already spiced with the pesto from the original salad. It turned out, they were difficult to mash as the potatoes were not floury enough. Instead, I mashed them with cream and butter and added 2 eggs to keep it together.

Half the portion, I made into a pan fried potato mash. I simply added a portion of the mash to the pan (no oil needed), mashed it flat with a spatula and cooked it for about 15 minutes on each side (or until brown) on medium heat. It was delicious!

The other half, I added to a mini muffin pan, baked them at 190 degrees C for 20 minutes – and these too, turned out crispy and yummy!

I properly could have made proper croquettes with the mash, turning small balls of potato in egg and flour and properly deep frying them. Will have to do that another time.

On the pan and in the muffin pan however, I did not need extra oil, as the pesto from the original salad was already oily.

Ingredients

1250 g potatoes (left over from a pesto based potato salad)

75 g butter

200 ml cream

2 eggs

If you do go down on the amounts as you have less potatoes, add 2 eggs just the same.

Method

Heat the potatoes in a pot adding the cream. The potatoes need a bit of liquid when heating. When warm, take the potatoes off the heat. Add the butter and let in melt while mashing the potatoes with a handheld mixer. When well mixed and mashed, add the eggs and mix well.

For the pan roasted potatoes, I just simply heated up the pan and added half the amount of the mash. With a spatula, press the mash flat as it is not a runny mash. No need to oil the pan in this recipe as the potato salad contained oil in the sauce/pesto. Had this not been the case, you would have had to oil the pan.

To do the “muffins”/croquette style potatoes, preheat the oven to 190 degrees celcius. Add the mash to the cups of a mini muffin pan. Bake in the oven for approximately 20 minutes or until dark golden. Again – in this particular recipe you do not need extra oil as the pesto contained oil.