Guest Author - Marianne Gibson

These soft potato pancakes are quick to make and a good winter filler. They can be served with sour cream, or stuffed with the filling of your choice to make a light meal.

500g potato
Half a large onion
1 large or 2 small eggs
50g flour
Salt and pepper to taste
Sunflower oil for frying

Peel and grate the potato and the onion into a large mixing bowl. Don’t use the coarsest side of your grater for this, or the potato will not soften properly. You want fine strands of potato which will mesh together during cooking.

Add the other ingredients and mix thoroughly. If the resulting mass is very wet, squeeze down the mixture with a masher and pour off the extra liquid.

Heat the oil in a heavy frying pan. Why sunflower oil? Draniki are actually a version of a popular Ukrainian dish, deruni, and to get the authentic flavour, other oils just won’t do. When the oil is hot but not smoking, add a heaped dessertspoon of the mixture and pat it down to ½ cm thickness, rounding the edges off with a spoon. Add more until the pan is full of small round pancakes.

The draniki need to fry for 3-5 minutes on each side. To achieve a good colour, start them hot, but then turn them down to cook through. They should be crispy and golden on the outside, but soft in the middle, and the potato should be cooked through.

Stuffed dranniki
Draniki traditionally can be stuffed with meat, soft cheese or grated hard cheese, cabbage, chopped fried mushrooms.. there are many possibilities. If your filling requires prior cooking, make sure to do this in advance. The filling should be quite cool before you use it to stuff the draniki. As a basic kitchen rule of thumb, cold and hot ingredients should not be combined.

To make the stuffed pancakes
Do the same as for the plain, but make a thinner layer of batter in the pan. On top of this, spread the filling of your choice to make a thin circle a little smaller than the potato. Finish with another thin layer of batter carefully spread over the filling. You need to seal the 2 layers of potato mix together at the edge, by pressing down firmly. Turn and cook as for the plain draniki.

Priyatnogo Appetita!