Sweet Potato Fritters (and some waffle)

Shalom, all. Bit of a long post today but I’m bored as hell and you’re probably got nothing better to do so there we go. Suck it.

Hope everyone’s quarantine is going well, and no one is gnawing each others’ fingers off due to boredom or hunger. In my current household, it’s interesting to see how shopping habits have changed: I’ve gone from buying 2-3 weekly shops of around £10-12 each for me, to buying enough food for two of us to last three weeks. I’m hiding at Lewis’ and we agreed it’d be best to reduce exposure time by doing big ol’ shops: bless having the use of a car, a well-stocked Aldi, and a huge freezer to store prepped food in. Seeing as we’re spending practically 0 money elsewhere (besides rent, and Lewis’ crippling addiction to climbing gear for which he has no use in this current climate), we’ve unintentionally put the ‘going out’ money – drinks, meals, cinema, indoor bouldering – into the grocery shop. I’m now spending approximately a million pounds a week on food, as my favourite thing to do is cook, and Lewis’ favourite thing to do is eat (and put cams in the gaps between cupboards). My blog will soon transcend from kerfuffle of budget recipes to a luxury duck-egg-and-buckwheat fitspo moodboard, sponsored by Ocado. Darlings.

Only kidding; we’re still on £4 a day each for food and alcohol, which I think is still pretty ok.

Before we started spending half the nation’s GDP on dinner every night, we had some more student friendly stuff to use up. This is a backdated recipe from before the lockdown began, so we had an abundance of cheap carbs to play with. One of these items was a sweet potato the size of a chihuahua. Now, I like sweet potatoes a lot and have used them to top shepards pie, cubed them into a curry, or just have them roasted with olive oil n sea salt – but the addition of the v savoury onion in these fritters really complements the sweetness of the spud.

The recipe is kind of across between a hash brown and a rosti and is borderline orgasmic with a poached or fried egg on top plus a side of whatever veg you fancy. This batch made absolutely millions of fritters but that’s cos our sweet potato was thicc.

SO:

For a 1gk+ potato, you will need

2 large eggs (or 3 small ones)

just over half a big mug of flour 

Two small or one huge brown/white onions (red is too sweet for this yin)

salt n pepper 

quite a large amount of olive oil for frying 

The above quantities will make about fiftteenish 4-5 inch patties. For a normal sized tatties (like 300-500g of them), halve everything. I’ve made these twice so far and have adjusted quantities slightly – the second batch I made had less flour so didn’t stick together as well, but were still very tasty. Also I never peel anything unless I have to but it’s up to you if you would like to spend an extra 10 minutes faffing with a blunt peeler and some pent up isolation rage.

So what you do is grate your sweet potato and your onions into a bowl using a cheesegrater and mix them together nicely. If you have ongoing beef with a flatmate or a parent at this point, and you want them to feel desperately sorry for you while you grovel/ask for an apology for some heinous crime, approach them just after you’ve grated the onions because YOU WILL BE CRYING and then you can offer them dinner after as a peacemaking tactic if needs be. Win win. After emotionally manipulating your loved ones, beat the eggs in a mug or bowl or something and then add to the tatties and ingins and then sprinkle over the flour. Get your hands in there and make sure every strand of tattie is covered in egg n flour as this is what will make them crispy af when you fry them. Add your salt and pepper (and indeed, any other flavour additions such as fried chorizo, bacon bits, spring onions, or raspberries) and then think about the economy for 5 minutes.

When you’re ready to frit those fritters, turn the oven onto a very low setting so you can keep the first few batches hot while you fry the rest. It’s also a really good idea to have some kitchen towel and a plate on hand so that you can drain the fritters and then stick into a warm oven straight away so they don’t go droopy.

Get a frying pan onto medium heat and pour in enough oil to completely coat the bottom on the saucepan and then add a splash more for good luck. Now, using either your hands (fun but risky) or a massive serving spoon (boring but understandable), scoop large blobs of the mixture into the frying pan and flatten into patties. I found I could only fit 2-3 in at a time, and you certainly don’t want to overcrowd the pan or they won’t go crispy and I’ll cry. Fry the sweet potato mix for about 5 minutes on each side, turning when the underside is a deep Gordon Brown. They’re not especially strong so this is quite a delicate operation a lot of the time. Make sure you have a good fish slice or something to turn them. When cooked, transfer to the paper towel plate and pop in the oven while you continue to slave away at the stove until all the mix is used up. This could take up to a week if your potato is as colossal as my first one was. Also, make sure to stack your fritters between layers of paper towel in the oven for maximum CRISPr.

As mentioned, I like to serve these with eggs because the yolk dribbling into the lil fried cracks in the fritters is nothing short of breathtaking, however, I had a similar street-food version made of white potatoes in Germany, served with with sliced bratwurst and applesauce, which I thought was utterly charming. Do what you like with your sweet potato fritters but don’t throw them at people because they’ll get oil on their dressing gowns and oil is hard to get out.

F.