Remember the post where I said I don’t romanticise breakfast from Monday to Friday?
Well here is the romantic Sunday breakfast that is the antithesis of that post.
Well… maybe romantic is the wrong word. I’m not sure how some potato cakes and pickles qualify as romantic, so let’s call this breakfast “more than toast”, yeah?
One Saturday I roasted a chicken (as one ought) and in lieu of making roast potatoes, I made lazy ones. By lazy, I mean I grabbed two handfuls of baby new potatoes, slid them all on to two skewers (about 6 potatoes on each skewer), covered them in oil and salt and put them in the oven – right on the oven racks – next to the chicken. Cute roast potatoes, no fuss.
Side note – the best roast potatoes ever can be found here. Thank me later.
However, I knew I wanted to make a nice breakfast on the Sunday. Not because it’s hard and I wanted to make an effort, but why not. I had the spare time, I had the ingredients to use up so what was the harm. Plus I knew it was going to taste so good, and really that’s reason enough.
Sure a pickled cucumber doesn’t sound sexy but I urge you to try this if you can. It dances so harmoniously against the potato cakes and really lifts the freshness of the leek.
Although, if you don’t want to go through the effort of this cucumber (which really is no effort at all) you could just chop up some jarred pickled gherkins into the sour cream.
This recipe is anointed Dirty purely because I keep the skins on the potatoes. So I’m going to assume here that you DON’T have a small handful of roast new potatoes. If you don’t, please see the beginning of this post for how to get them.
Otherwise, continue on.
Preheat the oven to 200c.
Start by making your pickle (if you want to make them). Using a vegetable peeler, peel a cucumber into thin strips.
Put them in a bowl and cover with apple cider vinegar until they are submerged. Add a pinch of salt, some black peppercorns, some coriander seeds and some chopped garlic.
Put the bowl to one side to marinade so that the cucumber ribbons can soak up the pickling liquid,
Chop up a leek into small pieces (as small as you have energy for) and fry them in some butter, salt and some finely chopped garlic until they soften. Once they have softened in with the butter and garlic, take them off the heat and allow to cool.
Take a handful of roasted and cooled baby potatoes (give or take 9/10 small mini ones) and chop them up into small bits of potato flesh and skin. Don’t use a potato masher because the masher won’t get the skins as small as you want, I promise it will be quicker using a sharp knife.
SIDE NOTE – you could just do this with any leftover mashed potato.
Throw the potato into a bowl with the cooled leek. Add a generous pinch of salt and pepper.
Add a teaspoon of English mustard along with a tablespoon of flour. Mix everything together until thoroughly combined.
Now using your hand, take handfuls of the potato and leek mixture and form into burger shapes using the pads of your hands. With these measurements you’ll get enough for four big, sloppy patties. Once they are shaped, place them on a baking tray, drizzle with a little olive oil and slide in the oven for 35 minutes.
When they are brown and golden, take out of the oven and leave to sit for 10 minutes. This allows them to harden a little so that they don’t fall apart when you lift them.
Once cooled slightly, serve with a drizzle of sour cream and the pickled cucumber ribbons.
