Smoked Salmon Rösti

We first fell in love with this dish at the Shouk Café. There, it's called latkes stacks. Then, we discovered we could have these scrumptious things at the weekend markets as well, but there, they're called roestis (or röstis). Either way, it's basically a potato pancake topped with whatever delicious toppings you would like. Our family favourite is smoked salmon.

We love röstis so much we had them for brunch on New Year's Day. Is it too late to be talking about what we ate on New Year's Day? It was only the beginning of this month. Regardless, they were worth rolling out of bed for, and the perfect way to start off our year.

The recipe I found for Swiss rösti is much simpler and requires less ingredients than the latkes recipe I previously used so I'll probably stick to this version in the future.

Ingredients:

• 6-7 medium potatoes (starchy types work best)
• butter
• salt

Directions:

1. Peel, then grate the raw potatoes into a bowl using a grater with large holes. 
2. Melt a bit of butter in a medium-sized pan and add grated potatoes in piles depending on how big you want each rösti, pressing down to flatten. Sprinkle with salt and cook over medium heat until the bottom browns, then flip to cook the other side. 
3. Continue making pancakes until all the potato is used up. Top potatoes with your desired toppings. 

Notes:

You can eat rösti plain, mix other ingredients (such as parsley, onion, pepper, paprika) in with the potato, or top with a whole variety of things. Some of the more common toppings I've seen at the markets include: avocado with cracked black pepper, eggs benedict, eggs with tomato salsa and grilled mushroom, but the possibilities are endless.