Potato Pancakes with Hogao

In the Morris household as a child, there was no messing about on Shrove Tuesday. Pancake Day was the whole shebang - pancakes for main AND dessert. I have fond memories about snarfing up pancakes with mushroom fillings and whatnot.

So for our first pancake day of living together, I decided to make a nice savoury pancake main course for myself and Bailey of Potato Pancakes (that are actually basically potato scones but made in the shape of a pancake but shh, no need to tell anyone that). Seeing as the Potato Pancakes were arepa shaped, I decided to top them with my all time favourite arepa topping, Colombian Hogao.

I love Hogao, it is so simple to make and takes so few ingredients, but as long as you leave it to cook down for long enough, will be really delicious. My Colombian grandma always fries her Hogao in loads of butter and this makes it even more awesome but in our waistline friendly household, Frylight is the norm.

I've made Potato Pancakes with Hogao, topped with a nice bit of cheese on Pancake Day ever since that first time, it's become a bit of a tradition. Every time we make them we think they are so nice and so easy to make, we always wonder why we don't make them more often.

Recipe:
For the Potato Pancakes
600g potatoes
100g plain flour
Salt and Pepper

For the Hogao
1 onion
1 pinch chilli flakes
1 pinch cumin
6 ripe tomatoes
Salt and Pepper

To serve
Parmesan cheese

Start by peeling the potatoes and cutting into smallish chunks. Boil the potatoes until soft. In the meantime get the Hogao going. Finely chop the onions and fry for a few minutes with some salt, pepper, chilli and cumin until beginning to soften. Finely chop the tomatoes and add them to the pan. Leave this to slowly cook over a really low heat, stirring occasionally, until it has basically turned into a delicious mush. This will pretty much take until the Potato Pancakes are done anyway.

Once the potatoes are cooked, blend them up in the pan using a hand blender until free of lumps and all sticky. Gradually add the flour. You might need to add a bit more than the 100g depending on how the potatoes have tured out, but the end result will be a more firm mixture that you can separate into little blobs.

Heat up two frying pans over fairly high heats and spray with some non-stick cooking spray. Divide the pancake mixture into 4 blobs of pancake mixture and add two of these blobs to the pans. Leave for a moment until the bottom of the blobs of pancake mix have cooked a little and the mixture can be flipped. When you've flipped the blob, squash it down with a flat wooden spoon or fish slice which will make a flat, pancake shape.

Reduce the heat on the pans and cook the pancakes until evenly cooked on both sides. Keep these warm then repeat for the last two pancakes.

Meanwhile, finely grate the parmesan.

When all the pancakes are ready, cover the pancakes with a nice bit of Hogao. I made mine into little stacks. Top with the cheese and serve with a nice green salad. Lovely stuff.