Recipe: Spiced Potato Patties With Cucumber & Mint Raita

Good Day Everyone,

We’ve been back in Singapore almost a week and our body clocks are only just starting to adjust to our current time zone. My hubby’s had a hectic and stressful week back at work and I’ve just about finished our unpacking! So we are both looking forward to a relaxing weekend and what better way to start the weekend than some delicious home cooked food and watching some feel good TV (well technically it’s not TV as we don’t have one but it’s a TV programme that we watched over the internet). Tonight we watched our first episode of the new series of Doc Martin that has just started back on British TV. My hubby and I both love this programme, set in the idyllic and picturesque fishing village of Port Isaac in Cornwall, England. It’s a little piece of home that we watched whilst enjoying some yummy food.

Back to the food bit, I thought I’d share some photos of what I made this evening as well as the recipes so that you can try it out for yourself. I’m not an amazing cook by any means and I don’t tend to follow recipes very well. Cooking, to me, is more of an art rather than a science and so I tend to make things up as I go along, often going off in little tangents and mixing things up a bit. The only time I tend to treat cooking as a science is when I’m making something where the relative proportions of the ingredients have a dramatic effect on how the final food turns out, for example, when baking a cake or a soufflé (not that I’ve ever made a soufflé but you get what I mean).

Despite not being vegetarians, my hubby and I tend to have a heavily vegetarian based diet for the simple reason that he doesn’t eat most types of meat or seafood. I really don’t mind this as I’m not a big meat eater myself. So tonight I made us spiced potato patties along with cucumber and mint raita. These make a great snack and for something more substantial, my hubby has them in a wrap with some salad. They can also be used in a burger bun to make a vege burger.

The spice levels are just enough to give the food a little bit of a kick but not burn your mouth as neither of us can handle really spicy food. I do tend to be quite generous with things like ginger and turmeric as they both have anti-inflammatory properties which studies have shown to be beneficial for people like me who have arthritis. I generally believe that spices and herbs have a lot of health and healing benefits and tend to use them as often as I can in home cooking.

 Cucumber & Mint Raita:

·         8 dessert spoons of natural yogurt

·         1 ½  tsp mint sauce

·         ½  tsp salt

·         ½ tsp ground cumin

·         ½ tsp ground coriander

·         3-4 stalks of freshly chopped coriander

·         3-4 stalks of freshly chopped mint leaves

·         1 baby cucumber finely diced

·         A little paprika for dusting

Instructions:
Mix all of the above ingredients together in a bowl. I kept a little bit of the diced cucumber and some whole coriander leaves back to use as a garnishing along with the paprika. You can add some finely chopped fresh chillies, if you prefer a little heat but I find that the ground cumin and coriander add sufficient spice for my liking. The salt helps to tone down the sweetness of the mint sauce.

Spiced Potato Patties:

·         1kg of potatoes peeled, finely sliced, boiled and roughly mashed

·         4 large spring onions finely chopped

·         10 stalks of coriander finely chopped

·         1 (not too hot) red chilli finely chopped

·         1 ¼ - 1 ½ tsp salt

·         1 tsp ground cumin

·         1 tsp ground coriander

·         ½ tsp ground ginger

·         ½ tsp ground turmeric

·         ½ tsp ground garam masala

·         ¼ tsp red chilli powder

·         2 eggs lightly whisked in a bowl

·         Some olive oil for cooking

·         Slices of lemon and fresh coriander leaves to garnish

Instructions:

1.      Into the mashed potatoes add all of the other ingredients except for the eggs, olive oil and lemon and coriander set aside for garnishing.

2.      Mix the ingredients well using a spoon and using your hands form the potato mixture into 14-16 balls.

3.      Heat a frying pan with enough olive oil to coat the entire pan.

4.      Flatten a potato ball in the palm of your hand to a round patty shape, coat the patty entirely in the whisked eggs and place into the heated frying pan.

5.      Depending on the size of your frying pan and potato patties, you should be able to get 3-4 patties into the frying pan at once.

6.      Cook the patties for a couple of minutes on each side until golden brown and then remove and place on a plate covered with kitchen towel to soak up any excess oil.

7.      Once you’ve cooked the patties, garnish with the lemon and fresh coriander leaves and serve with the cucumber and mint raita.

The potato balls will keep in the fridge for a couple of days, if you don’t wish to cook them all at once. When you’re ready to cook them just remove the potato balls from the fridge and repeat instruction steps 3-7 above.

The quantities in the recipes are very much a guide rather than a rigid instruction and so I recommend you adjust things to suit your own taste and as with most things it’s all about experimentation ;o)

Do let me know in the comments below if you tried any of these recipes and how they turned out? I’d love to see your photos too :o)

Hope you all have a relaxing weekend.

Love Sheen xxx