The Aspiring Luddite

	I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Boxtie Mark Two
20 December 2012

A few weeks ago, I posted a recipe for Boxtie. That version came out as a thickish, latke-esque pancake. It was delicious, but my friend Mike (the go-to man for things Boxtie) said he was more familiar with a thinner style, usually filled.

Back to the drawing board.

With a little work, I came with something that I think fits the bill. The trick, and I'll warn you in advance, is cooking them as one would cook a crêpe - a tiny bit of oil, a hot pan, and a thin layer of batter. It took me several tries, but I got there in the end. And even the mistakes were pretty tasty.

If you haven't already, take a quick look at the previous Boxtie post, since the technique is the same and I wont repeat it in detail here. The big change is in quantities. Use these:

6-8 medium to small potatoes
1 cup flour
1 Tb salt
2 cups heavy cream

Do the half grate, half boil thing with the potatoes and then mix the rest of the ingredients in. You end up with a much thinner batter than you do in Boxtie Mark One. Then get your skillet going.

I was going to fill mine with crisped duck confit and then use the leftover confit fat for frying. This is a fine idea, but as I noted above, you don't want too much fat in the skillet. If you do, you end up with something like the picture on the right side of this article. It's still delicious, mind you, as only potatoes fried in duck fat can be, but it was too thick and didn't roll up well.

[Boxtie in too much fat] You don't have to use duck confit, but you can use butter or lard or whatever lipid you like. The idea of cooking your protein, if you have one, in the skillet, and then making your Boxtie in the flavored drippings, adjusted for lipid volume, has much to recommend it.

The picture on the bottom left was when it was working properly. Lightly greased , thin layer of batter, nicely browned and then flipped. By the time I got that sorted out, all the duck was gone, so I rolled them up with whatever else I had to hand. Horseradish cole slaw went quite nicely, actually.

[Boxtie, Take 2] As a bonus, they reheat beautifully in the microwave, and are still supple. I took the rest of the slaw and the remaining Boxtie to work the next day for lunch and was pleased with the result.

The Aspiring Luddite