Swede Cakes

This delicious recipe came from my friend, The Craft Bureau, while we were having some veg-box musings on the train. This time of year veg-boxers are likely to get quite a few of these "alien" vegetables and I feel that there must be more to them than mash. These delightful cakes are mashed swede to begin with but when fried they have a lovely crispy exterior, and the addition of spices makes these far more versatile.

Ingredients makes 8 cakes

1 medium Swede, peeled and roughly diced

Salt & Pepper

Spices of choice - I used chili powder & garam masala

splash of Milk

1 cup of plain Flour

1/2 Leek, or Onion, quartered

1 small Potato, peeled and roughly diced

cooking Oil or Fat

Recipe

Heat water in a large pan and boil the diced swede, potato and leek in a pan for 50 minutes or until the swede is very soft. Drain water and leave in the colander for a good 5-10 minutes to get all the water out. Toss the cooked vegetables back into a pan, add a splash of milk and mash well. It's ok if the vegetables are a bit lumpy. 

The swede holds a lot of water so your mash is probably wet and lumpy at the moment. Take a wooden spoon, add your spices and mix the mixture well. Add half of the flour and combine. You want the mixture to  become more dough like, but not too dry. Think of the consistency of dry starchy mashed potatoes, and add flour until you reach that. 

At this point or post boiling, the mixture can be left covered in the fridge to pick up the flavour of the spices overnight. This will also make it a bit easy to shape your cakes for frying. When you're ready to start frying, heat a pan with some cooking oil or fat. I had some dripping to hand so used that to provide an extra flavour. Keep the pan on medium heat and spoon a serving spoon sized mixture carefully into the oil. They will take about 4 minutes on each side, don't flip them over until their bottoms come cleanly off the pan and are nicely browned. 

Place on kitchen towel to soak up the oil and then serve. 

For a quick breakfast, heat up some swede cakes and serve with a fried egg