Satisfying a Craving from Halfway Around the World

It's Oktoberfest time and that has me thinking of the delicious food I consumed the last time I was in Munich. I have never been to Munich during Oktoberfest, but I did spend a good amount of time in Munich's beer halls. And while all of the beer halls were fun in their own right, there was one that had the tastiest food hands down - the Ratskeller. This restaurant is located in the bottom story of the Rathaus (which is the town hall) in the middle of the Marienplatz (which is the old town square). This building is amazing and if you ever go to Munich you should check it out (I would put up a photo, but the computer that my pictures from this trip were on got stolen - sigh).

At the Ratskeller, my favorite thing on the menu were the delicious German style potato pancakes. I have searched high and low and nothing has compared to these pancakes. The closest I have come stateside are the potato pancakes with smoked salmon at MacCool's in Salt Lake City, but seeing as I am now 600 miles away from Salt Lake that isn't really an option either. So I decided to do the next best thing to traveling halfway around the world in the pursuit of food - I decided to try and make them myself.

I started out with 2 pounds of russet potatoes, which I peeled:

I then put the grater attachment on my food processor:

And they came out looking like hash browns:

I placed the potatoes in a dish towel and attempted to wring out most of the moisture from them. Then, I mixed them with one egg, 1 Tbsp flour, and 1 tsp baking powder to bind the potatoes together and dropped them into hot vegetable oil on the stovetop, like so:

I cooked the pancakes for about 4 minutes (until they started to brown), and then flipped them over and cooked them for another 4 minutes on the other side:

Then I transferred them to a cookie sheet and baked them in the oven at 425 F for 3 minutes per side to get them extra crispy (if you prefer them less crispy, you could skip this step) and they came out looking like this:

I topped them with a dollop of sour cream, smoked salmon, and chopped fresh chives:

Serve these with your favorite Oktoberfest lager - prost!