French Potatoes

Just like French Salad, the name for this dish didn’t come from France. I imagine (this is not historically verified 😝), that Croats during the Napoleon invasion learned new dishes from Napoleon soldiers and made their own version of french “Potatoes au gratin” which they called french potatoes.

This is another great dish to use up leftover hard boiled eggs from Easter. Also, instead of sausages, you can use the leftover ham or slices of bacon!

Ingredients

serves 2

  • 4 medium potatoes
  • 5 hard boiled eggs
  • 2 sausages of your choice
  • 500 ml sour cream
  • 100 ml milk
  • salt and black pepper to taste
  • dash of vegetable oil

Preparation

  1. Cook the potatoes in their shells. Let them cool off before peeling.
  2. Slice the cooled potatoes as thin as possible but not too thin so they don’t fall apart.
  3. Boil the eggs until hard boiled.
    Tip: Add 1 tspb of vinegar in the water for easier peeling of the egg shells.
  4. Cut the hard boiled eggs as thin as possible but not too thin so they don’t fall apart.
  5. Cut the sausages, about half a centimeter wide.
  6. Preheat the oven to 180 °C (355 °F).
  7. Grease the baking dish with vegetable oil.
  8. Mix the sour cream and the milk in a separate small bowl.
  9. To assemble the dish, first place potatoes, than the eggs and finally the sausages. Season with salt and pepper.
  10. Cover with half of the sour cream and milk mixture and repeat the process until you use up all the ingredients.
  11. Season all the layers and sprinkle with a dash of oil at the end.
  12. Bake around 20-25 minutes until you get the golden brown crust on top.

Serve with your favorite salad. Usually we have green lettuce with vinaigrette dressing, but any seasonal salad would go perfectly with this dish.

What is your favorite potato dish?

Croatian Potatoes – “Restani Krumpir”

One of many traditional ways to prepare potatoes is restani krumpir 😀 Basically, it’s cooked potato sauteed with onions. So delicious!

Best way to enjoy these wonderful potatoes is with sauteed sauerkraut and sausages! I guess this is another one of many Austrian influences Croatians adopted throughout history 🙂

Croatian Potatoes -

Ingredients

  • 500 g potatoes
  • one large onion finely chopped
  • 2 tbsp sunflower oil or lard (do not substitute with olive oil or butter in this case)
  • 2 tsp red sweet paprika
  • salt and black pepper to taste

If you like spicy food, add some chili powder or cayenne pepper as well!

Preparation

  1. Cook the potatoes in a shell and then cut in cubes.
  2. In the meantime saute chopped onions in the large pot until almost brown and soft.
  3. Put the cooked potatoes on the brownish onions and add the spices.
  4. Use spatula to brake the potatoes until incorporated with onions.
  5. Serve hot as a side dish with your favorite meat.

Tip: They go perfectly with cabbage rolls – Sarma 😉

What is your favorite potato dish?