Vegetable Pancakes

Last summer I made a lot of zucchini pancakes, and tonight I tried a similar method with sweet potatoes, frozen corn, and cilantro.  I love sweet potatoes so of course I thought they tasted awesome!  

You can use a wide variety of vegetables for this, and it actually only calls for 2-3 cups of veggies, so it's a really good way to stretch your produce when you have just one or two of something and want to get the most out of it. 

I looked at two of Mark Bittman's recipes for this, one in his book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, and the other on his website.  They are slightly different in some amounts of ingredients but it all comes out the same in the end I guess.

It says it serves four, but ours only served three, because I didn't use enough butter and so a couple of them stuck and got destroyed while trying to flip them, and we just HAD to sample one before we were even done cooking (Quality Control, you know).

A little darker than ideal, but still really good!

Vegetable Pancakes
adapted from Mark Bittman - How to Cook Everything Vegetarian
Serves 3-4

About 1 pound vegetables (2 cups packed).  Common choices include root vegetables (turnips, carrots, beets, etc), corn, sweet potatoes, zucchini, winter squash, alone or in combination.  
1/2 onion, grated
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup flour, more or less
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Milk, half-n-half, or cream as needed
2 tablespoons melted butter or extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the pan

Preheat the oven to 275.  Place a wire cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet and put it in the oven.  You'll probably be working in batches so this is where you will put your finished pancakes to keep warm until they are all made.

Grate your vegetables (by hand, or use a food processor).  If using raw vegetables that have a high water content (like zucchini), wrap them in a towel and squeeze out some of the water otherwise you will have soggy pancakes.  

Put the grated veggies, onion, egg, and flour in a large bowl and mix together.  Add a tablespoon of fresh herbs if you want (Bittman says cilantro is good for sweet potatoes and corn, so I used that).  Season with salt and pepper.  Add just enough milk so that the vegetables are moist enough to hold together, but not super liquidy.  I ended up using about 1/3 cup of milk.  Stir in two tablespoons of melted butter or olive oil.  

In a large nonstick skillet or griddle over medium heat, add a good sized pat of butter or a couple tablespoons of olive oil (don't be stingy or the pancakes will stick).  When melted/hot, drop in spoonfuls of batter (about 1/2 cup; I found if I made them much larger than that they were too hard to flip) and use the spoon or a fork to press them down so they are fairly flat and even.  Cook, turning once, until they are nice and browned on both sides, about 12-15 minutes.  

Serve hot or at room temperature.  We served ours on a bed of salad mix with a side of Yumm sauce.