BEEF & POTATO PATTIES - PERGEDIL DAGING

An Indonesian carry over. This is a beef and potato patty that can be eaten as an additional dish with rice or as a must have topping to a lovely spicy soup noodle dish called Soto. What is nice about this dish is that the potatoes are deliberately left lumpy instead of smooth as opposed to the mashed potatoes of croquettes. It can be made with any kind of minced meat or even fish such as mackeral or our local tenggiri. Very rustic in its use of cumin, chopped coriander, chopped spring onions, chopped chillies with a few squirts of lime or lemon juice, salt and pepper. Very delicious.

4 medium potatoes, boiled, cooled, peeled
180 gm mince meat
1 stalk spring onion, chopped
1 sprig coriander, chopped
1 1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp or more ground black pepper
1/2 tsp or more salt or according to taste
juice of a lime or half a lemon

1/2 egg, beaten
1 egg extra, beaten

1/2 cup of cooking oil

Heat a small pan and dry fry the mince meat until it turns brown, and the moisture has evaporated and is cooked. Remove from heat and put into a bowl and let it cool.

Add the boiled and cooled potatoes to the mince. (Alternatively, the potatoes may be cut up into wedges and fried and cooled).

Break up the potatoes with a fork roughly. Do not mash.

Add the chopped herbs, ground coriander, pepper and the salt. Squirt in some lime or lemon juice. Taste for salt. If necessary add some more salt. Add 1/2 a beaten egg and using your hands bring the mixture together and form them into patties. You should get about 10 patties.

Heat up the cooking oil in a small pan. Dip each patty in the beaten egg and shallow fry till golden brown on one side then turn over to cook the other side. Serve.



TIP : Potatoes and mince must be cooled down before mixing otherwise the moisture from the heat will make the mixture soggy, difficult to handle and will break easily when frying.

TIP : Mince meat must be cooked to rid it of moisture before mixing into potatoes. If using fish the fish too should be shallow fried or poached, drained well and then flaked in largish pieces before mixing with potatoes.