Lokše – dry-toasted pancakes made from potato dough – flavour the Slovak culture as well as the Czech one. They are added to roast goose on St Martin’s day, to soups and other savoury dishes, or they are prepared sweet, wrapped like pancakes. Here, Ambiente's creative chef Tomáš Valkovič chose to fill them with duck liver and onions – let’s get the potatoes on the boil!

For the dough (2 servings):

• 2 potatoes, boiled in their skins and peeled
• plain flour (in a ratio of 1:3, i.e. approximately 1 part of flour to 3 parts boiled potatoes, or 300 g of flour per kilo of boiled potatoes), plus extra for dusting the work surface
• salt

For the liver (2 servings):

• 80 g of duck fat (for frying the liver and rubbing the lokše)
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 250g duck liver
• salt and pepper
• a sprig of fresh thyme or marjoram

Instructions:

1. Start by preparing the lokše. Finely grate the boiled potatoes, mix in the flour and form the dough into a roll about 5 cm thick. It should be smooth, without being sticky – feel free to add a little water or flour to fine-tune the consistency.
   
   Important – be gentle! The ingredients for lokše should only be gently mixed with your fingers and lightly kneaded. If you use too much force, the batter will thin out.
   
2. Divide the dough into equal (roughly two centimeter) pieces. On a floured work surface, roll them into thin patties with a diameter of 20 cm, or the size of your pan. 
3. Fry the patties on both sides in a dry hot pan, for around two minutes – small, brown bubbles will appear when they’re ready!
4. Immediately brush the fried pancakes with lard and sprinkle with a little salt.
5. Always place the lokše on top of each other so that they steam, soften and remain soft, or put them in a slightly heated oven, so they keep their temperature until serving.
6. Next is the liver. Heat the lard in a pan, add the onion and fry until translucent.
7. Add the cleaned liver. Fry each piece sharply on one side, turn and remove from the flame. Finally, season with salt, pepper and herbs.

To serve: Fill the warm lokše with liver, fold like a pancake and serve alongside something pickled, like sauerkraut, gherkins or hot peppers.

A few tips from the stove

Potatoes for lokše (just like pierogi and other dishes made from potato dough) are best cooked in their skins, peeled while still warm and left to cool, ideally overnight in the fridge. During this process, the starch in the potatoes changes, and this affects both the structure of the potatoes and also the dough.

The skin of the boiled potatoes should not crack. Water penetrating the tuber increases the risk of the dough being wet, resulting in the need for extra flour, which can cause the dough to stiffen. Undercooked or overcooked potatoes can also spoil the outcome of your dish.

The risk of excess moisture motivates some cooks not to boil potatoes, but bake them instead. The tubers are usually pierced with a fork and baked with coarse salt.

Lokše made from fermented potatoes are also delicious – in this case, potatoes are pre-boiled whole in salted water, mixed with whey and salt (2%) and sealed in a container where they ferment for about two days at room temperature.

Always grate or mash the potatoes using a press, potato masher or stainless steel sieve. An ordinary cheese grater will also suffice. However, forget about your food processor – it would disrupt the structure of the starches and the potatoes would become a stretchy mass.

Act quickly! The salt makes the dough thinner.

Always flour the rolled out patties – it helps avoid burning during frying at a higher temperature! For the same reason, it pays continuously to wipe the pan with a napkin, preferably after each patty.

If duck or goose fat isn’t to your taste, replace it with butter.

Source: Ambiente chefs