Riki is potato and kur is bread in the Sherpa language, and the dish is exactly that. What makes it worth telling is how recent it is. The potato only reached the Sherpas of Khumbu in the middle of the nineteenth century and took hold within a generation, moving a herding and trading people toward settled farming, feeding them through famine, and becoming a trade good in its own right once dried potatoes started going north over the passes into Tibet. A tuber from the Andes rearranged an economy in the Himalaya. Grated fine, bound with a little flour and fried in butter, it is a breakfast that will carry a walker up a hill, and it turns up along the trekking routes and in the Sherpa quarters of Kathmandu around Boudha and Swoyambhu. Sherpa households in Britain still cook it when the community gathers, where the winter suits it as well as the mountains ever did.
INGREDIENTS
- 700 g floury potatoes
- 3 tbsp plain flour
- 1 egg (lightly beaten (optional, for a firmer bind))
- 50 g butter (for frying)
- 100 g feta or cottage cheese
- 3 spring onions (finely chopped)
- 2 green bird eye chillies (finely sliced)
- 1 tbsp butter (softened, for the achar)
- salt (to serve)
METHOD
- Peel the potatoes and grate them as finely as you can, using a food processor if you have one. The finer the shred, the better the pancake will hold together.
- Stir the flour through the grated potato until no dry patches remain, and beat in the egg if you are using it. Do not add salt at this stage.
- Make the achar. Crumble the cheese and mix it with the spring onions, chillies and softened butter, working it together until it holds as a rough paste.
- Melt a knob of the butter in a frying pan over a medium heat.
- Spoon in about half a cupful of the potato mixture and spread it out thinly and evenly with the back of the spoon.
- Cook for 4 to 5 minutes until the underside is set and golden, then turn and cook the other side. Turn again if the middle is still pale.
- Slide it onto a plate, spread a spoonful of the achar across the top while it is still hot, add a little salt, and eat straight away. Repeat with the remaining mixture.