Kugelis

Ingredients

• 2 kg floury potatoes
• 200 g smoked streaky bacon
• 2 onions
• 4 eggs
• 250 ml whole milk
• 1.5 tsp fine salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 0.5 tsp dried marjoram
• 20 g butter for the dish
• soured cream to serve

Before you cook

• Peel the potatoes and drop them into a bowl of cold water.
• Dice the bacon into small cubes.
• Peel and finely chop the onions.
• Butter a 22 by 30 cm baking dish generously.

Steps

1. Heat the oven to 190°C.
2. Put the diced bacon into a cold frying pan and set it over medium heat.
3. Fry the bacon for eight minutes until crisp and the fat has run.
4. Lift out half the bacon with a slotted spoon and set it aside for serving.
5. Add the chopped onion to the pan and fry it for seven minutes until deep golden.
6. Take the pan off the heat.
7. Heat the milk in a small pan until it steams.
8. Grate the potatoes on the finest holes of a box grater or in a food processor.
9. Tip the grated potato into a sieve set over a bowl and press out the liquid.
10. Let the drained liquid stand for five minutes so the starch settles.
11. Pour off the clear liquid and keep the white starch at the bottom of the bowl.
12. Stir the reserved starch back into the grated potato.
13. Beat the eggs into the potato one at a time.
14. Pour in the hot milk in a steady stream, stirring hard.
15. Scrape in the bacon, onion and all the fat from the pan.
16. Season with the salt, pepper and marjoram.
17. Pour the mixture into the buttered dish and level the top.
18. Bake for sixty minutes.
19. Raise the oven to 210°C and bake for a further fifteen minutes until the top is dark gold and firm.
20. Rest the kugelis in the dish for twenty minutes before cutting.
21. Cut it into squares and serve with soured cream and the reserved crisp bacon.