Sächsische Quarkkeulchen

Quarkkeulchen belong to Saxony, especially Dresden and the Erzgebirge, where a boiled potato left from yesterday becomes supper today. They sit between sweet main dish, side dish, and coffee-table plate, depending on the house. Some cooks put raisins in, some refuse them. Some serve apple sauce, some cinnamon sugar, and in the south they would rather argue about Kaiserschmarrn. Im Norden anders, im Süden anders.

The technique is simple and strict: cook the floury potatoes the day before, rice them cold, and drain the quark well. Warm potato weeps starch and turns the dough sticky; wet quark makes the cakes slump in the pan. Cold and dry is what holds the little Keulchen, the small cakes, together without burying them in flour.

I fry them in butter with a little neutral oil so the butter tastes like butter and doesn't blacken before the middle warms through. Runter mit der Temperatur if they brown too fast. You want a golden crust, a soft quark-potato middle, and enough salt in the dough to keep the sweetness from going flat. Schön ist, was schmeckt.