Potato cakes with duck eggs and smoked salmon

Over a week ago I had a little chat with a fellow foodie blogger Dom from Belleau Kitchen on the subject of chives' flowers. He is a true artist in the kitchen, and his photo styling is always impeccable. I was impressed with his photos of a delicious celeriac soup (if you fancy to have a look and admire his photos, here is the recipe link): a pretty scattering of chives and a purple flower. Dom confessed that the flower was purely served as a decoration. I looked online on what you could do with the flowers of chives, and they are mostly used in salads and soups. Would they work in potato cakes?

The dinner on Sunday was a result of what I had in the kitchen (the smoked salmon needed to be eaten). I also bought a box of duck eggs at Cogges Manor Farm when we visited it earlier that day. And I had plenty of potatoes. Chives grow like weeds in the garden, and keep reappearing every year. I often use the green bits, but haven't eaten the flowers of chives, so this was an experiment for me.

Potato cakes with duck eggs and smoked salmon
Ingredients:
4 small to medium potatoes
1tbsp olive oil
4 heaped tbsp of Greek style yogurt (I used Chobani fat free plain yoghurt)
1tbsp plain flour
a handful of basil leaves
a handful of chives (including 5 flowers)
1 egg
salt, pepper
Cook the potato in salted boiling water (in skins). Once cooked, remove the skins and grate the potatoes. In a medium sized bowl mix the grated potatoes with the olive oil, Greek style yogurt, plain flour and chopped herbs. Add the flowers (just divide the purple mini flowers into sections). Season well.
Using hands, flatten the potato mix into 6 cakes. You can fry them, but I'm trying to cut down the calories, so baked them in the oven on a tray covered with foil and slightly sprayed with the olive oil.
Traditionally I would use a lot of butter and maybe mayo for the potato cakes, but this time Chobani and olive oil worked as a substitute perfectly well.
Cook in the oven at 180C for about 15 minutes, until golden brown.

Serve the warm potato cakes with slices of the smoked salmon and poached duck eggs.
I think adding the flowers to the potato cakes was a pretty good idea, they added a lovely flavour which wasn't overwhelming.

And that's why I love Twitter, you can stumble upon some tweets almost accidentally, get an idea (or in the words of the glorious Baldrick "I have a cunning plan!") and get inspired.