Potatoes, Smoked Salmon, Creme Fraiche

Needed an appetizer for my brother-in-law's house on NYE. Wanted something new. Saw this recipe for potato pancakes topped with smoked salmon and a creme fraiche sauce on the front page of the Food & Wine Web site.

I skipped the caviar. Perhaps caviar makes the dish something else entirely. I didn't miss it. At all. It was quite good, even with making the pancakes a bit ahead of time and reheating them in the oven before serving. Loss the crispiness it would have had from serving it within a few minutes of coming out of the pan. But sometimes sacrifices have to be made. There was general agreement that it was excellent.

Only thing I did differently was add about a teaspoon of honey to the creme fraiche concoction and a bit more lemon juice than it called for.