6 posts tagged “potatoes”
From Prashad's in Bradford, we had samosas, some kind of battered fried sandwich with a garlicky pureed veg filling, round dumplings filled with spiced mashed potato. Dhokla, patra, snacks. I made a lassi with fresh coriander, garlic, fresh green chilli and a pinch of salt. Fresh baby tomato, and a little raita sauce.
I also made a quick trashy hot chaat:
Fry:
1 tin new potatoes, drained and cut into small lumps
1 tin pinto beans, or chickpeas, drained
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Sprinkle with powdered hing and fenugreek.
After about 5 minutes add half a tin of chopped tomatoes, cook til thickened.
Stir well and add 2 handfuls Bombay Mix or your favourite Indian crispy snack.
Heat through, take off the heat and stir in 2 tablespoons natural yoghourt.
Put in serving dish and top with dollop of tamarind sauce.
Served with warm rotis.
With a selection of sweets to finish, I am absolutely podged.
Cheap and yummy, what more could you want? Get a big baking potato, lay it flat and slice off the top. Scoop out a hollow in the big piece (a melon baller really helps), season it, and drop in a cored lamb kidney. Put the top back on and bake it at about Gas Mark 5 for about an hour and a half.
The potato is crisp, the kidney is gently cooked and moist, and the juices have oozed through into the floury potato inside.
I served it with broad beans in a mustard cream dressing. Next time I might put a bit of butter and mustard in the potato underneath the kidney. It would be good with a bitter green salad, or breakfast things like baked beans or mushrooms. I'll have to make spare next time, it drove the cat beserk - worse than catnip.
I had always thought of heart as a long-cooking casserole meat (although I've had cold smoked moose heart, which was gorgeous), but apparently lamb heart and liver make a good mix and can go on a bbq kebab or be grilled briefly. Lots of yummy Moroccan flavours.
You can hollow out a giant potato, bury a well-seasoned lamb kidney in it, and bake it. We're trying that one this week.
Kidney can feature in Chinese dishes, stir-fried and with a sweet and sour sauce. Liver salad with a Chinese sesame and garlic dressing.
There was also a recipe for Little Pots of Curried Kidneys which is basically a very mild extra-creamy curry sauce, with kidneys and onions fried in butter mixed in, topped with breadcrumbs and briefly flash-baked. Looks like a good breakfast, or starter, or lunch with kedgeree.
A Spanish recipe for pig's trotters simmered with onion, tomato, garlic, with added prunes and pine nuts, thickened with ground almonds and crushed biscuit. That would do for a belly pork or lamb breast as well, I would think.
It was an interesting book to read, difficult because there is a lot of text on darkly coloured pages. I wasn't sure whether the aim of it was to enthuse me or gross me out (tripe makes me heave at the best of times, but fish tripe?), but it's certainly given me a few ideas. I certainly wouldn't buy my own copy, though.
Found some goose breast crowns in LIDL, weighing about a kilo each, for £8. The instructions were to roast at 200 (Gas Mark 6) for an hour, and that worked really well. I was using a single small oven this year, and that let me roast the potatoes underneath and the celery stuffing on the bottom.
Two of them gave off about a pint of good quality fat, and we carved off two whole breasts from each one, one breast per person. That was a large portion of solid meat, and there was a spare breast for slices if seconds were required.
The German meat stall at the Sheffield Christmas Market sold sealed longlife bags of shredded red cabbage cooked in apple juice, I microwaved one of them as a veg.
Dad did his oriental braised sprouts, and carrots with soy sauce and star anise. There were some steamed new potatoes, as well as the roasties.
Plain gravy made in the goose roasting tin, with some Chardonnay left over from Christmas Eve supper.
EDIT: Whoops, forgot, apple butter sauce with cloves as well
Bottle of Quinze President with main course.
A Waitrose "richly fruited" christmas pudding, with cream or white sauce, and a tiny bottle of Royal Tokay wine.
Breakfast:
Beetroot-cured salmon, blinis, hardboiled quail eggs, creme fraiche, Ovruga fake caviar, chives and dill. Champagne or clementine juice, coffee.
Dinner:
Glass of Taylor's Chip Dry White Port, chilled.
Roast goose, goosefat roast potatoes, butter roast parsnips, sausages in bacon, sage and onion stuffing balls, plain boiled sprouts, petits pois, ginger cream sauce, port and redcurrant gravy. Choice of spiced pickled pears, sweet spiced prunes, cherry compote, cranberry and horseradish relish. Chateau Neuf du Pape.
Christmas pudding with cream or white sauce or rum butter. Orange Muscat Flora.
Coffee and Bendicks mints.
Late supper:
Winter apple, Comte cheese, clementine.
Phew.
Heston said: Maris Pipers, peeled and cooked in salted water for 20 minutes until nearly falling apart. Put the peels in a muslin baggie and cook in with the potatoes for extra flavour. Drain and allow to cool for 10 minutes to start drying off, roughing up slightly by tossing gently in a metal colander. Toss in hot olive oil to make sure all the surfaces are coated, and roast for 1 hour in a hottish oven. Add rosemary and garlic for the last 10 minutes.
All of which is fine, except - NOT oil, good goose fat is best best best. And I wouldn't add the herbs and garlic, they're beautiful by themselves. Haven't tried the peel trick before, that might be interesting ... I'd been wondering, following his 3-stage chip process, whether getting them to the cooling stage and then refrigerating overnight might be interesting, to let them really dry yout, the starches crystallise, and therefore give a crunchier coat and even fluffier insides.
