today's lunch: stereotypically french potatoes!

 You know what's awkward? Trying to take a picture of your plate with a webcam that's built into your laptop because you can't find your actual camera. But even so, I think it came out pretty well!

Today I had baby red potatoes with caramelized onions, brie and bacon. Seasoned with Herbes de Provence, French grey sea salt, and cracked black pepper. It's 700 calories of awesome, and I'm totally okay with it being half my calorie intake for the day.

Make like so:
Put the potatoes to boil on med-low with sea salt.
Chop the bacon, then cook it slowly on pretty low heat to get all the fat out, until it's crispy and crumbly. Take it out of the pan.
Chop the onions small and cook them in the bacon fat with a pat of butter. Once they're a little clear and juicy, add a pinch of Herbes de Provence. Caramelize slowly for as long as it takes for the potatoes to cook. I like mine pretty soft and sweet.
Drain the cooked potatoes and add a pat of butter, more sea salt and cracked black pepper. Let that sit and absorb while you cut the brie into little rounds or slices.
Dump the taters onto a pretty plate and break them up a little with the back of a fork. Top with the onions, the brie and the bacon bits.
Enjoy deeply.

carribbean mash

Last night, we had porkchops cooked with one of those ready-made seasonings-- the citrus one-- in a roasting bag, and for a side, we had this amazing and original mash that D discovered in a dream:

He took red potatoes and boiled them with green plantains, to start, adding the plantains a few minutes after the potatoes because they don't take as long to cook. He said that they boil nicely, but they make weird black bubbles that are kind of alarming, though they drain away like any other boiling water.

While they were cooking, he sautéed peppers, onions and garlic.

Once everything was done, he mashed it all together with salt and pepper, and it was really amazing. The red potatoes already make a pretty smooth mash, but the plantains made it almost creamy, and gave it a little tang like they'd been made with buttermilk. The slight fruityness of it went really well with the citrus porkchops, and mellowed the onions and garlic so that all the flavors blended better than they do with just potatoes. And they tasted excellent with the citrusy meat-juice left in the roasting bag.

Keeper!

Stamppot Boerenkool By Way of Bangers and Mash

I saw this on the Food Network ages ago, and really only remembered that there were potatoes cooked in beef broth, weensy-chopped kale and sausages. I couldn't find a recipe that was exactly what I was thinking, so I read, like, seven and combined them the way I wanted to, and came out with something similar to what I was thinking and similar to Bangers and Mash. I'm pretty sure they cooked it in a crockpot sort of deal on FN, but I did away with that. 

Here's how it went:

Peel and chop a bunch of potatoes and set them to cook in a whole box of beef broth. Boil like you would for anything else.

Meanwhile, put four pieces of smoked bacon on low heat to melt out all the fat and cook them until they're crispy as you like, then remove them and let them cool while you cook a thinly-sliced onion in the fat. Cook until it's all melty and golden, then remove and replace with a sausage for everyone who's eating. I wanted a smoked brat, but I couldn't find any, so I used regular brats, and they turned out just fine. I think it's the sausageyness that matters, not what kind of sausage you use, though the recipes usually call for 'smoked sausage' or 'farmer's sausage'. I'm not huge on keilbasa, but that's probably good too.

While they're browning up on both sides, finely chop a whole bunch of fresh freen kale, disgarding bad leaves, yellow or tough bits and stems. You can save the stems for soup or something. 

When the sausages are all browned, but not cooked through, add the onions, the bacon and the kale on top of them, and ladle in enough of the broth from the potatoes to make it, like, three-quarters of an inch deep. You're braising here, not boiling. Cover it with a lid, and let it cook on medium or medium-high while the potatoes finish cooking. 

When they're done, pull them out of the broth (don't throw it away!), and mash them like regular mashed potatoes, but with alot of pepper and some of the broth as well as milk and butter to make them creamy. 

Pull out the sausages, which should be almost cooked through, and spread the kale, onions and bacon on top of the mashed potatoes. 

Throw the cooking broth from the potatoes into the pan where the sauage and bacon were cooked, and simmer it until it's thickened up and starts to look like onion gravy, then add the sausages back in to finish off.

Serve the topped potatoes with one sausage and some gravy, and there you go!

~:) Delicious Dinner (tm)!

Leftovers: Fried Mashed Potatoes

You know how three day old mashed potatoes kind of glom up and get all stiff? I was playing with a chunk a little after Thanksgiving, and I thought, this would be great fried. And really, what wouldn't?

So I heated up, like, an inch of veggie oil and mushed the mashed potatoes into three little paddies like felafels, and fried them for a minute or two on each side until they were this lovely golden color just sort of too dark. While they were draining, I salted them like french fries, and then ate them as-is, right off the paper towel. They were awesome. Like french fries, but softer. I think they'd be great with something yummy inside. I was going to put turkey inside, but I got lazy. 

I don't regret it at all.