Wednesday, April 18, 2007

April 16, 2007: Indian-spiced potatoes


Recently, Lucy from Nourish Me inadvertantly posted a recipe that would transform our Eastern vegetarian burgers into Eastern vegetarian burgers and chips! These are chips of the self-saucing variety, moist with a paste of garlic, ginger and ghee and luridly yellow thanks to turmeric and yes, more ghee. If anything, these spuds were a bit too oily for my taste so next time I'll start with 2 tablespoons of the ghee and then up it to three if they look like they can soak up a bit more. Now that I've had 'em, I don't think I'll be making these burgers without 'em.


Indian-spiced potatoes

500g of waxy potatoes
salt
a thumb-sized piece of ginger
3 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
4 tablespoons ghee (next time I'll use 2-3 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon fennel seeds

Scrub the potatoes, place in a saucepan, cover with cold water and add a pinch of salt. Bring the potatoes to the boil and then simmer them until tender. Drain, cool, and dice.

Peel and coarsely chop the ginger and garlic. Add them to a mortar with the turmeric and a teaspoon of salt, pound it all together into a paste. Lucy says you could use a food processor instead, and in that case you might need to add a few tablespoons of water too.

Warm the ghee in a frying pan and first add the fennel seeds. Let them sizzle and sputter for a few seconds before reducing the heat. Add the spice paste and stir-fry for a couple of minutes.

Next in go the diced potatoes - turn the heat up again and continually stir the potatoes for about 10 minutes as they cook. Hopefully they'll develop a bit of a crispy skin and your self-saucing chips are done!

6 comments:

  1. Hey, hey, you made them!

    They are a bit on the ghee-heavy side (can't help it. I love fat...) but your reduction would make them much lighter, and just as good.

    They look great next to that burger.

    I've just spied a bunch of new entries - you guys are prolific!

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  2. Too much idle time on weeknights, I guess. :-)

    Thanks again for the recipe, Lucy - it's just what I needed to tear myself away from my standard olive oil, salt and pepper potato dressing.

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  3. Delicious. Must get myself some waxy potatoes. I think the non-waxies would break up.

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  4. You're right, Kitchen Hand - that may be what happened in Lucy's original post (although she did specify waxy...?).

    On the other hand, I wouldn't turn away a plate of Indian-spiced mash...

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  5. They look great. I might try your light version because the less ghee that ends up on my hips, the better!

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  6. Truffle, I think these will still have that delicious buttery flavour with about half the ghee I originally used. I'll probably continue to adjust the quantity each time I make it, depending on whether I'm teaming it with something heavy or light.

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