Potato Salad

This isn't just any potato salad recipe. It has pancetta, lemon juice, garlic and rosemary. I needed an alternative to the typical mayo-laden recipes and this was great. It has just enough fat to be delicious, but still light because of the lemon juice and celery.

If you're wondering why there are so many potato recipes, it's because my dad gave me a 10 pound bag of potatoes. They were on sale.

Potatoes Au Gratin

There is really nothing I like better than potatoes au gratin. What isn't there to like about layers of thinly sliced potatoes with cream and whole milk. deeliiisshhhh Panko bread crumbs make it even better. This is a classic recipe and there's nothing I'd change.

Potato Gnocchi (the 101st? post!)

I had gnocchi for the first time ever while volunteering at Food Rendevous, a great meeting of local food. A chef was demo-ing potato gnocchi and how easy it was to make and I tried some- omgggaahhhhh it was so good. It still had bits of mashed potatoes in it so it was soft, not at all what I thought it would taste like. I've avoided gnocchi for so long because I thought they were going to be chewy lumps of dough- that's definitely not the case! This recipe is great- the gnocchi were tender and had a very faint hint of potato.


I also got to use a potato ricer for the first time and I am now a converted ricer-lover. It make the potatoes so fluffy! This recipe was somewhat labor intensive, I spent just under an hour rolling and cutting the gnocchi. I youtube'd a lot of videos on how to properly roll a gnocchi on a fork... I think they came out more or less looking like proper gnocchi.

I served mine with a meat sauce (Trader Joe's spicy Italian sausage!) YUM! This would be perfect for the rainy weather in socal right now.

Lion's Head Cassarole and Potato and Cheese Pierogi

Sorry about the photo- I couldn't quite figure out how to make it look appetizing.

I don't particularly care for meatballs, especially Italian meatballs (sorry!), so I was surprised when I liked a lion's head. It's slightly crispy (if you don't steam it) on the outside and so juicy and soft, not the hardpacked Italian version. I made the version that's all meat because I didn't have tofu, but the tofu one is way better. It's a lot softer. I don't know how to cook Asian food, unless it's fried rice. I really have no idea what the spices look like or what they're called or what flavors go with what so I'm really thankful for Taiwanese bloggers who post recipes like this because without them I'd be lost.


Pierogi is like a dumpling and I love dumplings, all shapes and forms. I've only had them from Traktir, a great Russian restaurant in West Hollywood, CA. I looovveeee their pierogi, but it's pretty expensive for the amount they give you and I can probably eat two platefuls so I thought it'd be a good idea to make them at home. I got the recipe here. Again, the addition of sour cream is unexpected and thankfully I couldn't taste it in the dough. I am going to need to work on making pierogi. My dumplings were not the silken, plump half moons at Traktir, mine were lumpy HUGE ovals- some of which blew up while boiling. I didn't make the sauce- I couldn't bring myself to use all that butter and sour cream.

Potato filling. I added a LOT of dill to this after the photo because it was bland.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake & Curried Potato Chips

This is a surprisingly good healthy(ish?) cake. There is shredded zucchini and I replaced the oil with unsweetened apple sauce- you really can't tell when you eat the cake. It's really moist and chocolatey, I even added walnuts to mine (still trying to use up all the nuts). I was really surprised I couldn't taste or feel the zucchini, I'm pretty skeptical of recipes like this that try to hide vegetables in desserts. The texture is a bit off compared to regular cake, this was softer, lighter.

soaking the potatoes to get rid of excess starch.

I saw a recipe for making potato chips in a microwave, but it looked too labor intensive. You can only make as many chips as fit in your microwave at at time. I saw this recipe for curried potato chips, which uses an oven. I made one batch with curry powder and one batch with cheddar bacon salt. The cheddar bacon salt turned out MUCH better- the curry chips tasted a tiny bit bitter towards the end. The author warns against this and I could probably avoid the problem by slicing the potatoes thinner. My kyocera mandolin is arriving in a week or two so I'll try making chips again with it.

Wrinkly Potatoes with a Cilantro Sauce and Sour Cream Dinner rolls

I chose this recipe for wrinkly potatoes (papas arrugadas) because of the way it's made. You boil small potatoes in extremely salty water until all of the water evaporates. The potatoes have a thin crust of salt on them. The cilantro sauce (mojo verde) that goes with it is really good- I loooovvve cilantro. Next up is baking fish in a crust of salt!

Before

After

I had leftover sour cream from some odd recipe a while back and found this recipe for sour cream dinner rolls in an attempt to be less wasteful. These were a lot softer than the other dinner rolls I've made and there was absolutely no trace of sour cream taste.

Latkes

Latkes with a side of sour cream and apple sauce.

This recipe comes from www.style.com from Pamela Love, who makes beautiful jewelry (including the famous bird claw cuff). The first time I tried to make hash browns from scratch, I didn't squeeze out the water and no matter how hot and long I fried the potatoes, I couldn't get them to crisp. In the end I had purplish-brown mushy potatoes. My poor dad ate a plate of them and I threw away the rest. LESSON LEARNED: always squeeze the water out of potatoes.


This is a basic, great recipe for latkes with ingredients you probably already have at home. I like to add green onions or some smoked salmon on top with a dollop of sour cream. YUM.

Potato Salad

I love potato salad, with mayonnaise and without (ie german potato salad). This is a recipe with mayonnaise, but there's not that much. This is a different potato salad than the one you're used to. There's a time and a place for mayonnaise-y potato salad with peas and some celery, but this is not one of those times. You need to try this version because:

a) it's not covered in mayonnaise
b) there's bacon
c) there's smoked salt
d) there are fresh herbs (thyme and parsley, although is substituted chives for parsley)


ahhh smoked salt. I got mine from Whole Foods. It's a good investment- it's kinda pricey, but you use it sparingly and it adds a good amount of smokiness to your dish.

This recipe is very easy and I added some of the bacon grease to mine to make it even more bacon-y. I think it tastes better the next day- a great make ahead recipe. Although next time I'm going to cut the potato into thinner pieces so it can soak up more of the onion, bacon, smokey, herb-y flavors.

Spanish tortilla

I had my first spanish tortilla last summer in Barcelona and I didn't know what to expect- a flour tortilla? Nope- it's basically a giant potato and onion omelet and it is delicious. This recipe is really basic, you can make small tweaks here and there to make it your own.


I stuck closely to the recipe because I was very skeptical. Almost every time I've tried to pan fry potatoes, they've stuck to the pan or never fully cooked through, so I was expecting a disaster. Par-cooking them in water helps and so does the copious amount of oil. If you have a mandolin (jealous!) then this would be a good recipe to use it with. If you don't, just work slowly and try to get even slices.


I even flipped the tortilla onto a plate and then back into the pan to cook the other side. I must've been lucky that day because it didnt fall apart. This was good warm from the pan and room-temperature the next with a salad. This made a LOT and was enough for 5 meals.

even more french fries!

I had a lot of leftover oil from deep frying the piroshkis a few recipes ago. Here are the sweet ones, I put strawberry jam on the inside and dusted them with confectioner's sugar afterwards.

My set up.

I also had a bunch of leftover potatoes so I made french fries. I experimented with two frying techniques, just frying once and doing a double-fry (aka once at 325 and again at 375). I didn't use a thermometer, although that would've helped. I put small pieces of potato in the oil to test if it was hot enough- if the oil isn't hot enough you get soggy, greasy fries- not good.

One fry.

Double fry.

I seasoned mine with cajun seasoning and smoked salt. Next time I'll try soaking the potatoes in water for a few hours before frying- I read that this make them crispier.

Garlic Fries

One of my favorite things to eat is french fries, but it's hard to find a recipe for oven-baked fries that are good. They usually turn out soggy and greasy, but these are GARLIC FRIES. I found the recipe here. And it's easy to make because you pre-cook the potatoes in the microwave (or par-boil them if you don't like using the microwave).


I also added some of Trader Joe's chicken seasoning. I paired mine with sriracha mixed with ketchup. These have the same outer crunchy layer because of the corn starch- good trick.