2 ways with potatoes

Oven Pride set me the challenge of putting my creative slant on a recipe post. As a food blogger, recipe posts are what I do, but what is my ‘creative slant’? Well, I like to keep my recipes simple. I want them to be accessible to everyone, even if the reader has never cooked before. To me, it was time to work some magic on the simplest ingredient that we cook with. The potato.

Making mash, chips, boiled and baked potatoes are amongst the first things we learn in the kitchen. I think it’s such a shame to leave it there with potatoes when there are far better side dishes to make with them. Today I’m showing you two of my favourites, both are very different in texture but use the exact same ingredients.

Let me introduce you to domino potatoes. Stacks of potatoes with perfect crunch and beautiful garlicky butter finding it’s way between them.

I like to think of them as the healthier version of dauphinoise.

To make these, simply preheat your oven to 210 degrees Celsius (425 F). Peel enough large Maris Piper (or other white potatoes) to fill your oven proof dish. Trim the side of each potato to make a block. Slice on a mandoline or as thinly as possible with a knife.

Stack on their sides in the dish and top with cubes of garlic butter. I use my own recipe for wild garlic butter, but you can find pre-made garlic butter in the Supermarket’s dairy aisle.

Season and bake for around 40 minutes. When cooked, the tops of the potatoes will be a crisp golden brown and the insides tender and buttery.

Next up, Parmentier potatoes. Rumour has it these crispy little cubes were ‘invented’ by Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (French, potato loving guy born in 1737). How true that is, I’m not sure, but I doff my hat to him. This is my favourite way to eat potatoes.

Start by cutting white potatoes in to 1cm cubes. I’m using Albert Bartlett Rooster which I think are best with the skins left on, but you could peel them if you’d rather.

To get these little cubes fluffy and soft inside whilst offering a good amount of crunch outside, we’re going to parboil them and then throw them in hot, hot, fat.

Set the oven to 210 degrees C (425 F). Add a lump of goose or duck fat to your roasting tin or skillet pan and pop it in the oven. They’re actually surprisingly low in saturated fats so don’t let that scare you off them, but if you don’t have any you could use a high smoke point oil like rapeseed (here’s a good reference chart for that).

To parboil the potatoes, add the cubes to a pan of boiling water for around 5 minutes, or until you can poke a fork in to one without too much force. Drain them and transfer to the baking tin that’s in the oven with cubes of garlic butter on top. They’re ready after around 30 minutes when the outside crisps up and turns golden.

You can liven these up by adding extras like diced bacon or shallots prior to cooking. They’re easily transformed in to a full meal by cracking eggs in to the pan for the last 5 minutes as a twist on egg and chips.