Wednesday, July 28, 2010

best potatoes ever!



Last week I got I Like You, Amy Sedaris' party planning/cook book that's been on my want list for ages. It's jam-packed with great recipes, funny stories, witty anecdotes and silliness. My favorite part is the recipes (ok, and the silliness.)

She has a lot of meat recipes that I might try with tofu or fake chicken, but, as usual, my first inclination was to skip to the index and look for all recipes with "potato" in the title. I tried the most scrumptious-looking one last night -- Roasted Potatoes in their Jackets.

The recipe is SO simple. Just preheat the oven to 400 degrees and coat the bottom of a roasting pan with olive oil and sea salt. Add your little potatoes (This really only works with little potatoes. The best part is the skin, and if you cut large potatoes into chunks it just wouldn't be the same!) and toss them in the oil/salt combo. Amy doesn't say whether to cover the pan or not, so I covered it for the first 25 minutes to make sure the insides of the potatoes cooked well, then took off the lid for the remaining 20 minutes to let the skins get crispy! The result is so delicious! The insides are like perfect mashed potatoes -- creamy and flavorful without even adding any butter or seasonings. And the skin (the skin!!!!) is salty, a little crunchy and utterly mouth-watering!

The potatoes looked so amazing, but, alas, I made dinner at 10pm so the lighting wasn't exactly suitable for taking photos. Thankfully, there was this pretty cool photo from the cookbook that I could steal instead :)

Thursday, June 3, 2010

potato salad


Today I had the best potato salad ever. I combined two recipes -- one that I've been using for years from my friend, and one that I just saw in a vegan cookbook last week. It was so incredibly simple, and turned out so delicious!!

You just boil a bunch of potatoes until they're soft, but not mooshy (you can see this is a very technical recipe..) then drain, and let them cool. Peel, and chop into chunks. Combine with some olive oil, water and vinegar (add the vinegar little by little to taste, if you're not really into the tangy flavor) and THEN to top it all off, chop up a bunch of flat-leaf parsley, and I mean a bunch--not just a sprinkle-- and combine it with the other ingredients.

The large amounts of fresh parsley (really has to be fresh, not dried!!) give the potato salad a summery, super fresh flavor. I felt like having some lemonade and going swimming after I'd eaten it :)