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Spicy Fried Potatoes

- Alex 2 Comments

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Everyone loves potatoes (don’t they?) but sometimes it’s tricky to do something other than sauté them, mash them, turn them into chips and so on.

Last night I was faced with an Asian style fish dish (recipe to come) that needed an accompaniment. We’d had rice the night before, there were no noodles in the cupboard and we had just two potatoes.

This is a great way to stretch those two potatoes a little further.

Start by taking your potatoes, peeling them and cutting them into approximately 1 cm square cubes. Cook them in boiling water – slightly under is better than slightly over. Drain. You can leave them to cool or not.

Heat a generous tablespoon of ghee in a frying pan. If you have no ghee a combination of butter and a light oil (such as peanut, or a very light olive oil) will do. When the ghee is hot, add a little very finely sliced onion (I used about a quarter of an onion as that’s what I had left over – but if you love onion then a whole one will be fine!) and one clove of garlic, finely chopped. When the onion starts to take on a little colour, add 2 tsp of ground coriander, 1 tsp of ground cumin, about ½ tsp of turmeric and chilli flakes to taste. Fry these spices for a minute or so and then add the potatoes.

Now, this is best done a little in advance because you don’t want to be hurrying the potatoes. You want to get them plenty of frying time so everything gets good and crispy. You don’t have to worry about serving them immediately they look done – they keep hot very nicely. The only problem might be snacking on them while you finish off other things … if you do that you’ll find your potatoes don’t go quite as far as you hoped!

I needed to season the potatoes reasonably generously with salt. I almost never add salt to cooking so my idea of “reasonably generous” is probably nowhere near enough for many people. As always … season to taste.

Serve with whatever you happen to be eating. These would be awesome with any type of curry, or at a BBQ – any meal with robust flavours that can stand up to a bit of chilli. Delicious!

Lemon Chilli Chicken with Couscous Salad

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lemon chilli chicken with couscous salad

Well, the lemon chilli chicken part of this is really pretty straightforward. What is interesting is the couscous salad. At the risk of sounding like a broken record – I’m quite into salads and during summer we eat quite a lot of couscous. But mixing through the same lot of vegetables can get a little uninspiring.

This recipe comes from Gordon Ramsay’s Makes It Easy. It’s actually the first thing I’ve cooked from this book. Some of the recipes seem somewhat uninspired (roast pork sandwich? really?) but this recipe proves that there’s at least one gem.

The lemon and chilli chicken part is facile. The recipe is for chicken wings on the BBQ. I opted for chicken thighs, pan fried (and boy, did that end up with chicken and fat spitting all over the kitchen …). Simply take your favourite cut of chicken and marinate in olive oil, lemon juice and finely sliced chilli for a couple of hours. Cook in your favourite way.

For enough couscous for two, with a little left over, you need to start by roasting a red and a green capsicum and a few cloves of garlic. Heat the oven to 200°C fan and toss the capsicums and unpeeled garlic cloves with a little olive oil. Place the vegetables on baking tray and cook, turning the capsicums every now and then, for about 20 minutes. The skin will start to blister and you want it blistered all over the capsicums so you can peel them easily.

While the capsicums are cooking, measure out 100g of couscous into your serving bowl and add 100mL of boiling water. Stir the water through with a fork and then cover the couscous for about 15 minutes, fluffing up the couscous every now and then.

When the capsicums are done, allow them to cool then peel, remove the seeds and chop coarsely. Add to the couscous. Squeeze the roasted garlic in too: cut the blunt end off the cloves and just squeeze out the centre. Mix through ½ tsp of ground cumin and a good squeeze of lemon juice and a generous glug or two of extra virgin olive oil (use the cheaper light olive oil for the marinade, but don’t skimp here!). Finish with a roughly chopped a tomato (or use cherry tomatoes, for a prettier look) and a big handful of chopped coriander.

Absolutely delicious!

Lime and Chilli Steak Fajitas

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Randomly picked from an old cooking magazine this turned out to be the perfect mid week supper.  At the same time, it’s so tasty I think we’ll definitely be dragging it out for summer BBQs.

This time it’s Australian Gourmet Traveller, December 2009 and the “Gourmet Fast” section provides our dinner.  I skipped over the fried quails and headed to the lime and chilli steak fajitas.  This meal is just ridiculously easy.  It’s in three components, so you can mix and match and it’s structured perfectly so you can do it all with a minimum of fuss.

There’s also not a big list of hard to procure ingredients – everything you need you probably have in the fridge or can buy easily from your local shops.

The first part is the steak.  The recipe used skirt, I used rump.  Take your steak and squeeze over the juice of a couple of limes (I actually had half a lemon hanging around so I used that and one lime).  Ensure you cover both sides and then leave to marinate while you put together the two salads.  Turn the steak at least once while it’s marinating.

The salads are really two basic salsas:  avocado and tomato.

For the avocado, peel and coarsely chop one avocado.  Mix it with some lime juice, some finely chopped red chilli and some extra virgin olive oil.

For the tomato, coarsely chop a tomato and mix it with some chopped coriander, some lime juice and some extra virgin olive oil.  Andy decided we definitely needed onion in our tomato salsa so I added about a quarter of a finely chopped onion.

Heat a griddle pan (or the BBQ) and cook the steak according to personal preference.  When the steak is cooked allow it to rest for 10 minutes or so (pop it on a plate and cover it in tin foil) and then slice finely.

You’re all done!  Assemble the fajitas by grabbing some tortillas and adding what you will.  We included some jalapeños. Some finely sliced iceberg lettuce or a dab of sour cream would also work well.

My tip for this recipe: don’t be tempted to substitute lemon for ALL the lime juice. For the salads in particular you definitely need lime juice and you should ensure that you have at least some lime juice in the marinade.