Hasselback Potatoes

I don’t know about you but I get bored of the same old potato, rice and pasta side dishes.  Years ago I was watching a Nigella Lawson show and she made these lovely potatoes, describing their incomplete slices as just a way of getting more fat inside.  As a huge roast potato fan, this thrilled me.  Best of all, this recipe is pretty and easily multiplied to feed any army, limited only by the size of your largest roasting pan and oven.

Ingredients
6 medium waxy young potatoes (with thin peels)
Knob of butter
Healthy drizzle of olive oil
Good sprinkle of sea salt
Small handful chopped parsley for serving - optional

Method
Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C.

Set your potatoes, one at a time in a wooden spoon.  Using a sharp knife, cut even slices about 1/4 inch or 1/2 cm apart, from the top of the potato, width-wise, until your knife reaches the wooden spoon.

Set the potatoes, cut side down in a baking pan that has been drizzled with olive oil.  Put the knob of butter in the pan and put the pan in the preheated oven.

Roast for about 20-25 minutes, turning the potatoes from top to bottom and basting frequently with the olive oil/butter in the bottom of the pan.

Finally turn the potatoes cut side up and give them a good sprinkle of sea salt.

Continue basting frequently with the olive oil/butter.

Roast another 20-25 minutes or until the slices have separated and the potatoes are golden and crunchy around the edges.

Baste one final time and serve.

I meant to sprinkle these with chopped parsley.  Imagine them even prettier with a little green on top. 

Enjoy! 

Rough Puff Pastry

Easy to make, rough puff pastry instructions.  So much better than store-bought!

Do you ever go through phases where you watch the one television show you’ve just discovered, marathon style, whole seasons at a time, until you are all caught up?  Don’t try to tell me it’s just me because I don’t believe you!  Bunch of liars.  Yeah, well, now I don’t want to talk about it.

Just kidding!  Maybe I should have started by saying I am not a fan of reality television.  So much of it seems scripted or rehearsed or, at the very least, theatrically designed to cause controversy.  And if you know me at all, you know that I can’t bear to hear or watch people fighting.  So I avoid reality TV.  But, a few months back, a friend told me about The Great British Bake Off.  A BAKE OFF!  So I found it online.  It appeared to be genuine people, real home bakers, vying for the title of best amateur British baker.  The judges were none other than the queen of baking, Mary Berry and dashing bread guru, Paul Hollywood.  Each episode meant three challenges for our bakers.  The first was a signature bake where they used a tried and tested recipe of their own devising.  The second was a technical challenge posed by the judges.  And the third and final challenge was what they called The Showstopper.  Here the home bakers pulled out all the stops to impress the judges with their knowledge, techniques and decorating abilities.

Hooked by the drama, I watched the entire third season in just a couple of days.  It’s amazing the housekeeping chores and laundry - washing, folding and ironing - a person can get through with a good show to watch!  A few times during the season, the contestants were called upon to make something I had never heard of:  Rough puff pastry.  It is sort of like real puff pastry but you just mix the butter through the flour in cubes, instead of one big block, and there was minimal, relative speaking, rolling out of the dough.  I have been meaning to make and master real puff pastry for a very long time but had never gotten around to it.  (Read:  I was lazy but mostly chicken.)  But rough puff looked do-able. And so we commence.

I used this recipe from Gordon Ramsey, whom I love, shouter though he is.  I just can’t watch his shows.  Give me soft-spoken, with a glint in his blue eyes, Paul Hollywood any day.  Like Kenny Rogers before he got crazy with plastic surgery, right?

Photo credit BBC Two - Host profile

Ingredients
2 cups or 250g flour
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 cup + 2 tablespoons or 250g butter, cold
About 2/3 cup or 150ml cold water

Method
Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl.

Cut the cold butter into small cubes.

Add them to the bowl and cut in loosely with a pastry blender.

Not too fine, though.  You want to still see bits of butter.  Gordon wanted me to use my hands but it’s hot, hot, hot here in Dubai and, even with the air conditioning on, the kitchen is really too warm for this sort of pastry.   So I used a pastry blender.

Make a well in the bowl and pour in about two-thirds of the cold water, mixing until you have a firm rough dough adding extra water if needed.  (I did not.  If you are working in a colder climate, you might need it.)

Cover with cling film and leave to rest for 20 minutes in the fridge.  (Longer if you are in a warm climate.)

Turn out onto a lightly floured countertop, knead gently and form into a smooth rectangle.

Roll the dough in one direction only, until 3 times the width.  Keep the edges as straight and even as you can.  As you can see, I didn’t do so good with that step.  Never mind, it all turns out all right.  Don’t overwork the butter streaks; you should have a marbled effect.

Fold the bottom third up to the center, then the top third down and over that.

Give the dough a quarter turn (to the left or right) and roll out again to three times the length.

Fold as before, cover with cling film and chill for at least 20 minutes before rolling to use.

And that’s it!  It actually was very easy.  And the best part was that it puffed up most successfully in the oven.  Also, unlike store bought puff pastry, I knew exactly what had gone into that lovely crust.  Butter and flour and salt.

Stay tuned tomorrow for when I’ll make a pretty tomato and olive tart out of my rough puff.   (That’s a sneak peek in the first photo and again here below.)

So flakey!  So delicious! And actually very easy. 

Get mixing and rolling, lovely people!  Meet you back here tomorrow with your rough puff chilled and ready to bake. 

Fennel Potato Mash

My love affair with fennel continues!  Sometimes a new recipe occurs to me because I lack the ingredients for what I wanted to make.  Sometimes it’s because I am feeling lazy and one dish that provides both the starch and vegetable for our meal appeals.  And other times, inspiration strikes when a search through the vegetable bin in my refrigerator turns up an ingredient I had forgotten I’d bought.  This particular dish resulted from all three.  An occurrence I liken to the confluence of the stars.  Because the resultant dish was delicious and fresh.  I hope you like it too.

Ingredients
About 10oz or 285g potatoes
2 medium bulbs fennel
2 generous tablespoons butter (or more, to taste)
1 3/4 oz or 50g freshly grated Parmesan or other hard cheese
Sea salt
Black pepper
Trim the tough green stalks off of the fennel bulbs.  Discard the tough stalks and mince the fronds.  Set aside.

Cut the hard root end off of the bulbs and slice them vertically.

Peel the potatoes and cut them into quarters.   I missed taking a photo of this step but I think you can handle it.

Put the potatoes and the sliced fennel into a pot of water with a teaspoon of salt and heat to boiling on the stove.   Cook until the fennel and potatoes are both fork tender.

Remove from the heat and drain off the water.  With a potato masher, mash the potatoes and fennel until they are as smooth as you normally like your mashed potatoes, adding in the butter and salt and pepper to taste.

Spoon it all into a serving dish.   Mix the Parmesan with the minced fennel fronds and scatter the mixture on top of the mashed potatoes and fennel.

Isn’t that pretty?  And it tastes good too!

Enjoy! 

Chicken Périgord-Style for #RandomRecipeChallenge

The past couple of weeks I have had so many lovely comments and Facebook messages from folks who keep telling me how organized I am.  And mostly I am.  Really.  But I dropped the ball on this one.  When it came time to make the dish for this month’s Random Recipe, where Dom from Belleau Kitchen challenged us to use our birthday day to choose a cookbook off of our shelves and then let that book open to a random recipe, I ran into a small problem.  Hands up all of you who know where my cookbooks are!  Yep, in the sea freight.  Now what?  As you might have read way back here only two books with recipes come in the suitcase.  So, I grabbed my Good Housekeeping and opened it randomly.  Then I counted forward to the 23rd recipe. And it can’t get any more random than that with only one real cookbook to choose from.  Sorry, Dom!  Hopefully by next month, my cookbooks will be here.

I ended up in Poultry and the 23rd recipe called for boneless chicken breasts with heart-stopping amounts of butter.  And then cream!  This dish was so rich and delicious that I suggest you cook it for anyone you want swooning in your arms.  Let’s just call it love and not a heart attack, okay?

The original recipe called for eight chicken breasts but I cooked only four (well, my pack ended up being three and two little ones) and left all the other ingredients exactly the same, because we like sauce.  Feel free to add the extra breasts if you have more people to feed.

Ingredients
8 oz or 225g mushrooms, cleaned – I used Swiss browns.
1/2 cup or 110g butter
Drizzle olive oil – perhaps a teaspoon
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1.1 pounds or 500g)
1/3 cup or 40g flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
14 oz or 415ml chicken broth or stock
2 tablespoons cream
1 teaspoon minced chives for garnish – optional

Method
Cut the hard ends off of the mushroom stems and then slice them.  Set aside.

Rinse the chicken breasts and then dry them between some paper towels.

Melt three-quarters of the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat, along with a small drizzle of olive oil.  Slide the breasts in and cook until browned on both sides.   They will not be cooked through so don’t be alarmed if they are still pink on the insides.  Remove to a plate.

Add the mushrooms and the rest of the butter to the pan.  Cook until the mushrooms are golden.  Remove mushrooms with a slotted spoon and set them aside in a small bowl.

Turn off the fire and stir the flour and salt into the pan drippings.  Use a whisk, if necessary to make sure there are no lumps.

Gradually stir in chicken broth and cream and then cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is thickened.

Return the chicken and mushrooms to the pan.  Pour in any chicken juices that collected on the plate.

Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 25 minutes, with the lid on.

Serve over rice or noodles. Add the green onions for garnish, if desired.

Enjoy!