One of the best roast potato recipes I have ever eaten
Potatoes are one of my favourite foods to eat. I’ll eat them any which way, except raw….though I would probably even eat them raw if they weren’t bad for you! And one of my favourite ways to eat my favourite tuber is roasted in the oven so that they turn all crispy on the outside and tender and fluffy on the inside. After looking up Wikipedia (as that’s what everyone does these days), I discovered that there are over 5000 varieties of potatoes around. I’m starting to feel as though I’m missing out. I think I knew of only 4 or 5 of them. What do the other 4995 varieties taste like?
Who knew that there was a Year of the Potato?
I also found out that 2008 was the International Year of the Potato. I don’t remember seeing people dressed in potato outfits during the year 2008, celebrating the fact that the tuber exists, but I’m sure I ate many potatoes during that year. What a shame there weren’t more potato festivals filled with potato eating contests, potato throwing contests and best-dressed potato parades. I would have gone to a festival like that if it was on! The most intriguing thing I read about potatoes on my exhaustive Wikipedia search that took about five minutes was that there are museums dedicated to the potato scattered all over the world. If anyone has ever been to a potato museum, please let me know what was in it, and if it was interesting. They can’t actually display “live” potatoes, can they? They’d go moldy after a while, and as we all know, there are few worse smells around than that of a rotten potato.
And the credit goes to…..
This recipe is a slightly modified version from one of my favourite restaurants in San Francisco called Zuni Café. I have the wonderful cookbook from the café which along with the recipes, has long descriptions on why and how you should do what you do to make each dish. I also have the dubious claim to fame of having it signed by a friend of mine, who is an absolutely fabulous chef. She worked at the café for a few years. I used to adore going around to her place for dinner when we lived in California. She would cook us so many mouth-watering dishes!
Travel Photo(s) Of The Week
Since this post is about a recipe for one of my favourite foods, I thought I’d share a photo of one of my favourite places: Yosemite Park in California. The falls below take a bit of hiking to. We did an overnight sleep-out with the bears to be able to see them. They are called Waterwheel Falls, and for a good reason: because of the way the rock slope is shaped, the water hits dips and then sprays up backwards, forming these giant, beautiful “wheels” of white water.
This is a bonus travel photo of a place in Yosemite Park called Cloud’s Rest, for obvious reasons! That’s me in the photo, hiking with my hands on the sides of my face like horse blinkers. There was a 1000 metre drop on either side of where I was walking and I could only get to the viewpoint by pretending that the sides weren’t there. The view was worth it, but I nearly crawled back across this bit on my hands and knees as I was so freaked out. As you can tell, I’ll never become an expert rock-climber: another job to strike off my list along with astronaut, and trapeze artist.
By Lisa Watson
Crispy roast potatoes
Ingredients
- 2 kg Potatoes 4.4 lbs
- 1/3 cup Olive oil
- 2 - 3 Rosemary Sprigs
- 3 tsp Salt
Instructions
- Peel the potatoes and cut them into rough shapes about as large as a ping-pong ball.
- Heat the oven to 200°C/400°F.
- Cook the potatoes in a pot of boiling water with the salt in it for 5 - 7 minutes. The potato chunks should be still firm, but soft enough that a fork can start to be pushed into them.
- Drain the potatoes and add them to a large boil containing the oil.
- Stir the potatoes well so that they are all coated with the oil. Small bits of potato may break off. This is what makes them crispy.
- Scrape the sprigs of rosemary with a sharp knife to release the oil inside, then add the sprigs to the potatoes.
- Pour out the potatoes onto a baking tray with low sides, or a into a baking dish, and spread them out into a single layer.
- Bake for 35 -45 minutes until they are brown and crispy.
- Serve immediately.