Spud love: breaking free from the tater hate.
Recipe: smoky potato stew, inexpensive and memorable.
Can we talk about the joy of potatoes?
Grab baked potatoes out of the oven with a hot pad. Let the potatoes cool until you can touch them.
Slice them in half and remove the soft potato filling.
Slick the potato skins with oil, which will turn them crisp. Tumble the potato filling in a large bowl with butter, cheddar cheese, some soft-cooked bacon pieces, a tiny pinch of nutmeg, salt, pepper, and dried dill. Mix it all together and put that filling back into the potato skin bowls. Bake again.
Last 10 minutes? Top with more shredded cheese and let it melt all over that mountain of potato goodness.
Put the wok on the big burner. When the metal is hot, pour in the strained fry oil we keep in a big quart jar. Keep the thermometer in the oil. When it hits 375°, pull out the frozen skinny fries, in the generic-brand bag, from the freezer. Add a big handful of them into the fry oil and let them bob and brown until they show the faintest beginnings of brown and they rise up to the surface of the oil. Pull out those fries and put them on a big plate covered with paper towels. Shower them with salt — and, gasp, a pinch of sugar — and toss them. When the oil has returned to heat, add more fries. Call the kids over to eat fries together, while they are hot. Who needs plates? Keep them occupied with hot, fast-food-style fries, in your dining room. Put on a little music for dancing and you have a party.
Move the temperature knob of the oven to 450°. Splash the bottom of the roasting pan, lavishly, with oil. (Vegetable oil is fine. Don’t waste the extra-virgin olive oil here.) Line the bottom of the oiled pan with small purple potatoes.
Lift the raw chicken you have salted and oiled and put it on top of the potatoes. Bring the lemon you have been boiling in a small pot on the stove. When it’s tender-soft, grab the lemon with tongs and move it into the cavity of the chicken. Roast that chicken until the skin is browning and starting to crackle. (Also, measure the temperature. When the thighs have reached 165°, you’re good.)
Remove the chicken from the pan and let it rest for 15 minutes.
Drain the juices from the roasting pan. Give the potatoes a good tumble and return them to the oven to slowly dry out and roast.
Meanwhile, make a reduction sauce with the lemony juices from the roasting chicken. When the potatoes have that shattery crisp crust, pull them out. Put it all on the table: roasted chicken, roasted purple potatoes, lemon-caper sauce. Add a salad. Sunday supper.
That’s three dinners in one week.
We love potatoes in this house.
However, I have to admit this: for quite a few years, I tried to limit the amount of potatoes in our house.
Why?
If you’d like to learn how to roast that chicken, make that lemon-caper sauce, fry food without being anxious, or make the smoky potato stew I’m sharing here today, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
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