charming potato

[freckles_and_doubt]

You know I make those oven-baked baby potato thingies for braais? Where you halve the baby potatoes and sling them into a pan with garlic and olive oil and whatever other seasonings occur to you at the time (herbs, lemon, spices, the flesh of the living), and bake them until crispy? Well, this evening Jo & I, via the essentially random processes outlined above, accidentally created the best ever version of this. The One True Crispy Potato. The Platonic Ideal. I undertook to blog it quickly before we both forgot what we did. Herewith.

Excessive Potatoes

So, you need:

• 1kg baby potatoes. (This serves 4 of us. Don't mock). I like the Woolies yellow-fleshed Mediterranean ones, but any will do.
  
• A generous splodge of peanut oil.
  
• A couple of fairly heaped tablespoons of crushed garlic/ginger mix.
  
• Two mediumly ferocious chillis, chopped, seeds included.
  
• A mad sprinkling of Thai seven spice, to taste, but I tend to sprinkle a bit wildly.
  
• Half a pack of uncooked bacon bits.
  
• A couple of tablespoons of honey.
  
• A couple of tablespoons of soy sauce.
  
• A dash of fish sauce.
  
• A generous couple of handfuls of chopped spring onion.

So, you halve the potatoes and sling them into a wide roasting pan sort of thingy. Splosh generously with peanut oil; add ginger/garlic and Thai seven spice, and salt liberally. Whizz the potatoes around with a spatula to coat evenly with oil and seasonings. Chop chillis finely and add. Whizz around some more.
Stick the pan into a preheated 200^o oven, uncovered, for 30-45mins. If you remember you could come and mix up the pan a bit halfway through so they brown more or less evenly, but I usually forget.
At a point around 20 mins from the meat coming off the braai, add the bacon bits. Swirl around madly to coat/mix. Sling back into the oven.
Ten minutes later, haul the pan out of the oven and slosh over the potatoes the mixture of honey and soy/fish sauce you have previously prepared by warming the honey very slightly in the microwave before mixing in the soy and fish sauce. Once again, mix madly. Sling back in the oven.
As the meat arrives onto the table off the braai, triumphantly haul the potatoes out of the oven and decant into a serving bowl, making sure to scrape out the somewhat delectable sauce remnants and bits of crispy bacon. Add the chopped spring onions and mix together. (We contemplated adding sesame seeds, but it seemed redundant at this point).
Serve, to universal adulation and overeating.

I have only two things to add, being a bit overwhelmed by too much registration, too much braai, too much braai smoke, and a two-day headache.
(1) The possibilities for Skyrim mods seen in this video are making me drool more than slightly. Also, the editing on that irritatingly catchy tune is sheer genius. (I know that irritatingly catchy tune all too well because my OLs insist on using it every year for their opening presentation thingy. It's a terrible ear-worm even without all the arrow in the knee bits).
(2) I am utterly enjoying Veronica Mars anyway, but the last episode I watched completely made my weekend by developing precisely the 'ship I've been rooting for madly for about half the season. This makes me feel smug, and gratified, and prescient.

I have to note for posterity that my subject line will make absolutely no sense to anyone who doesn't read Pajiba. If you did, you'd know that the site has a running gag where they refer to Channing Tatum solely by the sobriquet of Charming Potato. You have to admit it's terribly apt.

Comments

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Want want want want some more and then want.

(Want?)

(Saved to memories.)

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Thank you for a truly gratifying reaction :>. If you make it, let me know how it turned out.

[stringgeek.livejournal.com]

I need to find out what's in your Thai seven spice, because that's the only ingredient I can't easily replicate in that heinously delicious-sounding recipe. I'm already salivating!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

It's really not essential. The one I use contains chillis, black pepper, garlic, ginger, coriander, lemongrass, basil and lime oil; if you don't have a source of the spice, I'd substitute powdered coriander and ginger, and dried basil, and possibly lime and lemongrass, since the recipe has a lot of the rest of it anyway. Or just coriander. Or dried basil. Honestly, go wild. I tend to think of these things as being according to personal taste, anyway.

[rumint.livejournal.com]

Yum! Very tasty. Makes me look forward to braais again. BTW I'm visiting CT in early November this year, instead of Xmas.

That Skyrim DLC looks great. Spears and arrow killcams would be great, and they really need the improved follower commands...

And you successfully earwormed me with dragonette too!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

The lack of specific follower strategy options is maddening after Dragon Age. I really hope they release that one. Also, am very taken by the footprints in snow, and the ice/fire arrow options. But my life will not be complete until you can adopt a sabre snow cat in place of a stray dog.

[tngr-spacecadet.livejournal.com]

I also intend to make this asap preferably this evening (just to test it of course). We also have everything in the house except the Thai seven spice. I wonder if that is the sekkrit ingredient in the fried rice as well?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Stv's delectable garlic fried rice doesn't contain seven spice, so I doubt it ;>. See comment above for seven-spice substitutions. Really, I don't think it's vital.

[herne-kzn.livejournal.com]

What season of Veronica Mars are you watching. Have just seen S1 for the first time and have been..really rather impressed.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

As soon as I've finished typing this comment I'm going to dash off to watch the final episode of Season 1, which I couldn't get to last night on account of dying of exhaustion at around 9pm. I'm so hooked, I've been avoiding spoilers because of the extent to which I enjoy trying to predict the twists. I have my Theories about the latest shenanigans, she says darkly. Theories. Will be annoyed if they aren't proven true.

And, yes, also rather impressed. As an index to my actual state of enjoyment, I ordered the second and third seasons a couple of days ago. Will twitch gently until they arrive.

[herne-kzn.livejournal.com]

It's quite an episode!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Wow, that it is. Deeply satisfying on many levels. I called the murderer ;>. Feel smug.