What do foreigners eat at their family dinner tables?
A while back, I saw an article published by NewsMarket about how the potatoes from the Friendly Land Alliance had failed to grow to full size because of winter rain and were hard to sell. It occurred to me that some foreign friends who have long lived in Taiwan, China, can never find baby potatoes when they want to buy them, so I immediately launched a ’friendly group-buy’ campaign online, and in less than two days everyone had ordered a total of 58 jin of baby potatoes.
So the recipe I am sharing with you this time is - olive oil and herb roasted friendly baby potatoes.
Ingredients:
* Several baby potatoes (the amount depends on how many people are eating, or you can roast extra and keep them in the fridge; next time you want to eat them, just pan-fry them in a hot skillet and they smell wonderful too!)
* Olive oil for cooking, about three tablespoons in total (there is no fixed amount; it mainly depends on the number of potatoes. If there is too little oil, the roasted potatoes will be on the dry side and not very tasty.)
* You can also prepare some extra virgin olive oil separately (usually used for dressing salads; here you can drizzle a little extra virgin olive oil over the potatoes after they are roasted for even better flavor).
* Homegrown herbs - rosemary, thyme, parsley, basil or Thai basil
(Freshly picked is best for flavor. If you do not have any, you can substitute Italian mixed dried herbs. But remember, if you are using dried herbs instead, when mixing with the olive oil you must add enough olive oil and make sure the dried herbs are thoroughly coated, otherwise in the oven the dried herbs, which already contain no moisture, will burn very easily!)
* Salt, black peppercorns (freshly ground by hand with a grinder tastes very good; if you do not have one, ground black pepper can be used instead)
* Mexican style chorizo (or you can also use ground pork mixed with Hungarian paprika, red pepper powder and some Italian mixed dried herbs)
Method:
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees Celsius.
Wash the baby potatoes without peeling them (because they are grown friendly and the soil is non-toxic, and the skin of baby potatoes is itself extremely nutritious, so do not peel them and eat all the nutrition in one go!), then cut them in half or into 4 pieces.
Give the freshly picked rosemary and other herbs a quick rinse, pat them gently dry with a kitchen paper towel, and after removing the stems from most of them, chop the leaves (leave a small portion of each herb uncut, keeping the stems intact (about one or two sprigs is enough) to use as a garnish after roasting).
Mince the Mexican chorizo, or mix the ground pork with the herbs.
In a large bowl, add the cooking olive oil, an appropriate amount of salt and freshly ground black pepper to the potatoes and mix with your hands;you can choose to mix all the herbs together and toss them with the potatoes, or divide the cut potatoes into three equal portions and mix each with three kinds of chopped herbs. The same goes for the meat: you can either mix the meat with all the cut potatoes, or mix it into only part of the potatoes.
By now the oven should have been preheating for at least 20 minutes to half an hour. Put the mixed potatoes onto a baking tray, place it in the oven and then turn the temperature down to 220 degrees. Roast for about 15 minutes, take the tray out (remember to close the oven door, otherwise the temperature will drop!), give the potatoes a little toss so that all the cut surfaces can be heated, then put them back in the oven for another 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are golden brown.
Once roasted, mix the extra virgin olive oil into the potatoes, plate them and place the reserved whole herb sprigs on top as a garnish. You can also prepare some freshly shredded Parmesan cheese and sprinkle it over the just-roasted potatoes.
Because this is a home-cooked dish for the dining table, apart from a few cooking principles, most of the time when cooking you decide the amount of each ingredient according to the preferences of your family members, so the quantities in this recipe are not fixed in any particular way. Just keep a few principles in mind: if you use too little olive oil the potatoes will be dry and not tasty; when you cook while thinking of the family you love you will feel happy; eating healthily while also being able to help local friendly small farmers - wonderful!
Finally, you can roast a few more potatoes. Keep any uneaten ones in the fridge, and the next time you want to eat them, cut the already cubed potatoes into thick slices, pan-fry them in olive oil until fragrant, season them a little, and they become another dish! At home, you can also eat very healthy thick-cut golden fries!