Smashed Warm Potato Salad

by Linda on May 15, 2012

This is the second of my potato harvest Tuesday Night Vego Challenge  recipes. I often have lots of these tiny chats in my spud harvest, and they’re the best bit. Add some egg for protein and avoid loading up with mayonnaise, and it’s a healthy and very delicious dinner.

New harvested chats are easy enough to wash, that you don’t avoid teeny ones because of the tedium of washing them.  I put them in a cotton bag (a recycled flour bag) and put bag and all in a sink full of water, then just rumble them in the bag.  Potato skins contain a decent percentage of the nutrient value of the potato, and reduce the amount lost in cooking.

The Recipe

(For two)

  • Boil or pressure cook 350 grams of new chats until they are soft.  In a pressure cooker this will take just a couple of minutes. Drain and allow to sit for a minute or two for the steam evaporate off.
  • Finely slice a red onion, chop 3 or 4 cloves of garlic up fine, dice a red capsicum, and roughly chop 10 black olives
  • Heat a frying pan up to very hot, add a good slurp of good olive oil and all the vegetables at once.
  • Cook on high for 5 minutes or so, with minimal stirring.  You are looking for the potatoes to develop brown crispy bits without  breaking up.
  • While the vegetables are cooking, soft boil 3 eggs, drain and peel.  You want the yolks still runny. If you start with cold water, this will take between 3 and 4 minutes from boiling, depending on the size of the eggs.  Eggs that are very fresh will be impossible to peel – just scoop them out with a teaspoon.
  • And make the dressing: Blend together a big handful of herbs with a little olive oil and the juice of half a lemon. I like basil, flat leaf parsley, thyme, and aragula or rocket for this.
  • Chop some celery to give it a bit of crunch.
  • Toss the warm vegetables together with the eggs, dressing, celery, salt and pepper and serve.

Did you have a Tuesday Night Vego Challenge recipe?  Feel free to share links in the comments.

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Dark Rye Sourdough

by Linda on May 10, 2012

I have a new favourite bread.  This one is sooo good I’ve made it half a dozen times over now. My last favourite was Seedy Sourdough Crispbread, and it’s still up there – I’ve been making a batch most weekends – but this dense, malty, well-textured, chocolatey rye bread is totally addictive.

The Recipe:

The method is the same as the one I use for my Oat and Linseed Sourdough and Barley Bread. I’ve tried a lot of different timings, but this works so well around a workday that making bread routinely doesn’t feel at all like a chore.

Before I go to bed:

  • Take the sourdough starter out of the fridge.
  • Mix 1 ¼ cups of unbleached bakers flour, 1¼ cups of water, and 1¼ cups of starter.  (I use my tank water, which has no chlorine or additives in it).
  • Put half of it back in the jar in the fridge.  You should be left with 1½ cups of fed starter, to put in a bowl covered with a clean cloth on the kitchen bench for the night. By morning it should be frothy.

Next morning:

Mix into the 1½ cups of fed starter:

  • 2 dessertspoons (1½ US tablespoons) treacle
  • 2 dessertspoons (1½ US tablespoons) macadamia (or other nut) oil
  • 1 big dessertspoon (¾ US tablespoon) cocoa powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon caraway seeds
  • 2 cups organic wholemeal rye flour
  • ½ cup wholemeal wheat flour

Pour another ½ cup wholemeal wheat flour on the bench and knead the dough briefly, until it is smooth and springy.  I am time-poor enough that I just don’t do long kneading, but I’m learning to re-vision kneading as my regular tuck-shop lady arms avoidance exercise, so I actually like a bit of bread dough bashing.

Put a good dollop of macadamia (or other nut) oil in a large bowl, swirl the dough ball around in it to coat, cover the bowl with a clean cloth, and leave out on the benchtop for the day to prove. On cold days, I try to find a warm spot for it.

When I get home at 5.30

The dough doesn’t rise as much as wheat bread, but it will still rise to double the size it was when I left.  I tip it out onto the benchtop (it’s already oily so no need to flour) and knead very briefly – a minute or so – then put it in a oiled baking tin. The tin I use is a small bread tin. Slash the top with a sharp knife, cover with the clean cloth again and leave again.

At 7.30

The bread will have doubled in size again.  I’ve baked it a few different ways. It’s nicest without a crusty crust. The best result was in my slow combustion wood oven,  with a tray of boiling water in the bottom of the oven, baked for around 30 minutes.  The oven was well and truly heated up, but slow combustions have a very even, mellow heat. I’ve also baked it in the gas oven, putting it into a cold oven turned to high, and baking for around 40 minutes, with a tray of boiling water added about half way through.

It is done when it feels firm and sounds hollow when tapped.

PS. I baked it again this weekend, but away from home, and discovered that in a fan-forced electric oven, it needs to be cooked at a medium low temperature.  I set it too high, and the middle was still doughy when the crust was getting too crisp.

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Latkes With Cottage Cheese

by Linda on May 8, 2012

I think these are latkes.  The have eggs, so they’re more latke than rosti, but they have no flour, and I don’t think the cottage cheese is part of any traditional cuisine.  Whatever. They’re very fast – fast enough to be a breakfast option as well as a Tuesday night vego. The cheese and eggs means they have a decent quantity of protein, and though they’re fried, they don’t absorb lots of oil.

I dug the late summer planting of potatoes on the weekend. Usually this is the best potato harvest of the year here. Spuds do better when the nights are getting cooler as they set the crop (as opposed to the spring planting, when, by the time they are ready to harvest in November, the nights are often so warm that the plants just don’t seriously go into food storage mode).

Home grown new potatoes are a gourmet delight, absolutely nothing like supermarket spuds.  They’re so good that they spoil you for out of season potatoes (and we don’t need the calories anyhow). So I treat potatoes like I treat asparagus, looking forward to the season, relishing it, then letting go till it comes round again.

The crop this time was a bit disappointing in quantity. It has been so wet and overcast this year, I think they just didn’t get enough photosynthesis in.  Nevertheless, there’s enough here for potatoes to feature for a few weeks.

The Recipe:

(Two generous serves)

Grate 2 potatoes – a waxy variety like Dutch Cream, Kipfler,  Bintje, Nicola,  or Pink Eye. I used the  kipflers that I grew this year for these.

Mix with

  • 2 eggs
  • 1 spring onion, chopped
  • a good handful of chopped parsley
  • 3 dessertspoons (30 ml) low fat cottage cheese or ricotta.

No flour makes them hard to handle until they start to set.  So heat a large pan with a little olive oil, wait till it’s hot,  and then use wet hands to make little patties and drop them in.  Place them carefully because you can’t move them till they set.

Squash them down with the back of your eggflip. Wait till they are set and golden on one side, turn and cook the other side.

Serve with a tomato salsa and a salad or steamed vegetables, or just make a platter of small ones and eat them as is, dipped in chili jam or tomato sauce.

Did you do the  Tuesday Night Vego Challenge this week? Links are welcome in the Comments.

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Connecting the Dots

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My post today is over at Simple Green Frugal.  Love to see you there.

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