Why hello there, and welcome to Kitchen Castastophe, where we’re honestly stoked that we got two posts out last week, and the Thursday post was ALMOST actually on Thursday. That’s the kind of energy we’re excited to push as we find our footing. Obviously, today’s post didn’t come out on Monday, but that’s because it’s got two recipes, so I’m using it for both the Monday AND Thursday post. Two for the price of…something. Like, technically the PRICE is the same as one, but it uses two time-slots…I don’t know. Look, if you want to jump straight to the recipes, here’s a link. For everyone else, let’s dig in.

 

Pick a Peck of Pickled Potatoes

So, let’s start with the first dish of the title, which I feel compelled to inform you isn’t technically wrong, but isn’t the original name for the dish. The original name, courtesy of Molly Baz’s “Cook This Book” (the source of BOTH recipes today) is “Smooshed and Crispy Potatoes with Salt and Vinegar Sour Cream”. The potatoes themselves are, in fact, dressed with some vinegar and salt, so my name isn’t wrong, it just shifts the focus from the texture/sauce to the potatoes. And I think the obvious questions are “What is this, and why?” And that’s simple enough to explain.

Step one: these are potatoes.

This is, functionally, a riff on Salt and Vinegar chips, combined with Smashed Potatoes. If you haven’t dealt with Smashed potatoes before, I refuse to check if we’ve covered them in the past, so a brief refresher: they’re potatoes, that you smash.

More thoroughly, they’re an interesting version of twice-cooking a potato wherein you par-boil potatoes, and then partially crush them, before coating in oil and roasting. The parboiling means that, when you crush the potato, the softened edges will cleave and tear into ragged exposed edges, which will then become crispy and crunch when roasted in oil. You know the edges of a fried potato skin? Imagine that, but like, fancy/respectable.

And it’s an interesting place to bring in the idea of Salt and Vinegar, which has its own little-inspected culinary history. Salt and vinegar potato chips are a fascinating example of cultural adoption without cultural history. Because, as far as I can tell, Salt and Vinegar exist for one reason: English fish.

Seen here, as all Brits are: Top-hatted and miserable.

See, the first people to make Salt and Vinegar flavored chips were the British. Why? Because originally, you added your own salt to packets of potato chips/crisps. Which worked for a time, but many Brits of the era also figured out that they could make their salt stick better by tossing a couple sloshes of vinegar into the bag, to give the chips some moisture to stick to. A decision they made in part because Britain has a long history of putting vinegar on fries, thanks to Fish and Chips.

Malt vinegar (or white, if you’re “a little something else”, as the Brits would say) is a common condiment on fried fish and chips, for much the same reason, AND because it helped account for variability. It’s easy to forget, in an era of electric deep-fryers, but back in the days when they fried over fire, ESPECIALLY in colder climes, it could be a bit of a crap-shoot on just how greasy your fried food was: If you’re not maintaining a good high oil temp, you’re getting oil-laden fish and fries. What helps cut that extra grease? Oh, look, acidic vinegar. Shake it over the mess, hit it with some salt, and boom, it’ll all come out in the wash.

Are the chips soggy from the grease or the vinegar? Who cares, shovel down some mashed minty peas to dull the pain and get back to the canning factory.

So the idea here is pretty simple: you make smashed potatoes, and then serve them on top of a pool of salt-and-vinegar seasoned sour cream. The Sour Cream matches the pseudo-baked potato vibes of the smashed potatoes, it helps tame some of the sharpness of straight vinegar, and it deepens said tartness, since sour cream is naturally rich in lactic acid, meaning you’re getting two types of tang. In a way, it’s one of those “constant moments of rediscovery” I get in cooking, where I read “just dump some salt and vinegar into sour cream for a sauce”, and my brain instantly goes “oh, yeah, we could always just do that. You could theoretically remake this recipe with ANY standard chip flavor, by just whipping different seasonings into sour cream. Hell, it’s ALREADY half of Sour-Cream and Onion.”

So on a fundamental level, this is just a smashed potato recipe, with some flavoring elements that we’ll get into, served with an unexpected sauce that you can riff on if you like. And that’s a great base recipe, even if the process is a touch fussy. (You’re going to need about an hour to work this out, but there will be downtime.)

So let’s tackle the recipe for these suckers first, before we do our other dish.

 

Down to Smash

That’s your ONE joke about the matter, alright, Title Jon? I don’t want you making a bunch of sexual potato references. People think we’re weird enough. Alright, first things first, you’re going to pre-heat your oven to the rip-roaring 450, and you’re going to start a boil. Specifically, you want 2 pounds of baby Yukon Gold potatoes (you want them small enough that a single smashed potato is at most a two-bite affair) in 3 quarts of water, and a metric fuck-ton of salt.

Yeah, my tap water isn’t naturally this cloudy.

Specifically, one whole cup. This is a LOT of salt, obviously, but remember that the water/salt isn’t going to penetrate too much. This is a classic (if somewhat exaggerated) version of “You want to over-season things that you know will be diluted before they’re used.” It’s of course possible to over-do it, but under-seasoning blanching water is one of the reason people’s home-cooked veggies don’t taste as good as they do in the restaurant.

Bring the salty water and potatoes to a boil, and cook for about 5-10 minutes, until the potatoes are soft enough that you can stab them with no resistance: too soft and they’ll crumbled when smashed, not soft enough, and you’ll end up with weird raw golfballs in the middle of the potatoes.

Drain them, and let them cool for a couple minutes, so excess water can evaporate/drip off. Then, get them into the baking sheet, and smash them. Just put a heavy, hard, flat surface (a cast-iron skillet, a pot or pan, the flat bottom of a coffee mug, a glass measuring cup, etc) and smash the potatoes, pushing them down until about ½” thick.

Pop, scrlock and glop it.

The process will be janky, and some will have edges fall off, and others won’t want to smash. That’s normal. Just do your best. Then Drizzle them all with oil, season with salt and pepper, and roast for 20-25 minutes. This will get the bottoms nice and crispy.

Take them out, drizzle them with white vinegar (I told you they were seasoned!) flip them over, and roast another 10-20, until golden brown and crisped on both sides. I believe ours took longer, because our oven is old. Which is fine, because it gave us time to do the complicated recipe for the sour cream:

Stir together salt, vinegar, sour cream.

Once that arduous task is overcome, get your potatoes out of the oven, season them with some more salt and pepper, and serve plated up on a pool of the sour cream.

“Crispness” is a very hard quality to display via image.

We’ll talk about how it tastes later, first, let’s punch out our other potato piece.

 

Semi-Macha Sweet Mama

I can’t tell if that was sexual, so I’ll let it slide this time, but you’re on THIN ICE.

So, this recipe I found interesting, because I very rarely encounter savory preparations for sweet potatoes. Oh, yeah, I should clarify that: by “Spicy Sweet Potatoes”, I mean “sweet potatoes that are spicy”, not “standard potatoes, that are both spicy and sweet”. I do know at least one recipe for the latter, but I expect to save that one until I kill myself by doing a 20 piece Banchan special.

It’s cool, each dish is only 4 steps, so it’s only EIGHTY STEPS LONG.

Anyway, as the Title implies, if you remember our Salsa Macha from last week, we’re making a salsa a lot LIKE that one (In fact, while it does have some differences, I believe it is still technically a salsa macha) and just spooning that over some roasted sweet potatoes. Meaning both potato recipes this week are “Cook potato, add sauce.” Which, in my defense: a  LOT of potato recipes are like that. On the plus side, this one is notably less hands-on than the previous one. The potatoes are cooked ONE time, (roasted cut side down), while the sauce is a little more complicated, but not by much.

My Arrakis. My Dune.

In case that image was insufficiently clear, if you read last week’s post, this is going to look familiar. You wanna chop up peanuts, get them in some oil, and cook them over medium heat, 4-5 minutes, until the peanuts are lightly browned. Then, you’ll grate 2 cloves of garlic into the hot oil, so they par-cook, rather than the full cooking of last week’s method. Then you add ancho chile powder, honey, red pepper flakes, and salt.

Then you just take your roasted sweet potatoes, spoon over the salsa, and squeeze some limes over for serving.

Yes, that is certainly “A sweet potato with stuff on top”.

So, let’s wrap up chatting about how both of these turned out.

 

Pit a Pat

I think both recipes produce a pretty solid result, but I think they’re very different results.

The Salt-and-vinegar potatoes we had as the side to some grilled steaks, and I think that’s a prime use for them, if not as the offset to something even richer/fattier. The salt and vinegar sour cream is a PUNCH of acidity that really does a great job. I straight up swiped a couple bites of steak in the sour cream, just for that contrast. I also think they pair well with something rich because, as mentioned, they’re just ever-so-slightly a hassle. The double-cook method means you’ve gotta use the stove top and the oven, and a lot of tools/dishes get dirtied. If you can get a handle on like, pre-par-boiling, that would certainly move them up in my estimation.

The Spicy Sweet Potatoes, by contrast, are pretty simple to make, and aren’t as hard-hitting, flavorwise, but are still pretty enjoyable. Like I said, I haven’t had many savory preparations of sweet potato, and I’m still not fully certain I’d call this one fully “savory”, but the salsa is certainly more savory than sweet, so it’s really just a matter of adding spice and nuttiness to the natural sweetness of the potatoes. It feels almost like a form of barbecue.  As I said, it wasn’t very strong, and I think I would like it more in a different presentation (maybe like, a smoky sweet potato salad, where the roasted sweet potato is tossed in the salsa), but I thought it definitely held a great return on investment of effort.  

So I hope you try both recipes out sometime soon, as I think they’re both suited for summer meals, in different fields. PEACE. 

NEXT WEEK: I THINK WE’RE DOING NOODLES. WHICH MEANS I NEED TO BUY MORE MILK. (THAT WILL, EVENTUALLY, MAKE SENSE).

 

Recipes

Salt and Vinegar Smashed Potatoes

Ingredients

                Potatoes

2 pounds baby Yukon Gold potatoes

1 cup salt

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

3 tbsp white vinegar

Salt and Pepper

                Sour Cream

¾ cup sour cream

3 tbsp white vinegar

½ tsp salt

 

Preparation

1. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees, with a rack in the center. In a large pot, combine the potatoes, salt, and 3 quarts water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 5-10 minutes, until potatoes are tender and easily pierced with a knife. Drain and let cool for a few minutes to dry out.

2. Toss potatoes onto a rimmed baking sheet, and smash to ½” thickness with a firm flat surface (coffee mug, cast iron, etc). Coat with olive oil, turning as needed. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Place baking sheet in the oven.

3. Roast for 20-25 minutes, until bottoms are crispy and browned. Remove the baking sheet from the oven to drizzle potatoes with vinegar, and flip them with a spatula, before returning to the oven to cook for another 10-20 minutes.

4. During second phase of roasting, make the salt-and-vinegar sour cream by combining all ingredients in a bowl and stirring to combine.  Remove the baking sheet from the oven, tasting one last time and seasoning with additional salt and pepper if needed.

5. Serve potatoes with sour cream drizzled over, or, for more chic presentation, pooled under potatoes.

 

Sweet Potatoes with Slightly Different Salsa Macha

Serves 4

Ingredients

                Potatoes

4 sweet potatoes, each roughly ½ pound

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 ½ tsp kosher salt

                Salsa

½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

½ cup roasted unsalted peanuts

2 garlic cloves

1 tbsp ancho chile powder or sweet paprika

1 tsp honey

½ tsp red pepper flakes

½ tsp kosher salt

                For service

2 limes  

Preparation

1. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F. Scrub and pat dry potatoes. Cut in half lengthwise, and place on a rimmed baking sheet. Coat with olive oil and salt. Place cut-side down, and roast for 25 to 35 minutes, until potatoes are tender all the way through when stabbed, and bottoms are lightly charred.

2. While potatoes are roasting, prepare salsa: finely chop peanuts until pieces are roughly half the size of a pea. Place in a small saucepan with olive oil. Toast nuts over medium heat, until golden brown, around 4-5 minutes.

3. Remove from the heat, and then grate garlic directly into hot oil (to lightly cook via residual heat). Stir in remaining salsa ingredients to bloom in hot oil. Cut limes into wedges.

4. To serve, spoon salsa over potatoes, and squeeze limes over top.