So this is my first post on my new food blog! Ahh! I've been wanting to start one for a while, but felt intimidated because I don't consider myself to be a chef or even a great cook and I'm kind of a picky eater so I don't make anything that adventurous or fancy and don't try a huge variety of stuff when I go out to eat either. I thought teaming up with my husband on this would be a good idea because he'll eat anything but doesn't cook very much (I plan and cook almost all of our meals - though he does help).
Well we used to never cook. We would do frozen pizzas and boxed mac n' cheese and those dried rice or noodle packages (just add water!). Yuck! lol. Then I started creating a weekly menu (now I plan two weeks in advance) and looked through a bunch of recipes on foodnetwork.com and in magazines and on pinterest to create a selection of meals. I really don't like recipes/meals that have a lot of ingredients - or recipes that use an ingredient that you will NEVER use again. Like coriander or turmeric - I think I've used each of those once. :P
Unfortunately I didn't think to take pictures of most of the dishes I've made so I guess I'll just have to make them all again in order to write a post about them!
Well, my husband recently went away for work and right after he left, I remembered that I had a bag of fingerling potatoes that I needed to use. I LOVE potatoes. Pretty much any and every way you can make them, I will eat them. Unless there is mushrooms, seafood, or spinach or something involved. :P
I had a recipe for salt baked potatoes which essentially is just laying down a TON of salt on a dish, then putting the potatoes on top and covering them with MORE salt. You brush off all the salt after you bake them in the oven, but that just sounded like a lot of sodium to me. I'm not crazy concerned with counting calories and stuff, but I do try to eat plenty of fruits and veggies and cut out junk food and fast food and stuff like that. "Everything in moderation," my mom always said.
So I decided to kind of come up with my own dish, which I'm starting to do a lot more as I get more comfortable with cooking. I hardly ever measure unless I'm following a complicated recipe or baking - but I'll try and estimate for you! This probably isn't the most healthy dish ever... but boy was it good! I ate it by itself as the main dish (I told you I love taters!) but it would be great as a side dish as well.
Butter Roasted Fingerlings with Mustard Vinaigrette
Fingerling Potatoes
Kosher Salt (eyeball it)
2 Tbs Butter (melted)
Rosemary (small palmful)
2 Tbs whole grain mustard (I used a whole grain garlic mustard)
1 Tbs red wine vinegar (White wine vinegar or probably any kind of vinegar would also be great)
1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
Rosemary (to taste)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I'm sure regular olive oil would work too, but this was all I had)
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
I took a baking dish (I used a glass pie dish cause I didn't have a small enough baking dish) and sprinkled some kosher salt on it. (till it was evenly spread over the bottom). I was trying to follow the salt baked potato recipe I found, but I chickened out cause I was afraid it'd be dry and super salty, so I decided to make it more buttery and moist.
I rinsed and then cut the fingerlings into bite-sized pieces and added them to the dish. I poured 2Tbs melted butter onto the potatoes and sprinkled rosemary on them. (I like to take the rosemary and crush it in my hand a little more to help release more of the flavor/aroma). Mix/toss so that all potatoes are evenly coated. I then baked them (roasted them? I am still learning some of the technical terms and definitions) for about 30 minutes. Check to make sure that they are fork tender.
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| Golden, buttery and just out of the oven |
While they were cooking, I began working on a little sauce for them. I mixed about 2 spoonfuls/2 Tablespoons of whole grain mustard with about 1 Tbs each of red wine vinegar and Worcestershire sauce (I eyeballed both of those - and tasted as I went til I reached the flavor I liked). I don't generally like a lot of mustard (I used to hate it!) so if you really like mustard, you could easily adjust the amounts to get a stronger mustard flavor. I also added EVOO - eyeballed and mixed it all together until it was a thinner consistency (not super runny, but thin enough that it would be able to be drizzled on the potatoes). I also added a little bit of rosemary to help tie the sauce with the potatoes (I watch a lot of Chopped lol). I made this sauce about 3 times cause I didn't make enough for the entire potato dish - so if you want it to cover all the potatoes, I'd probably triple the measurements. One of the times I made the sauce I decided to add mayo to see if it'd make a difference but it just changed the consistency - I didn't really see a difference in taste.
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| Main ingredients for the sauce. |
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| Yummy sauce! |
It was so much better than I expected. Next time I won't use as much salt - I won't cover the bottom with it but I'll just use it as a seasoning. Cause it was a tad bit on the salty side (and I generally like salty food!) But I ate about 2/3 of the potatoes in one sitting and the rest I ate the next day.
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| Apologies for the messy bowl - I didn't think to take a picture of the completed dish until after my second or third helping. |
If you try this, let me know what you think or any tips/suggestions you have or changes you made. Now I just want to come up with a new variation on it with a different kind of flavor profile because it was so easy and so delicious!
Well, thanks for reading! Hope you enjoy!
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