Friday, April 10, 2009

Hasselback Potatoes



This dish takes its name from Hasselbacken, the Stockholm restaurant where it was first served. I've seen recipes for it in a variety of magazines and cooking blogs, but it always seemed a bit fussy, so it never made it on to my to-do list... but then I thought of you, my loyal readers (hahaha) who might be interested.

Hasselback Potatoes

Scrub the potatoes and dry with a kitchen towel.

Place between two wooden spoons, or something similar...



Cut slits into them from the top down, being careful not to go all the way thru (using the wooden spoons as guides) so that they will fan open like accordions when baked



Traditionally the potato would be peeled, cut to resemble a fan, dotted with butter, baked, and then topped with fine bread crumbs and broiled.

Too boring.

We first drizzled with a garlic-chive-butter, being sure to get some between the layers



then personlized with some additional ingredients...

For me, I shaved slices of jalapeno and inserted between the potato slices, then topped with coarse salt...



For C, everything's better with bacon, so he cooked up a slice, crumbled, and shoved between the layers...



Bake at 400° for about an hour, and voila!

Friday, April 03, 2009

Home hibachi

Once spring hits, C and I turn to the grill to cook just about everything. I'm not sure why it hadn't occurred to us before, but tonight we created our own hibachi flat top grill in the backyard.

All it took was an old half sheet pan (from the Sam's Club restaurant section) heated on the grill...



Once it was hot we threw on our normal quick stir-fry ingredients... marinated beef, scallions, red onion and peppers.

This will certainly be put into our regular dinner rotation.