Crash Hot Potatoes

I saw this recipe on Pioneer Woman, and thought it looked absolutely delicious. Last night, we tried these for the first time and were VERY happy with how they turned out. They take a bit more time than other potato preparation methods, but they are well worth it. The recipe basically involves cooking the potatoes, crushing them on a baking pan, and then seasoning and baking them.


In all honesty, this isn't a huge departure from how we often cook potatoes - by dicing them, tossing them in olive oil and seasoning (often times salt, pepper, and rosemary), and then baking them. But, the pre-cooking and subsequent mashing seems to add a lot to the texture of the dish.

Crash Hot Potatoes
recipe from Pioneer Woman

Ingredients:
Potatoes (small/medium size)
Olive oil
Kosher salt
pepper
rosemary

Directions:

• Boil potatoes in salted water until fork-tender
• Coat a baking sheet with olive oil
• Place potatoes on baking sheet and crush with potato masher (we don't have one, so I used a large serving fork)
• Brush potatoes with more olive oil
• Liberally salt and pepper the potatoes, sprinkle with chopped rosemary
• Bake at 450° for 25-minutes
  

Camp Food

As I mentioned in my last post, we went camping with some friends last weekend. We were each responsible for one meal, and Z decided we should do something involving foil packets. She scoured the internet, and found a recipe for foil packet fish. We mixed all the spiced in a small ziploc bag before hand, and sprinkled them on the fish packets and then squeezed the lemon juice on them. Then, we sealed the packets and cooked them over hot coals for 20-30 minutes (likely to vary depending on how hot your coals are). The foil packets basically allow you to steam the fish, something you can't normally do over an open fire!

Lemony Fish Packets

6 halibut fillets (any white fish would work)
3 teaspoons dried dill weed
3 teaspoons onion powder
1/4 teaspoon paprika
Seasoning salt to taste
1 pinch lemonpepper
1 pinch garlic powder (or to taste... we like garlic)
1 lemon

Combine all dry ingredients in a small bowl. Place fish on a square of tinfoil. We made three packets of two fillets each. You could do them individually. Sprinkle dry mix generously over fillets. Flip and repeat. Cut lemon in half and squeeze juice over fillets, being careful to avoid seeds. Seal packets and place over coals for about 20 minutes. Mmmm.... tasty.

We didn't have any picture of the final product (we were quite hungry), so instead, here are pictures of us seasoning our foil pouches.

Also, we made "home fries" over the open fire. This turned out to be quite successful, in large part because Amanda's cast iron pan is finally seasoned enough to be non-stick (cooking bacon in it earlier in the day had to help). We boiled some redskin potatoes the night before we went camping and then chilled them and stored them (in our cooler) in a ziploc bag. Then, we diced them, threw in some diced red onion (lots of red here) and generously coated them with olive oil and seasoned salt.


The real success of this dish, however, is how well it cooked on the open fire in our iron skillet. I'd always heard that a well-seasoned cast iron pan is basically non-stick, but had never experienced it. My parents had cast iron skillets, but typically washed them using soapy water, which prevents the buildup of so much "seasoning," and thus, their pans were far from non-stick.


Notice how, much like the fish, I don't have a picture of the finished product. We were very hungry :)