My lovely foodie friend Kiki of Cardamom & Dill and I are doing a recipe swap this fine quarantine. We will each cook one of the other's recipe's and put our own spin on it.
Kiki has lived in and visited many Mediterranean countries and this is where she finds the inspiration for her food. As a vegetarian, she celebrates the vegetables she uses and truly makes them the stars of her dishes.
For my first one, I have chosen Kiki's Spanish Roast Potatoes and I have done them ever so slightly differently. For the original recipe, click the link above. To see how I got on, have a look below.
I'll be honest, I'm always very sceptical when recipes claim to taste as good as they do in the country they were originally made in. Particularly the Mediterranean where many of the ingredients and flavourings in the local cuisine are fresh produce. Our produce just isn't the same. Try an English tomato and then try an Italian one and you'll see what I mean.
However, this recipe absolutely delivers. These are not patatas bravas and they don't pretend to be. But I could just as happily be eating these in a Spanish plaza with a cold cerveza (or vino tinto), watching the sun set and the world go by. They are absolutely divine.
Kiki has already written out her recipe so I will not be doing the same. But I will write out the recipe I made (which is pretty much the same but with a couple of alterations due to quarantine). This just goes to show that you can make some stunning recipes with some simple substitutions if necessary. Incidentally, if you are stuck in that you'd like to make a recipe but can't find a certain ingredient, let me know what you can find and I'll help you substitute.
Kiki's Spanish Roast Potatoes (my way)
Ingredients
2 tbsp of extra-virgin olive oil
3 tbsp of tomato purée I did not use tomato puree because I couldn't get any anywhere. Instead I used tinned tomato pulp. If you can only get chopped then take a hand blitzer to them to get a thicker consistency. Because it's still quite runny, I used 1 tbsp of pulp.
1 tsp smoked paprika
500g of new potatoes, halved
6 large garlic cloves, unpeeled and left whole
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper, to your taste
1 lemon, juiced
For the Yogurt
4 tbsp natural yoghurt
1 1/2 tsp thoom
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C. In a small bowl, mix up the tomato, olive oil, paprika, salt and pepper.
Chop your potatoes into chunks and lay them on a baking sheet lined with parchment along with the garlic cloves. Pour the paste you made over the potatoes and mix everything around with your hands until it's well coated. Roast them in the oven for 40 minutes.
After the 40 minutes, pour over the lemon juice and return to the oven for another 5 minutes.
For the yogurt, all you have to do is mix the two ingredients together, pour it into a pretty bowl and sprinkle the rim with some smoked paprika.
Serve up to some very impressed guests as part of dinner or an aperitivo nibble.