I say potato...

Since Friday morning's "skillet," I've had a hankering for homemade fried potatoes. I've never made such a thing, but there's a first time for everything. Admittedly, I am very much a "recipe cook." I don't make things up, even though I suppose I have a fairly good handle on ingredients and what goes well together. I just don't trust myself to come up with ideas from scratch, so I tend to play with existing recipes, sometimes adjusting them enough to come up with something semi original. This time, however, I was determined to make something entirely from my own head. I considered an accompaniment of scrambled eggs or pancakes, but this was actually pretty good on its own. It looks extremely simple, I know, but humour me. It's a big step!

Rosemary and Feta Fried Potatoes

This "recipe" came of necessity from what I had lying around in my kitchen. I had the last of a bag of baby red potatoes to use up, some onions that I'd already cheater-cooked in the microwave for nachos, and the last of a container of feta that wasn't really enough for gratins.

I've got to say, my hatred for peeling potatoes runs nearly as deep as my hatred for chopping raw onions. Not only is it tedious and time consuming, but my neck always gets a crick from peering down at the things. Today the problem was slightly worsened by a green tint just under the skin of some of the potatoes, which my father informs me can lead to food poisoning if consumed. I normally peel potatoes with a knife, but I decided to use the potato peeler that the kitchen faeries left, as it has a rather nice rubber grip. Anyway, it took twice as long, but I managed to get rid of all the green, and then chopped my potatoes up into small, but not-so-even pieces.


I started with a tablespoon of margarine over medium-high heat in a non-stick frying pan, and added my potatoes. After a while, the pan was looking a bit dry, so I went ahead and threw in the onions, which were rather oily. That did the trick, and everything started sizzling nicely. You can use more oil and make the cooking less active, but with something like this where I'm adding multiple ingredients, I don't want to have to use the paper towel pat method to get rid of excess oil. So I sucked it up and went with the constant stirring method, which is more fun anyway. I don't know why, but I really like stir-fry.

The potatoes were taking a while to get any colour, so I upped the heat a bit closer to high, and once they started to brown, added a generous sprinkle of salt, some ground pepper, and chopped rosemary. I think the total cooking time was about 15 minutes, and I had to keep tasting to see if the potatoes were tender. Once I got them where I wanted them, I dumped the feta (about two or three tablespoons crumbled) and immediately removed the pan from the heat, continuing to stir to coat the potatoes with the cheese. It melted up quite nicely, and tasted wonderful. Still a bit oily, but not nearly as bad as some dishes I've made lately. I did this with about ten rings of onion and about six or seven baby potatoes, which made two servings, but obviously you can make however much you need. Bon appetit!