Roast Potatoes & Sun-dried Tomatoes

In keeping with the belated Christmas dinner posts, here are the roast potatoes I dined on. Roast potatoes are a lovely Sunday dinner treat (growing up in my house anyway) and my mother always seems to make them perfectly. As I was home for Christmas, these ones were a co-production with my auld one.

Her method (which in turn she took from my uncle) is to peel them, then boil them for ten minutes, then drain them, put them back in the dry pot and shake them round to get them fluffy. The fluffy bits make them deliciously crispy when roasted. Next, stick the shaken spuds in the oven with lots of oil. Since my family are partial to sundried tomatoes which usually comes in herb-y oil, I thought I'd use up the leftover, already-flavoured oil for roasting the potatoes. Roast them for 20 minutes or more, till you've got a crispiness level that satiates you and your diners. And about 5 minutes before they're done add in the sundried tomatoes themselves (maybe even less than five minutes as they burn easily).

 

Serve it with whatever you like. Or on their own. I love them cold as well - they're like really, really chunky crisps. In this case, they went together with the breadcrumb stuffing (in my previous post) and lots of veg to make up my Christmas dinner. But they are not exclusively festive. In fact, I have to wrap up this post as I'm about to have some more right now!

Bye!

- Dara

Breadcrumb Stuffing

So, stuffing is a strange vegan food. Being that it is normally stuffed into a dead thing. I've always loved stuffing, even back when I ate meat, stuffing was always my favourite part of a fancy Sunday or Christmas dinner. So, it is only natural that it has become the main focus of my Christmas dinners these days. Here's one I made last Christmas, that I've only put up now - because stuffing is not just for Christmas.

It's very simple, and a great way to use up stale bread that's too far gone for toast (but still not green). Blend up lots of bread (or if you don't have a blender and don't mind some bloody knuckles you can grate it, though I'd recommend the former). I add lots of fresh herbs from the garden; parsely, sage, rosemary, thyme, and anything else Simon and Garfunkel recommended in the song. Add a good glug of olive oil and some black pepper (and salt if you like). That's your standard there. Pretty good. Now to customize it: I diced up lots of apple and added it, along with cashew nuts (all from this), as well as some raisins. And then I added... orange juice! It makes it lovely and moist, gives it a bit of flavour and means you don't have to use as much oil (unless you want to). And it's a bit of natural sweetness that really brings out the raisins.

That's it, stick it in the oven for as long as you like (maybe a half hour or more) along with the rest of your dinner. You can cover it to keep it moist, or leave the top off to make it a bit crispy. Or both.

- Dara