I’m about to give you a recipe for what I will loosely label a ‘side dish’.
However I am absolutely not above eating a plate of potatoes for dinner. I have, I do and I shall continue.
Reserve your judgement, because when they taste this good, there is justification.
I believe every household should have a jar of emerald green pesto in their Kitchen. Whether this be plucked from a supermarket or homemade (see my Dry Roast Peanut Pesto) but either way, having this on standby makes good sense.
It’s luxurious (but costs pennies). Wedged all up in a sandwich, hugging on to pasta, smothered on a chicken… a jar of pesto will get you out of a multitude of troubles.
But having it poured over some crunchy, bashed up potatoes? It’s an experience.
So this isn’t much of a recipe because I, in my total embrace of reality, used a jar of pesto which I didn’t make. So this is a very, very simple recipe but I’ve come to teach myself not top apologise for simplicity. I revel in it.
I also haven’t specified how many potatoes I used because you can use however many you want and go by sight on the pesto. And you don’t even HAVE to include the flourish of breadcrumbs, parsley and pistachios (which to be honest was just me having a Kitchen forage). These potatoes are wonderful in their simplest format.
Preheat the oven to 200c.
Fling a handful or two of new potatoes into a ziplock bag and using a rolling pin, bash them to bits.
Don’t be too enthusiastic here though. You want them splintered into small, 50p size morsels and a small handful of potato rubble but don’t bash them to a pulp. You may well just have mash, otherwise.
Empty the potato bits into a roasting tin. Cover with olive oil, sea salt and pepper, shake the tin about a bit and put in the oven for 40 minutes, tossing around every 15 minutes or so to make sure they brown evenly.
After 40 minutes, take them out of the oven. Now empty a few tablespoons of pesto into the tray and add another small drizzle of olive oil to help the pesto loosen a little and make it easier to coat the potatoes. Stir everything up.
Now you could just bake at this point and be done with the damn thing, but I like to scatter over some stale breadcrumbs as a crunchy blanket. Either way, they need another 10/15 minutes with the pesto in the oven.
Once they’re done, serve up, but I like to scatter over some finely chopped parsley and pistachios just to be extra and to bring out the jade shyness of the pesto (which often gets diluted in the oven).
MIKEY AND THE KITCHEN. 