Category Archives: Side Dishes

Colcannon

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This traditional Irish dish doesn’t last long in our house. I’ve been making it for a few years now (TY to an old friend for giving me her mother’s version that I tweaked a bit). It’s so good. And if you’re lucky enough to have leftovers, this makes fabulous pan fried fritters the next morning.

Colcannon:
2 lbs Yellow Potatoes, peeled and cubed 2″
1 tbsp Salt

1 pack Bacon Strips, 1″ cuts, pan fried, drained

Half a head of Cabbage, shredded up
S&P

1 1/2 C Milk
1 bunch Green Onions, chopped up
2 tbsp Unsalted Butter

Prep all of the veg and bacon. At this point, if you know how to make mashed potatoes, jump to heating the dairy and frying the bacon and cabbage.

Rinse the potatoes under water twice and then fill the pot with them in it along with a heaping tablespoon of salt to start cooking over med-high heat. It should take between 12-15 mins to cook the potatoes.

In a small sauce pot, heat the milk/onion/butter mixture on low on a back burner. Don’t let the dairy mixture get scalded on the bottom of the pot. Keep it moving every minute or two. Heat it up until tiny bubbles along the outer edge start to form. Kill the heat and rest the sauce pot on the cold burner for a few minutes.

Get your biggest frying pan hot and drop the bacon cuts in to fry. When the bacon crisps up to your liking, remove the bacon to drain on paper towels. Drop the cabbage in over that bacon fat and hit it with pepper. Stir and move the cabbage around often. It it starts to burn, drop the heat a bit an move the pan off half the heat source to control the cooking. When it’s softened, remove the pan from the heat to cool it down. Add the bacon back in to keep warm until needed.

At the ten minute mark, spoon lift a few of the potatoes and look at their edges. It they look sharp, the need more time in the bath. If the edges are fuzzy, they are probably done. At this point, push down on a few of them with a fork. It there is resistance, they need another two or so mins. If they mash down immediately, kill the heat and drain the water out.

Return the pot to the same burner to start mashing them as they dry off for 1-2 mins from the residual heat.

At this point, you can start the assembly off the burner with a big knob of butter, cracked black pepper and half of of the dairy mixture. Give the mash a good stir before adding the rest of the dairy and stirring that in. And finally, fold the cabbage and bacon in to combine everything.

Give the mash a taste and adjust the S&P if needed. Remember, potatoes can really drink up salt (so can cabbage), so add a bit more than you are comfortable with.

Plate the Colcannon with a butter pat over top. Let it melt before you dig in.

Summer Salads – Potato

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This is my riff on Simply LaKita’s Southern Potato Salad. Her recipe is as delicious as it is straightforward. You will have your potato salad made in no time at all. I use the same base materials and steps, but I add two other ingredients. If my additions scare you, trust me when I say LaKita knows what she’s doing, so you can check out her original recipe instead. 🙂

Taco Potato Salad:
5 Russet Potatoes, peeled, diced
Half a medium sized mixing bowl of cold water + 1/2 tea salt

Prep and rest your potatoes in the mixing bowl as you peel and dice them up. Rinse the diced potatoes twice with cold water. Dump into a pot with water to boil. When the water hits its boiling point, add 1-2 teaspoons of salt. Always salt your starches!

Rinse out the mixing bowl using cold water. Add some ice and add some cold water. Drain the pot water after the potatoes hit fork tender stage. Drop the potatoes immediately into the mixing bowl to come stop the cooking and chill the potatoes.

3 Eggs, room temperature
1 tea White Vinegar
Half a small sized mixing bowl of cold water + ice

Bring eggs up to boil in water + vinegar, and then drop to a simmer. Cover and let them cook for 11 mins. Remove the eggs immediately and drop into the iced water bath to rest 10 mins before peeling. Smash both ends on all of the eggs before carefully getting fingernails under the membrane to smoothly remove the shell fragments. Wipe the eggs off on a paper towel before chopping up.

Dump the potatoes and egg chops into the rinsed out mixing blow and add the dressing:

1/2 C Mayo
2 Tbsp Relish
1 Tbsp Yellow Mustard
1+ Tea Taco Seasoning Blend
1/2 Tea Pickle Brine
S&P

Mix this all together, cover, and chill to marry everything together for roughly 4 hours.

Sunday Dinner – Meatloaf & Beans

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Made a late simple dinner tonight. I cooked a lovely meatloaf in the air fryer. And as that rested, I cooked some green beans with canned mushrooms, and fried onions as the side. I have made many different meatloaves over the years, but this one is up there with my favourite ground turkey meatloaf that I keep craving.

Here’s what I put in mine:

Jalapeno Meatloaf:
1+ lbs Ground Beef
1/4 sm Yellow Onion, grated finely
1/4 Bell Pepper, any on hand, fine diced
1/2 med Jalapeno, seeded and fine diced
Cracks of Pepper
Pinch of Salt
3 tbsp Everyday Seasoning Rub
1/2 C Panko
1/2 C Dry Breadcrumbs

Everyday Seasoning Rub:
1 1/2 tbsp: Garlic / Onion Powders
1 tbsp: Salt / Paprika
2 tea: Black Pepper / Mustard Powder

(Despite only needing a bit of the rub mix for the meatloaf, the above will net you enough to fill a small mason jar. You can use it with any kind of food group.)

Mix all of the meatloaf ingredients in a mixing bowl by hand. Place fistfuls of meat into a greased pan, and press the meat into the corners first. Add the rest to the middle and spread it all out evenly across the surface.

Place the pan into the air fryer (or on a sheet tray) to cook at 375*F for about 18-20 mins. Pull the loaf when it temps at 158-160* and let the residual heat finish cook the meat. Let it rest on a cutting board in the pan for about 15 mins as you work on the green beans.

Green Beans:
1 tbsp regular Olive Oil
S&P, to taste
1/2 can Mushrooms (for cooking speed), drained
1+ tbsp Dried Onions

Clean out the mixing bowl with soap, and drip dry it. Run your green beans under cool water to rinse off any dirt. Drain them and dump them in the bowl. Assemble the other ingredients over the beans. Roll everything around nicely. With tongs, move the mixture to the air fryer basket (or dump it onto a sheet tray to cook them in the oven, or in a skillet to pan fry). Cook the beans at the same temp as the meat for about 5+ mins.

They are done when you can hold one bean with the tongs and bend it over in a soft V shape. Plate it all and decide if you want any sauce to top the meat with or not. Enjoy.

Bacon Corn Salad

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This is some bbq chicken, peppers and corn salad I made a few weeks. It was delicious. I can’t stop making each of these things. But that corn salad…? I couldn’t not put bacon in it, so that’s what I did. 🙂 (See below pix for that version.)

Grilled Bacon Corn Salad:
2-3 Bacon Strips, 1/2″ cuts
2 Smoked corn cobbs in the husks, cooled enough to hold
1/4 Red Onion (can be raw or pickled – I use what I have on hand)
1 Jalapeno, seeded, fine diced
1/4 Smoked Sweet Pepper, fine diced
2 tbsp BBQ Dry Rub (of choice)

3-4 tbsp Italian Dressing
1 small bunch Parsley, chopped
Parm grated or Queso crumbled

In a pan or on a griddle, heat up bit of oil and lay the bacon over it to render out the fat. Add the veg and shuffle it around so nothing sticks to the surface and it gets cooked evenly. Add the dry rub and keep cooking the mix until the bacon gets crispy and the veg softens, about 5-8 mins.

Off the heat, dump it into a big bowl and roll it around with the dressing and parsley. Plate with the cheese of choice on top. Serve room temp or warm.

If making ahead of time, lay the corn salad in one even layer on a big sheet pan to rapid cool for up to 20 mins before storing in the fridge.

 

Nick’s Greek Potatoes

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(From the archives)

We have the loveliest Greek customer who comes in from time to time – even from miles away now that he’s recently moved to a difference city. Every time he comes in, we visit. And every time I hear his accent and the cadence of his old world Greek accent, I instantly crave Greek potatoes in the worst way.

I guess I’ve wore Nick down over the last few visits because today he gave me his secrets to making the best Greek Potatoes ever. Can you get any better than a Greek telling you how they make potatoes in the oven at home?! I think not!

Greek Potatoes:
* 1+ lbs Yellow potatoes, peeled and cut into sections of your choice (halves, quarters or eights), dried with a kitchen towel really well
* 2 tablespoons olive oil (regular not virgin)
* S&P to taste
* 1/2 – 1 teaspoon each: oregano and thyme (or just thyme), pinched to release flavours
* Lemon juice from one lemon freshly squeezed
* Small dabs or brush strokes of garlic butter on top of each potato

Bake covered in the oven at 350 for 75 minutes. Remove the cover every so often and stir potatoes so they don’t stick to pan and burn. There’s no need to babysit them, so once or twice is fine. Each time, dab or brush a bit of the butter on the potato tops. Cook until fork tender. Uncover the pan and continue cooking the potatoes in the oven for the next 15 minutes on broiler setting to crisp up the edges.

Serve with rice, salad, and meat dish of your choice. Popular Greek meals include tender meats like lamb.

These potatoes will be a home run every time as long as you’re patient while they slow cook. The smells coming from your oven will be so delicious and overwhelming, you’ll be tempted to eat them half way through the cooking cycle. I’ve been there, done that. Heh.

This entry was posted on July 7, 2011.

Breakfast Kebabs

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Although it’s not hot here – or when it is, it’s not deathly hot – like it in the deep southern part of the States, I still needed to use up some fruit I bought days ago that were on the cusp of aging out. I’m not about food waste if I can help it. I trimmed off the bad parts and used what was left to make five large fruit kebabs we ate as part our breakfast this morning.

It’s currently +22C. Not too shabby. I’ll take it.

That’s the breakfast hash I made using leftover baby potatoes, sweet potato, and hot sausage that I smoked on the bbq.

A&W Onion Ring Seasoning

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It’s Canada day, a day of reflection upon who we actually are vs who we like to pretend we are. Hard ugly truths are bitter pills that are hard to swallow, but we must take our medicine at some point so we can start some kind of change for the better, right?

Also, Canadians don’t have much in the way of culture outside of the Indigenous, Inuit, Metis and Quebec peoples to lay claim to, but we do have a fast food franchise called A&W that makes the best onion rings I’ve ever tasted. I have been working on figuring out the secret or the formula off and on all year, but I had a chance meeting with an employee yesterday and they openly told me the secret.

We love A&W root beer in this house.

I was close, but not close enough. Here it is:

1 tbsp Onion Powder
1 tea Garlic Powder
1/2 tea Chili Powder

My last attempt at making these beautiful rings at home a few months back.

I figured out the increments for making a small batch at home. They could only tell me what the powders were but not how much since it wouldn’t help me unless I plan to open my own food shack tomorrow. 🙂

So, this blend is the seasoning you will add to your coating bowl in a 3-bowl dredge station. This should be enough to batter and fry up rings from at least two medium to large sized onions.

Santa Fe Salad

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I discovered this one watching a tv cooking show. It’s going to be in heavy rotation around here this summer, me thinks. I can already imagine it plated beside the smoked ribs we are going to make on our charcoal bbq. Oh, boy!

Santa Fe Salad:
1 sm can Black Beans, rinsed
1 1/2 C Frozen Corn, rinsed to thaw quickly
1/4 C Red Onion, diced
Pinch Cilantro leaves, fine chop (garnish)

2 Limes, Juices
1/4 C Olive Oil
1 Tea ea: Chili Pepper Flakes, Garlic Powder, Honey

Shake the dressing up in a mason jar. Pour over veg mix. Toss in the bowl right before serving.

Easy Pico de Gallo

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I love Tex-Mex (and real Mexican food when I get my hands on it). Otherwise, I make what I can at home when I’m in the mood and the produce is at its best throughout the year. One of the easiest sides/toppers for any dish is a little mix called Pico de Gallo. I can’t get enough. *drooling*

Pico de Gallo:
4 large Field Tomatoes (or 6 Romas), 1/4″ dice
1 Red Onion, fine dice
1 bunch Cilantro, fine diced leaves
1/2 Garlic Clove, grated
1 Jalapeno, seeded/fine dice
Big pinch Salt

I find the longer this can sit in the fridge setting up, the better it tastes.