©2003 Ashy Macbean.
Did anybody ever make potato prints at school? Were you any good at it? If so, you'll find this recipe easy enough and you might also want to try your hand at Kashmiri dum aloo. In both recipes the most difficult bit is cutting holes or depressions in the potatoes to fill with stuffing. I used a potato peeler (or 'vegetable peeler', as it said on the packet when I bought it) and it wasn't very difficult. You can prepare all the potatoes before you do anything else, but put them in a pot of cold water until you need them, to stop them going brown.
Here's a tip. When you've peeled a potato, lay it on a flat surface to see how it rests, then make a hole in the top. You'll be disappointed if you make holes then find out that they are in the sides of the potatoes. Use potatoes which are roughly the same size and don't make the holes too deep. Leave 2 or 3 centimetres thickness between the inside of the hole and the outside of the potato, otherwise you could end up with soup. That wouldn't necessarily be a disaster but if you wanted soup you could skip the potato sculpting stage altogether and just throw everything into a pan roughly chopped.
You also need some breadcrumbs for this recipe. If you're not sure about how to make them, have a look here. There's nothing to it.
Ingredients
6 medium sized potatoes
1 small bunch of spinach
1 onion
1 tomato
1 or 2 cloves of garlic
1 handful of shelled walnuts
A cup of breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons of sour cream or yoghurt
Olive oil
A few crushed black peppercorns
A little grated nutmeg
Salt
So, you've done the potatoes, now you need to do the spinach. Actually, it doesn't really matter what order you do the spinach and potatoes in. They will both keep until you need them. Wash and chop the spinach, jam it into a fairly small pan with a tight fitting lid and steam it on a fairly high heat for five minutes or so until it's soft. It will be cool enough to use after you've prepared the rest of the stuffing ingredients.
Roughly chop the nuts and then smash them up well with a pestle and mortar. Add the chopped garlic cloves and spices and continue pounding until you have a stiff paste. Mix this in a bowl with the spinach, breadcrumbs and a little salt. This is your stuffing. Drain the potatoes and pack stuffing into the holes.
Chop the onion and fry it in olive oil, in a large deep frying pan, until it's soft, then add chopped tomato. Stir and let the tomato begin to break up, before laying the potatoes, stuffing side up, in the pan. Pour water round the potatoes until it comes about two thirds of the way up the sides and add some salt. Bring to the boil then reduce the pan to a simmer and cover. It should take about twenty-five minutes for the potatoes to soften. Don't keep sticking a knife in them to see if they're ready or you'll be heading down the soup-making track. About five minutes before the end of cooking time, add the sour cream and gently mix it in. Serve in the cooking pan or lift the potatoes out gently, arrange on a plate with an upturned rim and pour the sauce over. A wee bit of chopped fresh parsley or green onion would look really nice sprinkled on top.