Smitten Kitchen's Warm Potato Salad

The sun is setting at 5 PM now, so getting photos of my dinner that look nice is hard!

When I first saw Smitten Kitchen's recipe for potatoes with soft eggs and bacon vinaigrette, I knew I had to make it immediately, as it was a perfect combination of things that I love (potatoes! bacon! vinaigrette! soft eggs! some greens to make it healthy!) I made it for dinner the next night even though I didn't have all of the right ingredients on hand, and it is such a well-written formula that tweaking it to use slightly different ingredients still yields a delicious warm potato salad.

So! I have made this half a dozen times since Deb posted the recipe, and have figured out that I prefer this meal with poached rather than soft-boiled eggs (I find peeling soft eggs without crushing them to be rather difficult, alas), that it works better with greasier bacon so that there is sufficient bacon grease for the vinaigrette, that it is just fine without blue cheese, and that boxed salad greens work very well when your local grocery doesn't stock frisee.

Though I tend to make a couple ingredient changes from the original, I am just posting this as a recommended recipe, rather than posting a recipe here, because Deb's recipes are always so beautifully done and well-tested. You should make this, it is delicious and gluten-free, and by skipping the cheese it is dairy-free too!

Life updates and seasoned fries

Edit: I should clarify that it is a coincidence that I posted this on April Fool's day, when apparently most posts on the Internet are a joke. 

I know that the blog has been rather quiet lately. I mean, a little more than usual. This is largely because of some big decisions/events that happened in the last month. The first, which is fantastic (but not life-altering) is that I have gotten a job. Not only that, but I am thrilled to be doing data entry instead of some kind of cleaning job. I have been grateful for my various housecleaning/janitorial/room attendant jobs in the past, but scrubbing toilets gets a little old. So having this job is great. But between working full time and commuting ~45 minutes each way, I am left with very little time for experimenting with new recipes.

The other big thing from the last four weeks is much more life-altering. I have been accepted into graduate school, which is thrilling and also a little terrifying. Last month, the Man and I visited the school (University of Wyoming), and were impressed by the campus, the research, and the people. It will not be at all like living in the Willamette Valley, but I think we will like it there. Both the trip and making this decision has also contributed to our hectic schedule as of late, though.

The campus is quite pretty.

Being from Oregon, it is weird to see the quad (which they call "the Pasture") covered in snow rather than mud.

Lots of beautiful views around Laramie.

Also: snow. Lots of snow.

So we are eating a lot of simple, quick dinners. That often means a rotisserie chicken from Fred Meyer, salad, and fries.

The Man came up with with method for doing fries, and it is brilliant. Normally I dislike oven fries, but these are fantastic, and we eat them at least once a week.

Begin by purchasing a bag of frozen shoestring fries. Any brand of frozen fries is fine, but I think this works the best with the shoestring cut.

Preheat the oven to 425 F. Line a baking sheet with tinfoil if you want to have less cleanup work.

Pour out as many fries as you intend to eat onto the baking sheet. This was maybe a quarter of the bag. Drizzle 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil onto the pile of fries. Season to taste; for the amount of fries the two of us eat, I use a pinch of sea salt, a pinch of black pepper, and about a half teaspoon of Italian seasoning (I highly recommend the McCormick Grinder italian seasoning, we use it on everything).

Toss the fries until the oil and spices coat them evenly. Spread the fries out into as even a layer as possible.

Bake for 7 minutes. Remove the fries, and add more seasoning if desired. I usually do up to a teaspoon total of Italian seasoning. Toss the fries again, and bake for 6-8 more minutes, until the fries have some nice golden brown edges. It is very easy to over or undercook the fries, so keep a close eye on them towards the end.

And there you have it! An easy, really tasty, and not too-unhealthy side dish for a quick meal. Also: naturally dairy-free and gluten-free.

Fries right out of the bag.

After tossing them in oil and seasoning.

The baked fries, with my dinner.

Roasted sweet potatoes

So being that it is technically spring, though it is still pretty chilly around here, it is grilling season! The Man and I have been grilling a lot (well, more him then me, it's like if you add fire to anything then guys think it is awesome) these last couple weeks.


There has been extra incentive to do grilling as it is pretty low-maintenance cooking, and low-maintenance is ideal when it is finals week and one of you is graduating this year. Make that "graduated", as I spent most of the day today going to my husband's graduation ceremony and reception things. Yeah. Next year I get to go to all of those things again.

But that has nothing to do with roasted sweet potatoes, which are really good!

So this is less of a recipe and more of a method that the Man came up with. Apparently when he was spending time in Egypt you could buy roasted yams from food carts, and recently he decided to try and make his own.

It turned out really good and it's not difficult. Only when we made them a couple days ago, we used sweet potatoes, but those are yummy as well. It also works with normal potatoes, but because of the lower sugar content in a russet-type potato, the flesh doesn't caramelize or get very smoky, and they aren't much more exciting than baked potatoes.

Also keep in mind that I'm fairly sure that the "yams" you buy in the U.S. are an orange-fleshed variety of sweet potato, but don't quote me on that.

Anyway.
Here is the basic method:


When you are done grilling meat and veggies, the coals should still be hot but will have cooled down quite a bit. Just put the sweet potatoes/yams directly on the coals. I usually try to pile some hot coals on top of the potatoes, but there weren't quite enough coals this time.

He likes to push the coals with a piece of wood. I usually use tongs. Either works.


Put the lid back on the grill, and then turn the potatoes over after ten or fifteen minutes. They'll be charred and a bit ashy, and that's fine, as I usually don't eat the skin anyway.


They're done when they look like this and are slightly squishy when you poke them. That time varies a lot depending on the size of the tuber (tuberous roots, technically) or how hot the coals are, but I cooked these for probably 45 minutes. It would probably be hard to burn them because the coals cool off pretty quickly.


That's it! You can mash them with some butter (which is really dang good) or eat plain. We usually eat yams without the butter.


Note that the yellow is not from a crappy camera (well, mostly isn't) but that sweet potatoes have a nice golden color on the inside.

And you have an easy side to a barbecued meal!