MEGA STUFFED POTATO SKINS
Literally joy on a plate.
Something’s been bothering me since I started this website. In my inaugural post, I warned that potatoes would feature heavily given my deep personal love for them. I am therefore mortified that they haven’t been given any attention at all (follow-through is not one of my strengths) and have decided to rectify that today. If you had any idea how much I love potatoes as my nearest and dearest do, you would understand how shocking and perhaps even sacrilegious such an omission really is. (Kind of like leaving your favourite child off the family Christmas card photo and not realising until you’ve mailed them out to everyone, but not really because of course all children are equally precious and no parents anywhere ever secretly have a favourite. Hot tip: avoid this potential conundrum by being an only child.)
Anyway….potatoes! This year, rather unexpectedly, we discovered that the teeny tiny potatoes we failed to dig up last year had spawned a whole new generation of AWESOME and much larger potatoes, and I found myself with about 20kgs of both white (Kennebeck) potatoes and Dutch creams. Spud heaven.
You were probably expecting a photo of potatoes. Surprise!
Let me share just some of the reasons potatoes are amazing and why I can’t live without them:
They are the chicken/bread of vegetables. Though delicious on their own, they take on flavours and go well with almost everything, making them extremely versatile to cook with. The possibilities taste-wise are endless!
You can play with different textures and formats. Mashed, roasted, fried, smashed/hashed/grated then fried, steamed, broiled, make pasta/bread out of it, FRIES, inside of food…you get it.
You can never go wrong by adding butter and cheese to it.
Potatoes are hard to mess up. Unless you burn the hell out of them.
Good source of vitamin C! Don’t want scurvy? Eat potatoes.
When I was a teenager growing up in Hong Kong, there was an American-style restaurant called Dan Ryan’s that we frequented quite regularly, and one item I always ordered without fail (once I discovered them) were the potato skins. Now as a young one with zero culinary skills at the time and a somewhat uninitiated palate, I thought they were the bomb. I mean they probably still are delicious, because it’s potato skins, bacon and cheese, hello. But as an adult, I wanted MORE. Because sometimes, more is just more. Now we all know there are two different kinds of potato skins. The un-stuffed kind, and the stuffed kind. And last night, I made the stuffed kind because there was a bunch of stuff on the brink of expiry in the fridge, so why not throw some of it into the potato, the perfect blank canvas? Turns out, GENIUS move, if I may say so myself. Raiding the fridge and pantry for impromptu ingredients can often inspire crazy delicious creations. How crazy delicious? Well, it’s 10:30am and I’m eating a leftover stuff potato with my bare hands, if that says anything.
#ineedamanicure
Ingredients:
6 medium white or Russet potatoes
250g streaky bacon, finely diced
200g white mushrooms, finely diced (I used about 100g dried Shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated and finely diced)
4 spring onions, finely sliced
50-60g cream cheese (I used leftover Laughing Cow cheese, 4 triangles)
2/3 cup of shredded/grated cheddar cheese, divided
1 tbsp French onion dip
1 egg
Sour cream, to serve
Extra sliced spring onion for garnish
Salt & pepper to taste
Method:
1. Preheat oven to 450F or 220C (slightly lower if fan forced). Prick the potatoes a few times on each side with a fork, then wrap in aluminium foil and bake for about an hour until done.
2. While the potatoes are baking, sauté the bacon until crispy. Drain and set aside. Fry the mushrooms next until cooked and all the liquid as been released. Drain and set aside with the bacon.
3. Once the potatoes are cool enough to handle (but still warm), cut them in half lengthways. Using a teaspoon, carefully scoop out the potato flesh into a large mixing bowl, making sure to leave enough on the skin so it retains its shape. Return the skins to the oven for another 10 minutes.
4. Add the bacon, mushrooms, spring onions, cream cheese, French onion dip, half the shredded cheese and egg to the mixing bowl. Mix and combine well, then season with salt and pepper to taste.
5. Remove the skins from the oven and stuff generously with the potato mixture. Top with the remaining shredded cheese and bake for another 10 minutes or so until the cheese is bubbly and a little browned. Sprinkle with extra spring onions, then serve hot with sour cream.