Cooking for One: Potatoes Two Ways

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The mighty potato.

It is starchy.

It is filling.

It can be sweet.

It can be saucy.

But it is always delicious.

I've been working on ways to create multiple sauces or preparations starting from a basic ingredient. The idea is to create the basic ingredient once, in bulk and then add different sauces, etc. throughout the week so that you don't get bored with the same leftovers over and over.

This is part of my exploration into Cooking for One (see

here

for my first installation). Once I have enough of these recipes worked out, I'll post a succinct compendium (that there is a $20 word), but for now, I'll link them all through the individual posts. Of course, they'll all be tagged Cooking for One, so if one needs to find them quickly, this key phrase can be put in my handy search box on the right hand side of this site.

But I digress.

Potatoes seem like a great base for many things. I've got two variations here: a light potato salad (light because there's not too much mayonnaise involved) and a pan fried potato with bacon. Both are great, and are based on a large pot of boiled potatoes. Stored in an airtight container, once they've been fully drained and cooled, the potatoes I made kept for a week.

All you need to do is boil up the potatoes and then create sauce variations when you are ready to serve them. Easy as pie.

Boiled Potatoes

serves plenty, portion out to one-person servings as you see fit

Ingredients:

  • 1 to 2 lbs Yellow New Potatoes
  • Salt to taste

Method:

  • Fill a large non-reactive pan (I had to use it sometime...) with water, leaving enough room for the potatoes to fit comfortably, while being covered by the water.
  • Chop each potato into 6 to 8 even pieces.
  • Boil potatoes for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until you can put a fork through them, and the skin has turned translucent.
  • Drain potatoes, let cool and portion

Potato Salad

Ingredients:

  • 1 portion Boiled Potatoes (see above for recipe)
  • 1/4 cup Red Wine Vinegar
  • 1/4 cup Mayonnaise
  • 2 Tbsps Mustard (I used Sweet/Hot)
  • 1 Spring fresh Tarragon (you can use 1/4 tsp dried instead)
  • Salt and Black Pepper to taste

Method:

  • Mix the vinegar, mayonnaise and mustard together. It should be thin enough to pour once it's all mixed up.
  • In a small bowl, pour the dressing over the potatoes.
  • Using a fork, coat the potatoes with the dressing, pressing down with the fork to roughly break up the potatoes.
  • Finish with a sprinkling of tarragon, salt and black pepper.

Bacon Fried Potatoes

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 pound bacon, cooked and broken up into small pieces
  • 1 portion Boiled Potatoes (see above)
  • Olive Oil for cooking

Method:

  • Turn the oven on to broil.
  • Heat a large non-reactive pan over high heat.
  • When it's hot, coat the bottom of the pan with olive oil. If you have bacon grease on hand, you can use a little of that here, too.
  • Add bacon pieces, cooking for 3 minutes.
  • Put potatoes in with the bacon, stirring to coat them with oil.
  • Cook for 10 minutes.
  • Move the pan to the broiler.
  • Cook for 5 minutes, then stir the potatoes, getting all the crunchy bits from the bottom of the pant scraped up.
  • Put the pan back in the broiler for another 5 minutes.
  • Remove and serve!