Easter Season is nearly here, and Deirdre over at DaedalShop crafts intricate and inspired Pysanky eggs. We commissioned one for our “babcia” (grandma) several years ago and were blown away by the creativity and attention to detail that she brought to the project.
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Sometimes you combine two things and it really doesn’t work at all. Like Grape Nuts and oatmeal. That didn’t work. But sometimes imagination and reality match up beautifully, like in this potato salad. I had volunteered to bring potato salad to a bbq potluck but I wanted something more interesting than your standard American version. Esquites is just the off-the-cob version of the Mexican street corn called elotes, which is corn that gets charred and slathered in a creamy, zesty combination of mayo, crema, cotija, cilantro, and lime. It’s one of those dishes that makes your taste buds go crazy with textures and flavors. Perfect for tossing with some plain potatoes and turning into something delicious and interesting!
You will love this salad. So will anyone you share it with. Make it for your next BBQ! Or make it for your Easter luncheon. We had it for dinner with black beans and slaw. It’s really good warm or room temperature but it can be served cold, too. I never find roasted potatoes to keep amazingly well for the next day, but this holds up alright because of all the yummy extras.
A note about the roasting: I love the extra flavor and texture dimension that roasted potatoes add to this salad, but you could just as easily boil the potatoes until tender and then let cool a bit. They might soak up a bit more of the dressing, but that’s nothing to complain about!
serves 4-6, can easily be doubled or tripled
Ingredients:
2.5 - 3 lbs potatoes, scrubbed and chopped into 3/4 inch chunks (I use gold or russet potatoes)
4 Tbsp vegetable oil, separated
4 ears corn, shucked
1/2 cup cilantro, roughly chopped
3 scallions, chopped
1 garlic, minced
1 jalapeno, diced fine
1 tsp chili powder
1/4 cup mayo
1/4 cup sour cream
1 Tbsp lime
1/3 cup feta or cotija, crumbled
Instructions:
First the potatoes: Preheat the oven to 475. Put the chopped potatoes in a large pot and cover with water. Salt the water well! Potatoes absorb a lot of salt while cooking, giving them flavor; otherwise they will be bland. Set over high heat and bring to a boil. Boil for just a few minutes until the potatoes are just about fork tender but not quite. Drain. Place a large baking sheet in the oven with 1 Tbsp of oil and let it heat up.
Drizzle the remaining 2 Tbsp of vegetable oil over the potatoes in the large pot. Cover the pot with a lid and shake the potatoes around pretty vigorously to coat the potatoes with the softened starch and the vegetable oil. This will result in very crispy edges when roasted. (Note: if you boil your potatoes too much they may fall apart at this stage so be careful!)
Remove the baking sheet from the oven, tipping and shaking gently to spread the heated oil. Carefully dump the potatoes out onto the pan and spread out. Give them a sprinkle of salt, then stick the pan back in the oven.
Roast for 20-30 minutes or until tender, crispy and golden brown, turning over the potatoes midway. Remove and let sit while you make the esquites.
For the esquites: Whisk together the mayo, sour cream, scallions, cilantro, and lime juice.
Carefully slice the kernals from the cob using a sharp knife. Heat 2 Tbsp oil over medium high heat in a skillet. Add the corn, sprinkle with a bit of salt, stir a bit, and then let sit and cook and develop a little brown on the underside. Stir after a few minutes and let the other side brown for a few more minutes. Add the garlic and chili powder and stir for just a minute.
Scrape the corn into a large bowl. Add the sour cream mayo mixture and stir well to coat.
Add the potatoes and toss well to combine. Salt to taste. Sprinkle with the crumbled feta. Serve warm or at room temp.
I came up with the idea for this recipe after making chipotle sour cream to go along with baked bean & cheese burritos. The sauce was so good, I just wanted more of it. Then I remembered beef stroganoff, which is essentially beef coated with sour cream. If I just added chipotle to the sour cream, I’d have exactly what I was hankering after, right?
Read MoreI love these dinner rolls. They are easy, they are delightful. They are soft, they pull apart in almost-flaky layers as a good buttery dough should, and they are slightly sweet, which makes them reminiscent of Hawaiian rolls.
My favorite way to serve these is to slice them in half for pulled pork sliders (or post-Easter ham sandwiches!) but they are equally delicious on their own, with butter and jelly, or as a side dish to a roast.
Read MoreFor our April 2019 Great British Bake Off Challenge we thought we’d tackle something savory, since February and March brought you sweet treats.
I’ve never made a pasty (that’s pah-stee) before—let along a Cornish pasty—so I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Obviously I turned to Paul Hollywood’s recipe for my inspiration, and then browsed a few others to get a sense of possible variations in method and technique. (I had some issues with Paul Hollywood’s GBBO recipe as it appears on BBC.com, so I had to do some research to get clarity. I think the recipe you’ll find below resolves the issues; see the note at the end if you are curious!)
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Hello! It’s April!
YES. It is. And with it comes all the promise of spring and sunshine!
I love when Easter falls this late in April. It just feels so in step with the seasons. Spring starts to peek through the dismal long cold and then all of a sudden it’s busting out all over. It’s so refreshing and revitalizing, which, of course, is the promise of Easter.
Now grab some coffee and joins us for some links!
Where are GBBO winners now? I’m going to go find all those blogs!
Literary critique from unlikely places. Amazon really does have everything.
These abstract portraits are incredible.
Good for a laugh. But seriously, it's ridiculous!
Don't text with good grammar! People might think you're being a jerk.
Bad diets, cigarettes, wine, sugar, lack of exercise. It's all killing us. But we're all going to die anyway...
There are just no words. Breath taken.
I'm intrigued. Would it catch, I wonder?
Have I mentioned how much I love Ottolenghi cookbooks? His recipes opened up a whole new world of flavor in my kitchen. He is so creative with flavors and food combinations. I’ve never been disappointed with an Ottolenghi recipe I’ve tried, and there are some that we return to again and again.
This recipe here is inspired by one from his newest cookbook Simple. It is simple. It’s also really delicious and makes a substantial meatless dish. The original recipe calls for ciabatta but I only had a loaf of sourdough so I used that. I made it a little more herby, too. I would maybe add some ham or bacon in a future version but it certainly doesn’t need it. It was puffy and light with delightful crusty cheesy baked edges. Mmmm. Serve it with a salad and you've got yourself a perfect weekday meal.
Read MoreI've sat down to write this post on our life farming so many times. But every time, I have put it off, feeling like I didn't get it right. Maybe this time I finally will.
Read MoreWhen we first started this blog, we decided we didn’t want to be unecessarily chatty in introducing our recipes. We agreed that for the most part, when we are looking at other blog recipes, we typically scroll down quickly to the recipe recipe, where it’s written out in recipe format, and pretty much ignore everything else. So for our blog, unless we have something we particularly feel like saying, we try to skip all that intro story telling and get right to the recipe.
Read MoreMarch seemed to fly by, but not so fast that we didn’t savor the slow thawing of the earth and the promise of warmer days to come. There is something marvelous when the color of budding leaves makes its appearance on the trees, seemingly overnight. All of a sudden, there is an abundant chirping of birds and cacophony of frogs too. A striking shift that creeps in unawares. It never ceases to surprise.
Read MoreI have a little gem of a cookbook called Beard on Bread, a collection of bread recipes put together by James Beard at a time when making bread at home was making an upswing in popularity. It’s utterly charming in its simplicity. Beard has a fantastically direct and unpretentious approach to bread. “If you can read and have an oven and a work space, there is no reason why you can’t make a decent loaf of bread,” he says.
I love that so much.
Read MoreI love breakfast, but 90% of the time I don’t eat it. On the weekends we’ll cook up a big breakfast...sausage, bacon, potatos, eggs, pancakes, waffles, crepes... But that’s when we have the time to make and enjoy it.
I meal plan every week. Since I live with my in-laws, that means that once a week my mother-in-law and I sit down and talk through what to make each day of that week. This usually happens Saturday morning. We plan through the week up until the next Sunday. I find planning a bit more than an exact week is important. Otherwise, you could end up needing to meal plan for the week and on top of that, for dinner that very same night. I find that stressful. I never like waking up not knowing what I’m going to make for dinner because that automatically means a good-sized chunk of my day is going to get eaten up deciding what to make.
Read MoreHappy Saturday! We have a decent spread this month’s Mixed Media, and we’re hoping some conversations might begin. We found more than a single gem, which we hope you will enjoy as well. And don’t miss the final note to honor St. Patrick’s Day!
Read MoreI love this kind of salad so much. It’s colorful, it’s hearty, it’s nutritious, and it tastes delicious on top of all that. I serve a basic old house salad with every dinner, so a salad like this is kind of like a treat. It’s also a perfect side salad to fill out a meal that needs just a little more substance on the side.
Alternatively, you can throw grains (like farro, barley, or quinoa) or roasted veggies (Brussel sprouts and sweet potatoes are my personal fave) and make this a legit meal. It makes a delicious lunch or a lighter dinner. With all the different elements and flavors you end up feeling totally satisfied.
Read MoreWe were having BBQ pulled pork the other night, and in my mind, BBQ requires cornbread. Problem is, my husband and kids don’t like cornbread (truuuust me, I know…) so if I ever make it I spend a week afterward trying to peddle leftovers to my kids until I end up eating it crumbled and warmed with butter and honey. It doesn’t sound like such a bad ending, but it’s just not worth it (much as I love crumbled up, warmed up, buttered and honeyed cornbread mash). Anyway, so I dreamed up these yeasted cornbread buns. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? I got my honey corn contrast to the salty BBQ and my husband and kids didn’t get … cornbread. Instead, they got these delicious, buttery, honey sweet cornmeal hamburger buns. They are tender and soft but sturdy enough to hold pulled pork (or later on I made them again for zucchini turkey burgers!). They are simply delightful. You know you’ve done something right when the kids ask for a second bun over the (very delicious) BBQ pulled pork.
Read MoreTomato soup and grilled cheese: it’s an American staple. Probably because it’s fast, and it’s satisfying.
The thing is, as a grown adult cooking for my family, I discovered that many cans and cartons of tomato soup are chock full of sugars. On the other hand, a lot of homemade recipes, although fresh and delicious, take time to make, and don’t yield that ultra smooth brilliant soup you get from a can.
Read MoreSophie recently clued me in on this small village in Poland, Zalipie, where nearly every surface of their buildings is decorated with brightly painted flowers.
It looks like such a bright and cheerful place! Which got my wondering…why don’t more of us take risks with our interior (and exterior!) decorating?
Read MoreI have three toddler items that I use constantly. They are ingenious little items that have saved my sanity over and over again. And what is more — basically everyone who sees these products in action comments on how much caCHING the inventor must be rolling in
…or wonders aloud why they hadn’t thought of it first.
Read MoreI was inspired to make this dish after trying a recipe from this Food52 cookbook. The squash & chickpea salad/side recipe was delicious, but lacked enough “oomph” to pass for a meal on its own (at least in our house). So I added in couscous, tweaked the proportions, and discovered a few toppings that paired nicely. The result: a delicious, filling and surprisingly fresh dinner, sometimes hard to come by in the winter with no garden fresh produce.
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