I haven’t posted on here in so long I seriously feel like a stranger on my own blog.  Although, I cook almost every day, I’ve just been really uninspired to carve the time out to post any recipes.  It started when I got real busy and would put off posting “until tomorrow”.  Tomorrow turned into the next day, and the day after until next days turned into weeks, which turned into months and here we are.  But I’m not all to blame…there were days I would be inspired to post a recipe and I’d start sifting through my pictures (bloggers, you know how tedious that can get) and then boom! the power would go out or the internet would be too slow.  Unfortunately I live in an area where we experience intermittent power outs….the power company seems to have a vendetta against us.  Oh, and I had the unfortunate accident of drinking some freshly squeezed lemonade from hell.  Ok, not from hell, but from the sleepy little town of Lamu. The hell part came after I drank some lovely lemonade – it tore my mouth up pretty bad for a couple of weeks.   As a foodie, and a person who likes hot, spicy and citrus-y food, my mouth and tongue getting burned by the acid was not fun at all – soy pudding saved me or I would have starved to death.  Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe I woulda finally gotten skinny…mmhhh…before I starved to death.  Screw that, I’m one of those people who hopes I’ll get a fantastic “last meal” before I die:-)

I’m still re-training my tongue to eat hot spices and citrus and have been sending fervent prayers to the tongue gods to return my old tongue.

The tongue that could handle chewing whole chilies.

The tongue that could handle sucking a lemon/lime half.

The tongue that could handle toothpaste and mouthwash (yep, I’m now using Sensodyne)

The tongue that …

*lets all bow our heads now for a moment of silence for my fallen tongue*

I refuse to accept that one glass of juice can alter my future food choices.  My life is simply not complete without Indian food or vinaigrettes or orange juice or Sriracha or darn it, lemonade!

Enough pain, lets get to the food … these steamed parsley potatoes.   Who doesn’t love potatoes? Potatoes are such an easy side dish and we eat them a lot at my house – boiled, steamed, baked, roasted, fried, grilled, smashed, mashed, au gratin, dauphinois. Did I mention we loooove potatoes?   This one is pretty simple and its great hot or cold (great for picnics) and instead of boiling the potatoes in water, you cook them over water – steaming!  Steaming with skins keeps more nutrients in the potato so whats not to love?

Get your stuff ready. You’ll need new potatoes, garlic, lemon, vegan butter/margarine, olive oil, parsley and of course salt and pepper.

Olive oil, Chipotle Pepper* and Tarragon.  The last two are optional.

After washing and scrubbing the potatoes, I used a potato peeler to peel a strip off of each tater, just for looks. You can keep all the skins on.  Using my pasta boiler set, I add some water in the first pot, then the insert and then the potatoes.

The water should not be high enough to seep through the bottom of the pasta boiler otherwise you are losing the benefits of steaming…Cover the pot and let the potatoes steam until they are fork tender.

Get a saute pan and heat up 2 Tbsp of olive oil and 1 Tbsp of margarine/vegan butter. When the oil sizzles, add your crushed garlic and let it release its garlicky essence

Add your potatoes to the pan and toss ’em good to coat them in the garlic oil. I know it doesn’t seem like it but the heat is pretty high because this process happens in under 2 minutes!

Next, the parsley…I just tear it up with my hands and toss it in …. and a tsp of dry tarragon, which is optional.  You don’t really need it in this dish, I just wanted to try the combination.

Ta-daaahhhh!!  Off the heat and into your mouth serving bowl.  I sprinkled the chipotle pepper just to make them sing a little! AND because I seem(ED)* to sprinkle it on anything.

*Please note that this and other upcoming recipes were done BEFORE that fateful incident with my tongue* when I nonchalantly sprinkled any hot spice on my food with reckless abandon.   I’ll have to come up with a code on my recipe titles (like B.T and A.T – before tongue and after tongue…!!!)…ohhh that sounds risque huh…y’all know what I mean!

Sigh.

Recipe for: Steamed Garlicky Parsley Potatoes 

Servings: 3

Ingredients

Directions

1 kg small potatoes 1 lemon, juiced 3 Garlic cloves 1 bundle parsley 1 Tbsp Olive oil 1 Tbsp margarine/vegan butter Salt & Pepper to taste

Wash and scrub potatoes. Using a potato peeler, peel a strip off the middle of the potato, but this is just for aesthetic value, you could just leave the potatoes unpeeled. Set up your steamer pan and add potatoes to the insert and cover to steam until fork tender. Heat up a saute pan on medium heat, add olive oil and margarine/vegan butter. Add the crushed garlic and let it release its flavor for about 1 minute. Add steamed potatoes to the saute pan and toss the potatoes a couple times to coat in the garlic oil. Add your parsley and tarragon if using. Take off heat and sprinkle the lemon juice, toss and sprinkle salt and pepper if using.