Southern Fried Potatoes

This week has been all about comfort food for me. I’ve been really homesick as I usually am this time of year so I’ve been fixing a lot of comfort food. Comfort food for me is the food my mama cooked, the southern staples, the food that was set on our dinner table on any given night. This week I have cooked tuna patties, my Aunt Martha’s shoepeg corn casserole, southern fried potatoes and banana pudding done Mom’s way. Mom was my paternal grandmother. I’m going to try to squeeze in a batch of chicken and dumplings too. Anyway, the other night I decided to have southern fried potatoes. I grew up eating this and it is the epitome of southern comfort food to me. It’s a real treat. Pook gets all excited when she finds out that we’re having them with dinner. Heck, I get all excited about having them with dinner, still. Even Dr. J loves them too. Buddy? He only eats certain things and potatoes in any form are not on that list. Yet. I’m determined.

I’ve seen various recipes for southern fried potatoes that call for extra ingredients added to them such as paprika, diced bell peppers and sautéed onions. That’s all fine and dandy but that’s not how my mama made them. When you start adding other ingredients it goes from being fried potatoes to some sort of potato hash or something. I like to keep things simple when I can. Sometimes, depending on the food, simple is better. It may just be my personal taste but I find when you start trying to get creative and start adding in a bunch of stuff then the food just gets too busy or it just masks the flavor. It’s like adding steak sauce to a nice thick juicy medium rare steak. However, if you do want to make it with the extra ingredients I would suggest cubing the potatoes instead of cutting them in to french fry shapes. So I figured I would share with y’all how my mama used to make this dish and how I make it now.

I’ll take you step by step through the process. All you need are three ingredients. Potatoes, oil and salt. First off though, you need a big cast iron skillet.

Rule #1: Everything is better cooked in cast iron.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs. of potatoes (any potato is fine, we prefer Yukon Golds)
• Cooking oil (we use Canola)
• Salt

Directions

1. First you want to wash and peel your potatoes
   
2. Next you’ll want to cut them into fries
   
3. Take 1/4 cup or 4 TBS of oil and poor it into the pan
   
4. Heat the oil on medium. Now, here is the golden rule for frying anything. Get the oil hot hot hot. You want the oil to be at least 350. It helps if you have a thermometer that you can use.
   
5. Put in the potatoes and stir them around to coat them with the oil.
   
6. To get the potatoes done just right you have to cover them with a lid. This is the secret trick. The heat from the oil crisps the part of the potatoes touching the pan and the lid keeps the other side soft. Once you have the lid on you’ll want to stir every few minutes and re-cover. This helps break some of the potatoes down plus it gives you a good mix of crispy and soft potatoes. Dr. J likes them mostly crispy but I prefer the mix.
   
7. Once it starts looking like this then you’re good to go. You can keep cooking it a little longer if you want more of the brown crispy potatoes. I always just eyeball it.
   
8. Once they are done place them on a plate lined with paper towels to soak up the extra oil. Salt immediately while the potatoes are still hot so that the salt sticks
9. Southern fried potatoes
   

Now, I’m curious to know. What is a dish that you consider comfort food and why?

Pantry Surprise

Wednesday nights in our house have become “Pantry Surprise” night. The point of pantry surprise is to clear out all of the old stuff that gathers in the back of the pantry. Props to Dr. J for this nifty idea cause lord knows our pantry needs clearing out. Since I know exactly where everything is in our pantry I have Dr. J do the honors of closing his eyes, reaching in and pulling out something. Whatever he pulls out I have to make dinner with the following Wednesday. This past week, I kid you not, it was a bag of cinnamon spice quick bread mix that was from 2001 with a best used by date of 2004. I honestly didn’t realize we had anything that old in our pantry. I was scared. Really scared. I decided to make the bread as part of a breakfast dinner consisting of eggs (with Louisiana hot sauce of course), country ham, fruit and the bread. The bread actually turned out pretty good. It was crumbly but other than that, still totally edible and that in itself is kinda frightening too.

The bologna moon

Sometimes playing with your food is acceptable, if it’s art. Or if you are about to encounter aliens. Or in Pook’s case, if you make a bologna moon.

Fighting The Winter Blues

Y’all bear with me, this is my first blog post. It’s the middle of February. I’m in Michigan, which means there is at least 2 feet of snow on the ground and I have nothing better to do. We have 4-6 more inches of the white stuff coming this evening and I’m totally filled with dread. I’m southern so this time of year is hard for me.  I am just sick to death of the snow; of being cold, of changing shoes every time I leave the house, this cabin fever, and sick to death of not seeing my beloved blue skies and green grass.  I am soo ready for some color. The sad part is that I know I still have another 2 months of this to go. I have to get my sunshine in pill form, no joke. Don’t laugh but I’ve actually considered buying a light therapy lamp. Evidently our area comes in at #55 for the cloudiest city in America.

So naturally, this is the time of year that I get homesick for the south the most. Having grown up where the summers are long and having traded them in for long winters, well, it’s kind of jarring.  I start daydreaming of all the sights, smells and sounds of the south and I miss them so much.  I inevitably daydream of the beach too and by beach I don’t mean the Lake Michigan beaches with their biting flies. I mean the soft white sands and warm blue waters of the Gulf Coast where I grew up or the low country beaches on the east coast.  So how do I cope?  What gets me through these last few months of cold weather?  Here is my list.

• Tropical and/or citrus fruit.
• Seafood (I crave fresh seafood. However, what I can get in the store has to suffice.)
• Cajun food.
• Comfort food i.e. good ole southern cooking e.g. chicken and dumplings, fried okra, chicken stew, cornbread, banana pudding, shrimp and grits, etc.
• Celebrating Mardi Gras with a store bought King Cake, beads and Zydeco music.
• Spring and summer scented candles e.g. honeysuckle, magnolia, any beach or tropical fruit scent, rain, grass, citrus, etc.
• Retail therapy (shopping for spring and summer clothing for the kids).
• Planning this year’s garden.
• Looking at photos from previous trips to the south or the beach.
• My “Musing Tropicana” playlist (a playlist of summery songs).

The best one of all…Pook comes up to me out of the blue just now and asked me if we can have a beach party. She told me we could fill the bathtub with water and blue food color, put in toy sea animals, make lemonade and wear our swimsuits while sitting on beach towels in the bathroom. Sounds like a plan to me, I’m game. I know our plans for tomorrow now. This one, my Pookalicious, she loves the beach probably as much as I do. Almost.