Gracie’s Life Experiment

Probably the least authentic recipe in the world coming up…. decided to make a korma for dinner tonight (there’s a lovely jar of Patak’s hiding at the back of the cupboard – I know it’s cheating, but it does taste nice). Decided that having rice or naan with it would be boring and I’m long overdue for another experimentation. Here’s my recipe for Bombay Potatoes (gleaned the main ingredients from various online webpages), it serves 4 as a side dish…

Ingredients:
- 3 medium/large potatoes
- 3 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 tsp of wholegrain mustard
- 1 tbsp of plain flour
- 1 tbsp turmeric
- 1 tbsp crushed chilli flakes
- 1 tbsp ground cumin
- 2 diced fresh tomatoes

Instructions:
- Peel and chop potatoes (or could leave the skin on if you want to) into 1″ cubes and parboil for 7 mins
- Drain the potatoes and leave aside for 5 mins (don’t rinse the potatoes with cold water or anything, you want the heat from the potatoes to steam off and leave the potatoes dry). Once the potatoes seem dryish then sprinkle the plain flour and mix so that the potatoes are coated well.
- Heat the vegetable oil over medium heat in a frying pan (mine was about 30cm in diameter and you’ll need one with a lid)
- Put the mustard into the oil and stir
- Once the mustard starts to “pop” then add the cumin, turmeric and chilli flakes. Again stirring into the oil.
- Add the floured potatoes into the oil/spice mixture and stir
- Put the lid on the pan so that the potatoes cook through (I more or less sauteed for 2-3 mins then put the lid on for a similar amount of time and then stirred/turned the potatoes before replacing the lid)
- It took about 10 mins to get the potatoes done. They should look nice and crispy on the outside and coated with a golden brown spice mixture. The potato itself will go yellow because of the turmeric.
- Dice the tomatoes and remove all the soft pulp out of the middle (i.e. you’re just left with the skin/flesh – but no seeds or juice)
- When you want to serve it up just quickly heat through potatoes to crisp them up and then scatter the tomatoes on top when you plate it.

I liked this recipe best as it yields nice and crispy bombay potatoes with plenty of flavour (frying the spices seems to really increase the concentration). It will go well with our beef korma and rotis.