potato-cabbage hash with bleu cheese

well, i live in helsinki now and i've been cooking almost every day, since restaurants are comparatively more expensive than in the states ..

.. and almost every day i've been eating potatoes.  i think it's just a finnish thing.

despite my love for roasted potato wedges, i think it takes too long to heat an oven.  so if i'm not roasting peppers or other veg at the same time, i tend to boil them.

the problem is that boiling is often boring, seemingly without flavor.

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so below is a chunky version of colcannon or champ, with a bit of bleu cheese for the sake of umami ..

• 1 large or 2 small potatoes, roughly diced
• 1/8 head of red cabbage, chopped in strips
• 1 scallion, julienned
• 1 chunk bleu cheese 
• salt, pepper, and olive oil to taste

first, set the water to boil [1].  while boiling the potato(es), there's usually time to:

1. heat a dry pan;
2. chop the cabbage [2];
3. saute the cabbage .. and while doing so,
   chop the scallion and the bleu cheese;
4. melt the pieces of cheese into the saute,
   adding a little water and oil to keep it from burning;

to thicken the gravy, just take a few potato pieces, mash them, and stir into the water.  (there's no need to add flour or cornstarch.)

once the potatoes are ready, add them into the saute pan, and stir.  add raw scallion on top for savoriness, and you have a hearty entree.

(i usually wait for it to cool and chop a quick salad in the meanwhile.)



[1] electric tea kettles are awesome.  i never knew this trick before, but water for pasta and potatoes boils much more quickly in a kettle ..!

[2] if you eat meat, then you can start a hot pan at the same time as the water boil.  at the same time as the potatoes, you can fry a few strips of bacon or a diced chorizo sausage.  trust me; it takes no more time to chop the sausage than for the pan to heat up.

spices; also, a standby.

among the few home-cooked dishes that i've made lately, i've been using lemon pepper seasoning a lot.

rather, i should call it "lemon salt-&-pepper."

if it were really just lemon flavoured pepper, then it couldn't possibly taste that deliciously salty.

still, i quite like it. the taste reminds me of a bite of chips and salsa (laced with lime) but without the tomato overload.

you could call it a poor man's lemongrass, i guess. q-:

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in other news, i've been keeping a jar of sliced and spiced dried apricots, as a ready ingredient. i'll call them spiced apricot raisins.

• several handfuls of dried apricots, chopped into the size of raisins,
• garam masala and cardamon, to coat the apricot pieces.

that's it: just chop them after buying them from the store, coat them with tasty spice.

dried fruit is a great last-minute additive for morning oatmeal, stove-top or microwave. as for why it's worth mentioning this few minutes of prep .. think about the situation:

aesthetically, whole dried apricots seem too big to drop in oatmeal. a single one would fill up most of a spoonful of oatmeal, so you should really chop them.

oatmeal being a morning food, however, means that you're probably half-asleep when you want oatmeal, and are in no real mood to do any chopping. this means that you should chop them in advance.

dried apricots are still sticky in the middle. when chopped into pieces and left in a jar, they'll only clump together (and in a worse way than raisins, which still have their natural skin membranes). this means that you should include in them a non-clumping agent ..

.. and since apricots go well with spices, then why not some garam masala and cardamom?

in the end, they seem relatively versatile. if you end up cooking with these "spiced apricot raisins" for

• savory dinner dishes like risotto-like stews,
• muffins, by dropping them in like blueberries,
• toppings for yogurt or ice cream,

then let me know. i'll be curious how they come out.