Recipe: Garlic Cheesy Potatoes with Creamed Spinach and Spicy Sauteed Whole Mushrooms

This is a recipe that was inspired by something I once in Hannover, Germany. Do not ask me the name of the restaurant, do not ask me the name of the dish. All I remember is that it is diagonally opposite the Hannover Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and that it was a small restaurant on two levels.
Dad and I had a few meetings to attend and decided to grab a quick lunch before heading from one to the other. He recalled the restaurant from an earlier visit to Hannover (I think he said he ate there about 15 years earlier). There was only one vegetarian item on the menu (I was vegetarian back them) and it was this baked potato roll, served on a spinach base with a cheese sauce.
This is one of the attempts I made to replicate the taste. It didn't turn out the same, but was quite yummy so I'm leaving it as a recipe in its own right.

Ingredients (Serves 2):

Garlic Potatoes

5-6 Large Potatoes
Cheddar Cheese (100 grams)
3-4 Cloves of Garlic (Mashed)
3-4 Tablespoons of Flour
Salt, Black Pepper, Red chilli powder (to taste).

Cream Cheese Sauce

150 Grams of Cream Cheese
1/2 cup of fresh/heavy cream
1/2 cup of milk
50 grams Cheddar Cheese
4 Tablespoons Butter
2 tablespoons Olive Oil
2 cloves of garlic (Mashed)
Salt, Black Pepper to taste.

Creamed Spinach

1/2 Kg Spinach
1/2 a medium onion, diced fine.
1 Tablespoon olive oil
3-4 spoons of the Cream Cheese sauce we made earlier.

Whole Mushrooms

Button Mushrooms 150 grams.
2 tablespoons olive oil.
1 mashed clove of garlic.
1 tablespoon lemon juice.
2 tablespoons of chilli garlic sauce.
1 teaspoon of red chilli.


Lets COOK!!!!

Lets start with the potatoes. Whilst these are being prepared you will usually have more than enough time to make the rest.



Clean them out and boil them (with a pinch of salt) till they are nice and soft. Peel the skins off them.



Now you can start to get the oven heated. Set the temperature for about 250 centigrade. Whilst it is heating mash the potatoes . Add in the Garlic, salt and pepper.



(If you are wondering how the colour slightly changed, I used baked garlic cloves. YUMMMM... will put up a post on that someday )
Spoon on the flour. This will help hold the potatoes together when you are rolling them.



Mix it all together. Mashing and mixing potatoes with your hands is highly therapeutic in my opinion. The mixture should feel like a dough that you can mold. If not, add a little more flour half a spoonful at a time.
If you want you can make a roll or mold it into any shape you want. I decided to stuff it with some cheddar which is optional. The cheddar makes the end dish quite heavy, but yummy.
*Optional*
Flatten it out into a rectangle. You should get one that is about 1/4 of an inch thick. You can make it as long or wide as you want.
Grate some Cheddar cheese and add some red chilli powder in it. Mix it together and layer it onto one half of the rectangle. Fold over the other half so it envelopes the cheese.



By now the oven should have come to temperature. Apply some olive oil onto the potato rolls. Place the potato rolls on an aluminum foil, onto a tray, and let it bake for about 30 minutes (or until the outside is nice and golden brown).



Mmmmm...they look and smell so nice and garlicy and cheesy when they come out. I'm telling you, baked garlic is simply divine.



Anyway, whilst they are being made you can get the rest of the stuff ready. Lets go for the sauce first. Its simple enough. Take a large sauce pan and heat up a little olive oil and some butter. Add in the garlic and let it sauté for a bit.



Bring it to medium heat. Add in the milk ,cream cheese, cream, and cheddar and stir till it becomes a nice smooth mixture.



The more you stir it around the smoother it will get. You really don't want any lumps of cheese in it. Add in the salt and black pepper to taste.



Keep it on the side and lets make the spinach.
Clean the spinach leaves, break off the stems.



We are going to blanch the spinach to preserve the taste. Keep the spinach ready in a strainer and put another pot of water to boil.



When the water comes to boil, put the strainer with the spinach into the pot. The boiling water should come through the pores in the strainer and submerge the spinach. Cook it for two minutes. The leaves should wilt, but they shouldn't lose their colour.
Once they are cooked immediately either submerge them in cold water, or put them under a tap to cool down. Spinach cooks even when removed from heat and thus you want to cool it down to stop the cooking process.



Squeeze out all the liquid you can by pressing the spinach. Take the leaves and shred/cut them.
Now in a sauce pan heat up the olive oil and sauté the diced onion. Once the onions caramelize add in the spinach leaves and stir them around a little bit. Now spoon in the cream cheese sauce that we have made and mix it all together. Let it cook for about a minute.



Last of all, lets make the mushrooms. This is really simple. Just add some olive oil to a pan and heat up some garlic and red chilli in it(This always makes me sneeze). Add in the cleaned mushrooms, cover and let it cook for 2-3 minutes. Do not stir the mushrooms around yet.
Once you see the mushrooms caramelizing at the bottom where they are touching the pan, you can start stirring them. Recover them and let it cook for another couple of minutes.
By now they should have reduced in size. Add in lemon juice and chilli garlic paste and stir them around for a bit so it coats the outside of the mushrooms evenly.



Now just put everything together on a plate, garnish it with the sauce, and ENJOY!!!!

Recipe: Hasselback Potatoes

This is going to be a very short post. Thats because I did not really make anything original here, but combined a few recipes and it came out wonderful.

It was late saturday night, and I had a last minute cancellation of dinner plans. Now at 8 o clock I was left considering either making Maggi or having a Pizza. However both those options really did not gel with my pride as a food blogger. As I sat hungry and contemplating as to what to make with the meager ingredients available I remembered The Purple Foodie's recipe for Hasselback potatoes.

I decided to combine it with Garlic Mushrooms (similar to what I added on my hashbrowns) and a Caesar's dressing. Sprinkled some coriander on it as a garnish to finish it off.



Ok, so whilst the potatoes did not turn out as good looking as The Purple Foodie's (gotta ask her for some tips on this) the taste was delicious. For a last minute meal with basic ingredients (under an hour from the time I decided to make it, till the time I took my first bite), it was delicious.

I guess it goes to show, you don't need large amounts of time and prep to make good food.

Recipe: Hashbrowns with Garlic Mushrooms

Who doesn't like hash browns? They are a perfect breakfast fried potato treat. They are incredibly simple and quick to make. Have I mentioned they are absolutely yummy? I've seen a lot of recipes for them with some interesting variations that I think I will try at some point of time or the other. However I did have half a box of button mushrooms in the fridge and hence decided to make hash browns with a topping of garlic mushrooms.

Requirements for a serving of about 5 pieces:

Hash Browns:

5-6 Potatos. (about 750 gms I think)
1 small onion finely chopped (optional)
3-4 table spoons of flour. (You can also use an egg).
2 tablespoons of butter
Olive oil (1/4 cup)
Salt-pepper to taste

Garlic Mushrooms

8-10 Button mushrooms. (depends on the size)
1/2 table spoon of garlic paste.
1/2 Jalapeno (3-4 slices of a picked Jalapeno)
1 tablespoon of lime juice.
1 tablespoon of butter
2-3 fresh basil leaves
Oregano (fresh leaves preferred)
2 table spoons of Olive Oil.

Lets COOK!!!!!

Skin the potatos out first.



Grate them out. You can decide if you want small or long pieces depending on what final shape you choose for your hashbrowns.



Put the potatos in water for a good 10 minutes. They should be completely submerged. Cover the bowl and set away to the side. By the time they finish soaking, we can make our mushrooms.

Cut up the button mushrooms into flat thin slices. Lightly sprinkle some olive oil on them and mix them together.



To add a little spice, i'm adding my favourite peppers. Jalapenos. Unluckily I did not have fresh Jalapenos with me. However we always keep a jar of sliced pickled jalapenos, so I made do with those.



Grate the Jalapenos into a fine near-paste consistency.



Now heat the olive oil in a pan. Mix in the butter. When it heats up you can add in the Garlic paste, Mushrooms and grated Jalapenos.



Stir and flip over the mushrooms consistently.Pour in the Lime juice. Add in some diced basil, Oregano, salt, and black pepper for taste. You can take it off heat in about 4-5 minutes.



Take the grated potatos out of the bowl of water. Now, the drier you can get these potatos, and the more water you can get out of them, the crisper the hashbrowns will be. I first squeezed them over a perforated plate, and to get the final moister out, squeezed them between paper towels.
Mix in the diced onions and the flour. The flour is used to hold the potatos together whilst they are frying. Add in some salt and pepper to taste.
You want to now make a patty that is about 6-12 mm thick. I decided to try and see how it went when they were left under 6 mm thick, since I wanted them really crisp. A simple steel bowl was used to mould them into the required shape.



Heat up the oil and butter in a saucepan. When they start to heat up, you can add the patties gently into the pan. Fry each side for a good 3-4 minutes till they are a nice golden brown.



Im not the biggest fan of overly oily food. So the minute these were done, I popped them onto a set of paper towels. This drains away a lot of the oil leaving just a crisp patty.




And we are ready. Spoon on the garlic mushrooms. I grated a little cheddar cheese on top just as a garnish. They turned out beautifully crisp and the garlic buttery mushrooms add a savoury flavour that makes a perfect start to the day.