I'm getting blog post notifications in weird ways. Some seem to be giving me the notices of new posts then older, then some blogs seem to be missing, and then sometimes I get a whole list of the posts for the last three months all in one chunk. My comments may be patchy.
I do not need 500 potato recipes. I'm fine making mash and wedges, and I usually prefer pasta. But here we are. It's what happens when I have unsupervised access to Temu. It came from a firm in this country, Smeikal Books, who are selling through Temu as well as Amazon and eBay, and I saved 31p buying it from Temu instead of the company direct, at a grand total of £5.68 including postage.
As an aside, I just made a mistake where I absolutely should know better. I checked out the website of Smeikal Books and it looks like a source of inexpensive books, which I do not need!
So now I have a book with 500 potato recipes, a preference for pasta, and an unfortunate urge to try out the recipes. I mean, 500 potato recipes? There's got to be something special in there. I opened the book at random.
The first recipe I saw was Beef and Sweet Potato Stew - that sounded good, and I looked further. I don't think that I'll be making it, though, as it's not just beef and sweet potato. The ingredients list is:
1 large pumpkin around 5kg or 11lb
4 tablespoons of olive oil
1kg of braising steak, cubed
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 fresh red chillies, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 large tomato, roughly chopped
2 fresh bay leaves (and I have no idea where I'm going to get those as I don't grow them)
1 pint of beef stock
one half bottle of red wine
500g of potatoes, peeled and cubed
500g of sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 corn cob cut widthways into 6 pieces (and I'm not sure about how that would work)
3 peaches, peeled, stoned, and cut into wedges
salt and ground black pepper.
It's supposed to serve 8, and that's not a bad stretch of the meat, but two unlucky souls won't get a slice of the corn on the cob.
And what the hecking heck are peaches doing in the recipe?
You are supposed to serve it in the baked shell of the pumpkin. I think that I'll pass. I'm not ready for any recipe that involves an eleven pound pumpkin. I looked further, and there's a recipe which mashes cooked potato with apples cooked with a couple of cloves, which is served with fried blood sausage and onion rings which sounds more plausible, though I may use 'normal' sausages or perhaps chorizo.
I am absolutely old enough to know better than to get too attached to a book like this, and it's absolutely the wrong time of year for main crop potatoes. I'll share when I cook something from it.
Hugs and good health to all.
Lol. I'm fooled more than I want to say!
ReplyDeleteMy blog post notifications are all over the place. I have the thingy set up for the latest posts but they aren't. I've taken to clicking on them all to see whether someone has posted something new or not.
My timings are all over the place on the reading list. Like you, I've started to click on blogs just to see if anything has turned up.
DeleteI don't want to even think about what I buy on impulse.
Sounds like dreaded AI at it again!
ReplyDeleteIt has an author this time, but it does seem thrown together with a search engine. I've not read it deeply, but there are a lot of 'grate potatoes then fry them' recipes with little variation but under different regional names.
DeleteI shall read with caution.
Well, that looks fun. It's not so much 500 potato recipes as 500 recipes which may have potato as one of the many ingredients. Does it cover sweet potatoes, too? I really like potatoes . . .
ReplyDeleteI've been dipping in but not read it properly. It has sweet potatoes in, but it seems to have been something of a 'google loads of stuff then dump it into a book' and there's a suspicious number of 'grate potatoes and fry them recipes under a regional names, but there may be a gem in there.
DeleteI'm chuckling at your 500 potato recipes book. I could do with a five hundred courgette recipe book just now.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I have to laugh too. I prefer pasta!
DeleteThat looks like it could be a fun recipe book. I love to read recipes, although I usually modify any recipe to suit my tastes and what ingredients I have on hand. For example, I might omit the pumpkin and the red wine from this recipe and maybe add another ear or two of corn!
ReplyDeleteI would lose the peaches, the pumpkin, the wine and add a lot more corn. And when I think about it, that's not a bad dish... Thank you.
DeleteI've found that recipes fail if I follow them exactly, but when I add my own tweak, they turn out fine.