Grandma’s Upwasachi Bhaji

Potato sabzi is quite a common dish in india and consists of boiled potato’s tempered with mustard seeds, turmeric, asafoetida and other spices like green chili/red chili powder/whole red chili and ginger/garlic, urad dal etc depending upon the household. This came into rotation every other day in our household as a different avatar as potato’s were easily available and well liked by most. For most these days i didn’t care much for this as i would get bored of it from repetition.

But come the day of fasting the rules of the game were changed. Food prepared during fasting days (which werent really about no food) had constraints on what could be used. So oil was out but ghee was in. Heeng, turmeric were out and so was mustard and chili powder. But cumin and green chilies were in. Potatos survived the cut too. My grandma would then make the same potato sabzi for upwas/vrat/fast with ghee based tempering of cumin and green chilies finished with a dash of roasted crushed peanuts. This event would happen every once in a while, and this potato sabzi was dear to my heart. I would relish it and eat it gleefully and fasting day would become a celebratory occasion for me. The flavor of roasted cumin in ghee with fresh green chilies is what has always stayed with me since. It is an excellent combination to bring forth anytime you need a variation from the daily grind.

Thomas Keller’s Potato Pave

We love the french laundry cookbook. In its class of cookbooks it is still one of the first that really set the bar. We have been following Chef Thomas Keller since and came across one of his Potato Pave recipes. It was his alternative to scalloped potato’s. When we ran into delicious German butterball potato’s at farmers market we wanted to try making the pave again.

Pave is made by peeling the potatoes and then slicing them very thin on a mandolin. As they drop from the mandolin slicer collect them in some milk with salt so that they don’t oxidize. I believe it also washes a little bit of the starch away.

Then layer the slices in a butter paper lined tall edged pan overlapping each other slightly.

After every layer brush with some ghee and continue layering.

You should get layered height that is fairly tall up the edge of the pan. Once done add a cardboard cutout covered in foil to fit the top snugly and weigh it down with canned beans or beans in a ziplock bag evenly.

Refrigerate Overnight. You can then remove the foiled cardboard and cover the pan with foil and bake them in the oven till they are cooked through. Then you can flip the potatoes out of the pan using the sides of the butter-paper.

These can then be cut into pieces or cubes that can be pan fried. The many layers of potatoes look gorgeous.

Making the jeera hari mirch potato’s

We happened to have some Japanese Shishito peppers growing in Meg’s garden. We chopped them and added cumin and peppers to the hot ghee in a pan. Once they were cooked we removed them and also added some serrano/thai chilies as shishito peppers do not carry much heat. This flavors the ghee with cumin and green chilies.

We took the flavored ghee out, added some more and on low to medium heat gently cooked the potato cubes getting them to a perfect golden brown color cooking them patiently on each of their 6 sides, basting them with the ghee in the pan.

At the end we add back the cumin and green chilies and toss around in the pan. To plate we arrange the potatoes. Then drizzle with the flavored hot ghee if remaining. We garnished with chopped roasted peanuts and some micro cilantro.

This became a delicious looking fork-worthy snack. A small portion is good since it is all mostly potatoes and this can become an interesting appetizer for.