Hellishly Spicy Potatoes

I don’t remember writing here about the hottest dish I ate in China, although it’s entirely possible that I did (and if I did, I probably also mentioned that this was the only time I was seriously cheated out of money, given change in banknotes printed on someone’s home Oki or some other printer ;). You’ll be surprised, but it was potatoes. Little potatoes with lightly browned skins that had a strange reddish tinge.

It was on my first trip to China, sometime around 1999, when you could still sail through the Three Gorges of the Yangtze in their, let’s say, original form (meaning before the great dam was built).

Yesterday I suddenly fancied potatoes like those, and the craving was strong enough that, having run out of harissa, I made a special trip to the shop to look for some. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any. So I bought sambal oelek, and although it isn’t quite a 100% substitute for harissa, it works for spicy potatoes just as well as… any hot chilli paste.

They turned out more hellish than merely hot, and I only recommend them if you have a serious craving for a spicy side dish. Or perhaps if you’re going to wash them down with something decent, especially at the weekend. They certainly take me back to my student days, when we used to go for a kebab after every party (a big night out, or whatever we’re calling it these days).

I studied in Kraków, and that was quite a while ago, but the kebabs back then weren’t the sort of shit most of them are now. The quality really was completely different. Above all, you could taste something besides the sauce (meat, eh?), whether you chose mild, medium or hot. But to get back to the point, namely the potatoes in this recipe, there was one occasion, truly just one, when eating what was then Kraków’s best kebab, from the stall on Plac Wszystkich Świętych, caused me serious pain.

It was after a „wild night out” (possibly even a whole weekend), when, in response to „hot?” (they knew me pretty well by then and knew I always ordered hot), I said „f…ing hot” (I’ve no idea who I was trying to impress; it was that long ago ;). And honestly, these potatoes are pretty much in the same league. Recommended.

Recipe at a glance:

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Baking time: 15 minutes

Baking temperature: 250 degrees Celsius

Serves: make however many potatoes you want; I managed to eat 4 small ones

Calories: burns off every calorie, even the ones you’ve already burned

Ingredients for very spicy potatoes:

• a few small potatoes, peeled
• 2 teaspoons sambal oelek (an Indonesian chilli paste); harissa works too
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• half a teaspoon ground black pepper
• salt

How to make spicy potatoes:

I peeled the potatoes and boiled them for exactly 15 minutes in lightly salted water. Then I drained them and set them aside to cool.

In a medium bowl, I made the hellishly hot paste for the potatoes: two teaspoons of hot sambal oelek chilli paste (I originally wanted harissa, but since I’d run out, I used its Indonesian substitute (although they don’t taste quite the same), a tablespoon of olive oil, half a teaspoon of ground black pepper and a pinch of salt.

I preheated the oven to 250 degrees Celsius.

I coated the cooled potatoes in the paste I’d made earlier and baked them on aluminium foil in the oven for about 15 minutes. Done. It’s hellishly hot, but as always, enjoy 🙂