Tag Archives: side dish

Warm Chorizo and New Potato Salad

I don’t often make salads. When I do, the leftover ingredients usually go bad in this household of two. Then the guilt eats away at me. Then I vow never to let that happen again. So I steer clear from salads–it’s not that I don’t enjoy eating them, but who wants to be caught in a vicious cycle of wilty greens and guilt?

This salad, however, sunk me as soon as I saw its good-looking’ mug shot on Tasty Kitchen. And since it’s a warm salad, it can count as a main dish for a meal, and thus get consumed faster, before it goes bad and adds itself to my Register of Remorse. It satisfies the typical American man (meat, potatoes) and woman (leafy greens) so that everyone can be happy. It’s so good that we ate it two nights in a row, and then went and made it a third time the next night with a different kind of sausage.

Ingredients

(Serves 4)

1.5 lbs new potatoes or red potatoes
Salt and pepper to taste
15 oz chorizo sausage
1 TBS olive oil
16 oz mixed salad greens
1 lemon
4 poached or fried eggs (1 per person, optional)

Here are the ingredients:

And the eggs are optional, but they come highly recommended. By me.

Wash the potatoes and chop them into bite-sized cubes.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil . . .

. . . and add the potatoes.

Cook them for 10-15 minutes, or until tender when pierced with a fork (but not falling apart!).

In the meantime, chop the sausage into small chunks.

I’ve never dealt with Mexcan chorizo before, and this step was messier than what I bargained for–next time I’ll just put the whole thing in the pan and break it apart as it cooks. The original recipe used Spanish chorizo, which is cured and hard (so it will retain its shape). My grocery store, however, only had this:

It’s delicious, but a completely different animal, and crumbles apart as you cook it. It’s up to you (and the availability of these products) to decide which kind you get.

Heat the olive oil in a cast iron skillet or other large pan over medium heat. When it’s hot, add the sausage . . .

. . . and cook for about 10 minutes, until it’s getting brown and starting to release oil of its own. This was the moment when my fantasy of having the sausage cook in chunks was decimated. Overturned. Debunked.

Oh well. Ground meat it is.

Once the potatoes are cooked, add them to the pan with the sausage and cook it all together for about 10-12 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add a good amount of salt and pepper to taste.

If you’re adding some eggs, this is the time to try or poach them. Sorry, no pictures of this part–just one shot of a lonely egg that was quickly poached in my leftover potato-boiling water.

Wash and prepare the salad greens, piling them on the plates:

Spoon the chorizo and potatoes on top . . .

. . . and finish the salad off with a generous squeeze of lemon.

I’m talking generous–there’s no dressing involved, and the bright lemon juice adds such a great tang to the richness of the meat and potatoes.

Check out my frightening hand. And why is the juice rocketing towards the right?

Anyway, if you chose to make eggs, add one poached or fried egg per plate.

I love my runny yolk.

The greens and lemon are a perfect complement for the heavier, spicier element of the potatoes and chorizo. I think I’m in love.

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Creamed Corn

This Tasty Kitchen recipe (from this blogger) practically jumped off the page at me. As you all know very well, I love anything with heavy cream, and the picture of all those delightful little yellow kernels encased in creaminess was just too much to resist. It only takes about 15 minutes to toss together, with no chopping involved–everything just gets mixed in a pot. And the results . . . oh, man.

I should specify that it only serves 4 if those 4 people eat a ‘normal’ serving and don’t go hog wild like we did. But just to be safe . . . why don’t you go ahead and count on going hog wild.

Ingredients

(Serves 4)

½ cup heavy cream
½ cup milk
½ tsp salt
1 TBS sugar
16 oz frozen corn (sweet white corn if possible)
1 TBS butter
1 TBS flour
1/8 tsp black pepper

Pour the cream and milk into a pot . . .

. . . and add the sugar and salt too.

Bring the mixture to a boil, and add the frozen corn.

Bring it to a boil again, stirring occasionally.

Toss in some black pepper while you’re at it.

As the corn heats up, put the butter in a little bowl . . .

. . . and melt it in the microwave. Stir in the tablespoon of flour . . .

. . . and there you have your thickening paste. As soon as the corn/milk mixture is boiling, add the paste to the pot:

Turn down the heat to medium-low, and cook that corn until thick, stirring frequently. This will happen quickly, in only a few minutes.

Voilà! Now this part is important: taste the corn, and add more salt and pepper as needed. I needed more of both.

Without tasting as I go, I would be a lost soul in my own kitchen.

Dig in violently:

Are you witnessing this creaminess, people?

This is the perfect low-effort side dish that also happens to taste gloriously good.

Or is it the other way around? A gloriously good dish that happens to be low-effort?

I guess that depends on your degree of kitchen dedication. Sometimes, mine can be . . . quite low. Hence the primacy of ‘low-effort’ at this particular moment.

This recipe could easily be doubled (or dare I say tripled?) and brought to a potluck, where it will quickly make your enemies your friends and make your frenemies do the jig. Twice. While standing on their heads.

Though I have yet to figure out what exactly a ‘frenemy’ is.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Creamed Corn