Hasselback Potatoes.

June 2015, my entire family went for a holiday to Grindelwald – Switzerland. Age group – 3 years to 65 years. You can well imagine the pandemonium!!

Luckily the apartment we had hired had huge cooking utensils, a kick-ass oven and some other fantastic gadgets.My sister woke up early, every morning, to cook breakfast for all of us. We would all get out of bed, and sleepy-eyed make our way to the kitchen, heap our plates with whatever dish she had prepared, fill up our tea mugs, and sit outside eating our breakfast and inhale the scenic beauty of sublime Switzerland.

One day the elder of the kids decided to cook us parents and their grandparents a luncheon. They had new potatoes in their repertoire of ingredients, and though we were told to stay out of it, I mildly suggested that they make Hasselback Potatoes.

Soon pots and pans were banging in the kitchen amongst loud voices, instructions and trembling music.

I need to go off track here. (The history behind my fascination for Hasselback Potatoes!)

We had been kindly invited to a party by a friend, who has a lethal ethnic background, and leanings from Germany in his extremely artful cooking skills. He had made these potatoes. Even the worst carnivore in our group, attacked these Hasselback Potatoes, as they came out, hot and crisp from the oven, the aroma of rosemary and cooking potatoes with garlic, filling the room.

They were tender in the centre, crisp and mildly charred on the first bite. The flavour of rosemary just tickled the senses, instead of overpowering the entire dish. Every piece that touched our tongue, evoked some sort of long forgotten memory. Later, when all of us spoke about the potatoes, we all realised we had some sort of childhood memory revived, yet none of us had ever tasted it before. To date, we still talk about his potatoes, when we meet up.

Going back to the elder babies – they made a mean dish. The melee of dishes also had a kick ass pasta, fresh salad with honey vinaigrette dressing and salsa with garlic bread.

Hasselback Potatoes

Print Recipe

Soft and tender on the inside, charred and crisp on the outside. Tiring and messy, but Oh! so worth it.

• CourseSides
• CuisineFusion

Servings	Prep Time
6 people	45 min

Cook Time	Passive Time
1 hour	45 min

Servings Prep Time 6 people 45 min

Cook Time Passive Time 1 hour 45 min

Hasselback Potatoes Print Recipe Soft and tender on the inside, charred and crisp on the outside. Tiring and messy, but Oh! so worth it. CourseSides CuisineFusion Servings Prep Time 6 people 45 min Cook Time Passive Time 1 hour 45 min Servings Prep Time 6 people 45 min Cook Time Passive Time 1 hour 45 min

Ingredients

• 500 gm new potatoes
• 175 ml olive oil
• 100 gm garlic finely chopped
• 7 - 10 sprigs fresh rosemary
• 1/4 C parsley finely chopped
• 1 Tbspn salt
• 2 Tbspn pepper
• chilli flakes

Equipment and other requirements

• oven preheated at 175 Deg C
• bake dish Large enough to accommodate the potatoes side by side.
• aluminium foil sized to cover the bake dish completely.

Servings: people

Instructions

Prepping the potatoes.

1. If the potatoes are medium sized, slice them into half horizontally. If they are small start the prepping right away.
2. Wash potatoes in running water. Start slicing from one end. Slice all the way in, but not enough to slice so deep that it separates from the potatoe.

   
3. Take each potato in the hand and fan out the slices a bit. Be careful to not break them. Having said that, if a few pieces do come out of the potato they can be also added to the main dish.

Olive Oil Mix

1. Mix the salt, pepper, garlic, chilli flakes, and parsley into the olive oil. Taste for salt. Optionally you can also add 1/3 rd of the parmesan into this mixture. I do it sometimes. Other times I add it directly in the later step.

Final Dish

1. Now take each potato and scoop them into the dish with the oil. Try and scoop up as much of the garlic and parsley as you can. Manually fan the slices and fill them with a some of the olive oil mixture. Push in a few pieces of garlic here and there into some slices.
2. When all the potatoes are scooped and filled with the olive oil mixture, set them side by side on the baked dish. Pour all the left over oil on the potatoes in the dish. Pick up the rosemary sprigs and place them on the potatoes. More than one potato can share a sprig of rosemary. If need be cut the sprigs into half or three pieces, but do not chop fine.

   
3. This step should take approximately 1 hour. Each oven has its own tantrums. Please keep a watch on the potatoes. After approximately 45 min to an hour, lift the foil and check the potatoes with a fork. The prongs should sink in easily.
4. Lift the foil. Crank up the oven to 250Deg C.
5. Take the dish out and sprinkle all (or the left over) parmesan cheese over the potatoes. Set it back in the oven.
6. When the potatoes start curling and wrinkling, and look a bit charred at the edges, you can take them out of the oven. At this point if you desire crisper potatoes, bake them for a little longer, but do keep an eye on them. They can go from mildly charred to burnt in a matter of minutes.
7. Scoop out all the potatoes in a serving dish. Drip all the oil from the bake dish over the potatoes. Replace the fallen (and now toasted) rosemary leaves on the potato.
8. Serve hot.

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On behalf of the group that went to Switzerland, we hope you enjoy these Hasselback Potatoes.

Here is the link to the travel blog I have written for Switzerland.