A Puddle of Mud

I attempted to make the Baked French Potatoes (p 224) if you can find it. Jamie’s book has an annoying style in which tens of pages in a row do not have numbers on them. The section with this recipe goes for nineteen unnumbered pages. What the point is to lack of pagination, I have no idea—maybe a little extra proof in the tea on proof day. Bottoms up!

So I made the French Potatoes, but they didn’t turn out like they were supposed to turn out but thankfully, we had a whole bunch of other stuff to nibble on. . . . We were nibbling. That was basically what dinner was a bunch of nibble foods (Sometimes me wife and I will only order appetizers for dinner--you get so many different tastes--go ahead try it), and the potatoes were going to be a hot side dish to some cheeses and meats and veggies and wine and beer and good times with some friends (Carol, Vince, Dawn, John, Grandma Theresa, Erin) that we invited for an impromptu meal. Me wife suggested that I make something from the book and pass on the recipe. Well, we passed on it alright and stuck to the nibblies. (I’m ignoring spell check and sticking with nibblies.)

At first I didn’t know what baking dish to use. I couldn’t quite see what size was in the picture and it only says large—quite vague. Then I didn’t know how much onion or potato I should cut. It would be nice to get a ballpark figure on the measurements of 1 and 3/4 pounds of potatoes and one pound of onions. I do not have a little scale for food and to make another purchase for another kitchen gadget really adds up and isn’t this supposed to be easy. Huh Jamie? Isn’t this thing supposed to make non-cooks screaming mad, loony tunes, bonkers about the culinary arts. I ended up with way too many potatoes and not enough onion. I eyeballed it and was totally wrong.

Well, in addition to my lack of measurement skills, one problem I realized after it was over was that when I poured the broth in the dish to ‘just cover the top of the potatoes”, they began to float, so I had way too much broth and I didn’t even come close to using all the broth and so I wondered again if the dish was the right one. Maybe the distractions of conviviality and cork popping took away from my studied effort.

In the end, it all came out wet and bland and no one ate any, and Joe wouldn’t even try it because he is anti-onion at the moment, but I thought that I might make it a mash or a soup and that is what you see in the picture, not the nice golden brown scallop type rounds. . . . Yeah, I whipped it up and ended up with a puddle of mud.

P.S. The book calls for poundsof potatoes. . . . Must have been more proof in the tea than I thought.