Potatoes, Peasant Style

Potatoes, Peasant Style

    First things first.  I cannot for the life of me figure how this recipe got to be named "Potatoes, Peasant Style".  What I can tell you, is that this recipe is in the 1929 cookbook New Delineator Recipes. I googled "New Delineator Cookbook" and found an article by Linda Albert in The Daily Times from 05/14/2014. Ms. Albert is also interested in old books. She had been handed a copy which a colleague of hers had found in a free bin of books at a used book store in Knoxville.  I wanted to try and add a link to her article in case anyone would be interested in reading it, but I am not sure if that would be allowed.  So, just Google "New Delineator Cookbook" as I did, you will find it.  I actually did attempt emailing Ms. Albert at the email address listed in the article, but it was no longer valid.  I had figured it was a long shot, so I wasn't surprised.  (A little bit about The Delineator.  This was an American magazine for women which was around in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The magazine was produced by the Butterick Publishing Company. You can find more detail in Ms. Albert's article. Anyhow, I enjoyed the article and wanted you to know about it as well.)  

    So, it seems that I like picking recipes with "unusual", "funky", or "different" names and that trend continues with the "Potatoes, Peasant Style". The directions are to dice your potatoes, after washing and peeling them, fry them in the bacon grease until brown and remove from the pan. After removing the potatoes from the pan, you add the chopped garlic and parsley.  Cook the garlic and parsley in the fat , then add the flour, seasonings and milk and cook until thickened (the directions say that will be about 5 minutes). Add the potatoes to the sauce, stir to coat the potatoes while they re-heat and ta-da, you're done! 

    I prepped everything so it was ready when I came back from an outing with my Little Brother (I mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters). I measured the flour, paprika, salt and pepper and set that aside in a mini prep-cup. The recipe calls for parsley. I used dried parsley flakes (another mini prep-cup) and that worked out just fine. I cooked up bacon, so I'd have fresh bacon grease to fry the potatoes in. The recipe calls for 6 tbsp of bacon grease to fry the potatoes in. I didn't come up with 6 tbsp of grease, so I used 2 tbsp of vegetable shortening. Don't have bacon grease or you're a vegetarian? Use all vegetable shortening. 

    When I returned from my outing with my Little Brother, I diced up the potato and garlic, while melting the bacon grease and shortening. The recipe calls for three cups diced potato and that ended up being about 1 1/2 medium potatoes. I heated the grease while dicing the potatoes and then followed the directions as above. One thing I like to do when thickening a sauce, is to heat the milk before adding to my pan. It helps the sauce thicken quicker. When the dish was ready, I served myself a side of the potatoes with a chicken thigh and a bit of mashed sweet potato. 

    I really, liked this recipe. Would I make this again? 100%, yes!!!! Like garlic?  Use more than 2 cloves. Like Paprika? Do the same; add extra paprika. Options could be adding diced ham or crumbled bacon. Make this recipe and tell me how you like it.