Bill Granger’s Potatoes with Onion and Pancetta
I’ve just cooked Bill Granger’s Potatoes with Onion and Pancetta from his latest book Holiday. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly as it called for onions cut in wedges, but the only onions I had were frozen ready chopped, I also didn’t have the finishing touch of parsley but the recipe even it’s basic form is absolutely delicious.
It’s basically finely sliced new potatoes, pancetta and onion (I used my frozen stuff) fried in butter and olive oil in a frying pan, the first 20 minutes gently under a lid and the final 20 minutes with a slightly fiercer heat without the lid on to get a delicious golden colour. So as you can see it isn’t the quickest of dishes (with me the absolute maximum preparation and cooking time has to be half an hour) but I had the chance to spend a little longer in the kitchen today as we’ve been waiting in for a parcel and oh it was worth the extra time (I was about to say extra effort but it wasn’t really).
Cooking something new for the kids is always a risky business, as they’re highly suspicious of new stuff, so I tempered the arrival of this new dish with a side order of rice cake, which they both like, however they both dived into the potatoes, even Boy Lacer who’s normally highly suspicious of any potato not in the form of a chip, crisp or waffle, so I was shocked to see him grab an immediate handful of the potato, bypassing the beloved rice cake and even going “mmmm” in appreciation! Ok now I know fried potatoes, onion and bacon arn’t the healthiest of things, but this recipe makes delicious winter comfort food and has had the added bonus of getting my kids to try something new, even getting Girl Lacer interested in how I had cooked it, so all in all definitely something I’ll be cooking again!
