Patatas Bravas Spanish Potatoes by Maya Corrigan #Recipe

 

When my daughter visited last week, she made patatas bravas, which she’d eaten often while studying and traveling in Spain. This dish appears on the menu in most restaurants that serve tapas, Spanish snacks similar in size to our appetizers. Tapas are usually served between the midday meal and the late dinner that most Spaniards eat--with a starting time as late as 10 pm.

Patatas bravas (literal translation: spicy potatoes) is a national dish with regional variations. The spiciness comes from the sauce added when the potatoes are served. Traditionally, patatas bravas come with a sauce of paprika and olive oil, with tomato sauce sometimes added. Garlic aioli is also common on the potatoes, providing a creamy, mellow taste to balance the spice. In the U.S. you can buy both the bravas sauce and the aioli in supermarkets, in Walmart, and on Amazon. The potatoes are yummy enough for me without the sauces. 

Today I’m sharing the recipe my daughter jotted down as she prepared the potatoes. The ingredient list contains no quantities because you can make however many potatoes you need to feed a few or a crowd. The photos show potatoes for three as a side dish. With so few potatoes to fry, my daughter was able to use a small but deep saucepan for the oil.

Ingredients

Potatoes, peeled if they are large or tough-skinned, unpeeled for thin-skinned, smaller potatoes

Enough oil to deep fry the potato pieces

Salt and paprika to taste, either smoked or regular paprika 

Cut the potatoes into bite-size pieces, approximately one inch on a side.

Boil the potatoes the for five minutes. Drain, pat dry, and allow to cool.

Heat the oil at a medium setting until a thermometer reads 350-375 degrees F. Alternately, you can tell the oil is the right temperature to deep fry by inserting the handle of a wooden spoon. If bubbles form around the handle and start to float up, it's hot enough. But if the oil is bubbling a lot, it's probably too hot. Let it cool for a while and test it again. 

Add the potato pieces a few at a time. Don't crowd them in the oil. Fry them until they're golden brown. Remove them carefully and put them on a paper towel to drain. Season them with salt and smoked paprika. Repeat the instructions if you have more potatoes to fry. 

Top with aioli and/or spicy tomato sauce, if desired. The photo below shows the potatoes twith both sauces on a side plate.

I ate the potatoes plain. They were so good that I coaxed my daughter into making them the next night as well. Sadly, that was the last night of her visit before she returned to her teaching job in Mississippi. 

Readers: What's your favorite potato dish?

 

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Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. It features a young cafe manager and her young-at-heart grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website for book news, mystery history and trivia, and easy recipes. Sign up for her newsletter there. She gives away a free book to one subscriber each time she sends out a newsletter. Follow her on Facebook.

A PARFAIT CRIME: Five-Ingredient Mystery #9

Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the latest novel in Maya Corrigan’s Five-Ingredient Mysteries brings back café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a house, a love of food and cooking, and a knack for catching killers.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in Jane’s freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice?

After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa in town—where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler.

Read an excerpt and see where to buy A Parfait Crime.  

Praise for A Parfait Crime

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