Lori’s Smashed Skillet Potatoes – 101 Cookbooks

These smashed skillet potatoes were inspired by a weekend get-absent to the backwoods of Mendocino County, California. Permit me emphasize that when I say backwoods, I’m not kidding. Visualize – a couple miles off the closest paved highway where by a large-clearance 4×4 is a necessity. Earlier many cleverly-rigged hydroponic hippie buses (this is clearly where old buses go to die). Past a pack of car-chasing, fang-toothed guard puppies, and inevitably down into the riverside sanctuary that is my good friend Lori Narlock’s cabin.

Right before I get into the details of our weekend, I’ll just say (feeling extra than a bit guilty), I barely lifted a finger all weekend – Lori cooked for our cabin of six girls, food soon after scrumptious meal. Nowadays I’m heading to element her smashed skillet potato recipe. 1st, simply because they ended up delightful. Next, to demonstrate how equal section thoughtfulness, experience, and prep operate can culminate in delicious foods, even under rustic circumstances.

How rustic you might talk to? As I was packing this was exactly the dilemma I held asking myself as effectively. I had a handful of clues based on the flurry of pre-vacation e-mail – which includes snippets of data like this:

“The cabin is pretty rustic. There are two bedrooms with 1 mattress every and then two-solitary beds in the living area….There is no real electric power. We largely go through, enjoy scrabble, consume copious amounts of beer and wine and gab by day and lantern.”

And then:

“Make sure you bring clogs or other slip on sneakers for employing at evening if you will need to
get up and use the loo–there have been a number of creepy crawlers display up every now and then.”

I later on located out that creepy crawlers=scorpions. Lori’s sister Lisa also chimed in with the pursuing:

“Let me make sure you add that this is not a “Tahoe” cabin, and any slippers or these kinds of that you dress in all around the cabin may well extremely perfectly get filthy – so I would depart your preferred white slippers at residence.”

So, if your creativity is prone to run amuck like mine does – I was making ready for a weekend in the rain, in a shack (moon through the slats in the roof, spiders by way of the gaps in the floorboard), huddled by a stove in a Kaczynski-model shelter. One thing along the strains of an overgrown outhouse. I was fully up for it. I suggest, there was no tent included, so this was likely to be an upgrade for me any way you look at it. You can envision my shock (and delight!) when I walked into this….

The cabin sits on a enormous plot of land owned for generations now by the Narlock family members. The cabin was constructed by hand, and an incredible total of appreciate has long gone into it. Photos of the household line the partitions, as well as artifacts various family members have contributed. It can be the type of place you might be instantly cozy – entire with wooden-burning fire, the seem of the river in the backdrop – and the stove! Can you believe that the gorgeous stove?

Lori place this relatives treasure to excellent use more than the training course of the weekend, but before I get into that, permit me back up a little bit and say – it truly is fantastic to have a host who also occurs to be a meals writer. I’m guaranteed many of you are common with Lori’s do the job on publications like The Food items Lover’s Companion to the Napa Valley, The Wine Lover’s Information to the Wine State, Smoothies, The Niman Ranch Cookbook , and Cocktail Meals. She’s wonderful and proficient on every entrance. Seeing the way she pulled with each other foods for us in the cabin (no electrical energy, drinking water that can take an hour to boil) was intriguing – and it gave me all kinds of cooking/prep ideas for long term “rustic/camping outings”….in component mainly because she was so smart about how and what she prepped in advance of she even got to the cabin.

The Smashed Skillet Potatoes

Lori’s meals ended up coming jointly with hardly a bead of sweat from her brow (or at the very least she manufactured it search that way). So I began asking her about some of her tips for cooking at the cabin. The skillet smashed potatoes ended up a great example. She pre-boiled the potatoes and introduced them that way – In the early morning, just prior to breakfast she smashed them into a massive skillet with some olive oil and salt – in a handful of minutes they were crispy and brown on the outside the house, sizzling on the inside of, and the excellent complement to the frittata she threw collectively.

I also have to point out the pasta she designed for dinner later that night – outrageous quantities of garlic (in a excellent way), tons of shredded zucchini, and grated cheese. She’d boiled off the noodles the night time right before we obtained the cabin. Do you know how numerous moments I’ve struggled boiling noodles about a camp stove? SO numerous. Her pasta was delectable – the noodles weren’t mushy or sticky at all. Lori experienced all types of fantastic shortcuts like this that never compromised the finish dish.

So, here’s how she created her smashed skillet potatoes. Visualize all the factors you could drizzle or sprinkle on them. Many thanks for the recipe and the fantastic weekend Lori! I will rest with the scorpions any time…