Day 3: Boiled Potatoes with Tahini - March 20, 2013

Boiled potatoes sound rather plain, and many people may choose other ways to prepare potatoes.  On Clean Monday, we boiled some potatoes with herbs and seasonings, and they were flavourful, but less enticing than many of the more seasoned foods on the table.  Today, we found a nice way to prepare boiled potatoes with flavour that may be more appetizing than just plain boiled potatoes.

The Greek Monastery Cookbook (by Archimandrite Dositheos) is a good one for Great Lent because the Monks specify recipes for oiless fasts, fasts with oil and wine as well as for non-fasting periods.  This recipe is for a strict fast, with no oil or wine.  This book presents uses for tahini in more ways than we would have originally thought.  A challenge in this cookbook, though, is that we don't always understand the directions.  This recipe, thankfully, was clear and simple, and took us less than one hour to make. This potato-based side dish was easy, and we had all the ingredients on hand, so that added to the appeal of the recipe.  We did not have ten people to serve today, so we cut the recipe in half.  We are giving you the amounts needed to serve 5 people.

For this Boiled Potatoes with Tahini recipe, you will need the following:

1 pound potatoes (about 500 g)

2 soup spoons of tahini

some parsley (about 1/2 cup) chopped

juice of 1 1/2 lemons

1 medium onion, finely chopped

salt, as needed

First, boil the potatoes in salted water.  This did not take too long (it depends on the size of the potatoes).  If you like, the cookbook suggests this:  "Note: Instead of boiling, you may bake potatoes for an hour, in an oven at 200 ℃ (392 °F)"

To check the doneness of the potato, and to make sure that it is cooked in the middle, stick a fork or a knife in the middle and watch the potato slide off the fork (or knife).  If the potato does not slide off by itself (without you shaking the fork) then it is not quite done.  Check for doneness every five minutes thereafter. 

Peeling the potato was easy.  The skin is quite soft and you can just scrape it off with a knife -- either the dull side or the sharp side.  The peel even comes off  by rubbing it with your fingers.

Make sure to get all the spots off the potato!

Peel and cut the potatoes into pieces.  Allow the potatoes to cool enough for you to be able to handle them.  For every person, this amount of time will vary, but you do want them still warm when you mix them together with the other ingredients.  We cut these into large cubes, the same size that we would use for any potato salad dish.  You can cut them large or small, but the larger the pieces, the prettier they look with the chopped onions.

Spoonfuls of tahini.  This is a soup spoon, just like the book said.  Please note that on page 6 of this book there is a pretty useful conversion chart (however, a shortcoming is the confusion of using terms such as "1 tablespoon = 15 ml" while not explaining in detail if a soup spoon is exactly the same thing as a tablespoon.).

Adding the lemon juice a little at a time was helpful.  That way we could taste to determine if there was enough lemon juice with the tahini.  We wanted to taste a hint of lemon without overpowering the tahini.  We thought the one and a half lemons was just shy of what we thought as "just right", so we decided to use the juice of two whole lemons.

The tahini changes consistency as you add the lemon juice.  You will see it become lighter in colour and thicker; then it will just get lighter in colour and thinner with many air bubbles (see photo below).

Prepare the tahini as follows:  Beat the tahini with the lemon juice until it thickens.  Then, dilute slowly with hot water until it becomes a diluted sauce.  We beat the tahini and slowly added the lemon juice.  We thought that when the tahini and lemon became fluffy with air bubbles, and it was very thick - that would be enough for the mixing.  But, then, we added the water, and the sauce took on the consistency of squeeze-bottle mustard -- just thin enough to stir.  

Add the onions and some salt.  Combine the ingredients so all the onions are fully coated with the sauce.  This is the sauce that will go on the potatoes.

Pour the sauce over the potatoes.  Mix well to ensure that all the potatoes are fully coated.  Then, add the parsley and mix again.  We found that using a rubber spatula and folding the sauce with the potatoes, and then folding the parsley into the mix separately worked well, so we did not smash the potatoes.  We chose yellow fleshed potatoes, which, when cooked become creamy and velvety in texture.  They are fragile when cooked, so we wanted to make sure to leave the chunks intact.  Mix well and finally serve.  One of the suggestions of the original recipe is to sprinkle mortar-pounded walnuts.  We did not like the idea of the walnuts with the potatoes, so we voted against nuts, even though they would look beautiful on top.

Serve potatoes either warm or cold.  Our personal preference was to have the potatoes warm.  When it was cold, it was admitedly good, but it was not as good as when it was warm.  We loved the creaminess of the sauce with the creaminess of the potatoes.  This recipe was an absolute winner in our family.  It's funny; we trust monks for many things, and now we are more certain that we can trust them for cooking recommendations also!

This potato recipe was great.  It was relatively clear, concise, and appropriate for a strict fast.  The flavours and textures were a nice complement to the steamed vegetables we had.  And, the bright green of the parsley with the white of the tahini and the gold of the potatoes really made for a beautiful presentation.  As we ate the potatoes, we did not feel like it needed any more lemon, but some of us would have preferred it with a little more salt.  We all agreed that if we put this potato dish in the food processor with a little garlic, that would make some great skordalia!  Who knows, maybe we can create a new recipe?