Myra's Lifestyles

Here’s a great game day recipe from Kenny.

See, here’s the thing, some men think if they cook something it somehow will make them less manly. Negative. Learning how to cook makes a man into, well, a better rounded man. With that in mind and the Falcons/Seahawks game starting in less than a couple of hours here is something more advanced than toast or even a sandwich but easier than brewing your own beer. More on that later.

These are big honking potato wedges with a punch of heat and a powerful dip to go along with it. Figure 1 is the ingredients and most of the tools for the wedges and the dip we’ll cover while the taters are baking. This is an indoor recipe so if you’re game is the late game, like mine is today, you can watch one of the early games while you’re making these. It takes about an hour and ten minutes including prep and cleanup so start them at two if your game comes on at four.

Just a note, because I know guys, make sure the kitchen is clean. At my house that means every surface I am going to be working on and every kitchen tool I am going to be using is disinfected with a water and chlorine bleach solution (1 gallon of water and 2 tablespoons of chlorine bleach).

Fig 1: Ingredients and tools for the real men's potato wedges

Ingredients list:

• 4 medium white potatoes
• extra virgin olive oil
• black pepper
• garlic powder
• ground cayenne pepper
• sason completa (complete seasoning)
• 1 egg
• a large mixing bowl (a big pot will work)
• 1 cookie sheet or aluminum foil
• 1 sharp kitchen knife
• a teaspoon
• a sauce brush or clean shop rag
• an oven
• an oven glove
• probably a beer if that’s you style (note: beer goes in the face, not the recipe)

Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees. Make sure you didn’t leave an old pizza still in the box in there. While your oven is pre-heating get ready to go on the stuff. Now you can make this and it will be great even without the dip but you’ve got time and you’re a bad-ass in the kitchen so make the dip, too.

Fig 2: Potatoes cut into wedges in 1/4s the long way

• Wash your potatoes and cut them into quarters lengthwise. (See Figure 2)
• Pat them dry with a clean cloth and let them air out while you make the crap to coat them with
• In the mixing bowl place 2 teaspoons (that’s the little spoon not the ice-cream spoon) of olive oil
• Add the egg but take it out of the shell, okay? (egg shells can kill you because of a little thing called salmonella so wash up)
• Use your teaspoon and add:
• 2 teaspoons of sason completa
• 1 teaspoon of garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper (or about 10 cranks on the grinder
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt (I use fresh ground Himalayan pink rock salt but I’m a triple food ninja)
• Mix all that together with something like a fork or a whisk if one exists in your house

This mixture should turn into a thick slurry that looks like some nasty radiator fluid out of that ’56 BelAire you bought that had been sitting in the woods for 21 years without moving.

Now comes the part that takes muscle … but not much. Drop all of your potato wedges, you should have 12 of them if you followed the instructions. You can follow instructions, right? Okay, drop the wedges in the goop and toss them. If you drop one on the floor just pick it up and throw it back in because they are going to be at 400 degrees for a while and even the crud on your floor won’t live through that. Toss them for probably 3 to 5 minutes until they are coated really well. Not all of the gunge you made will stick to them, we’ll get to that in a minute.

On your cookie sheet or aluminum foil lay the wedges out skin side down at least 1/2 inch apart. After that using your clean shop rag or, better yet, your BBQ brush apply the remainder of the stuff in the mixing bowl to the wedges.

You are now ready to actually cook. Set a timer for 25 minutes. If you don’t have a timer use your Android because it’s smarter than most of us. Place your wedges on their whatever you have them on, could be an old hubcap for all we care, into the oven and get ready to make the dip. You *could* use just plain old store bought stuff with rat crap and illegal alien hairs in it or you could make your own.

For the dip you’re going to need:

Fig 3: Real men's potato wedge dip recipe

• Some sour cream (about a cup – 8 ounces)
• Two cloves of garlic
• A jalapeno pepper
• Some cilantro (ask your neighbor, if she’s hot she has some)
• Salt
• A lime
• A tablespoon (that’s the big one you use for ice-cream)
• A bowl
• A knife

You’re going to learn a new trick here if you’ve never worked with fresh garlic. In fact this will turn into one of your kitchen super-powers for when you find “the right one” and really want to impress her.

Fig 4: Smashing garlic

If you have ever worked with fresh garlic but you don’t know this really common, kitchen wimp technique (meaning anyone can do it) you’ve struggled with getting those little stinker out of their skin. No more, you are now going to be knighted into kitchen master brotherhood – albeit still far from being the jedi master I am. Because I am so cool and awesome you’ll even get to see a photo. Figure 4, actually, shows the magic. Take a clove (that’s one little piece) off the garlic bulb and lay it on your cutting board. With a broad blade knife, the kind kitchen jedis like me use, and lay it flat on it’s side on top of that little pimple of garlic and smack the crap out of it. Okay, not that hard. More like bump it.

When you lift the knife it should look all squished and flat. Pick it up by the skin and chances are the meat will fall out of the skin. If not just pull the meat out of the skin and you’ll have the part you need.

Like with anything else there are other ways but the one above is the fastest. If you’re meticulous and orderly you can cut the clove in 1/2 the long way and peel the skins off fairly easily. I prefer to go beast on it and make that “wham” noise so the wife asks, “you okay?”

Fig 5: De-seeding jalapeno peppers

If you can’t handle the heat you can de-seed the jalapenos but I don’t recommend letting anyone actually see you do that. If you must and the hotties hurt your little tummy simply cut the pepper into halves, use a paring knife and cut the pith out then scrape the pith and seeds out with the back of the knife.

Many people recommend you wear gloves when handling raw, fresh peppers. I never do but be warned, if you touch your eye, pick your nose or take a leak without first washing off very well you are, definitely, going to pay the price. If you get burned from the capsaicin in peppers the best wash is fresh milk. Scientifically proven I kid you not.

Chopped everything up pretty finely and toss it into the bowl. Squeeze in the juice of a half of the lime and spoon in about 6 big spoons of sour cream. Stir it up until the components are a nice, smooth blend. Probably take you about 45 seconds to smooth it out.

By now your taters should have cooked for 25 minutes which is the point where you’re going to use your oven glove and flip those bad boys over. Since they are triangular you’ll just be flipping them over onto one of their sides. I’m kind of anal so I have to rotate them all the same direction but it really doesn’t matter – just get them off the skins and onto a side. There will be a little dry crust of the egg that has run off the wedges and you can just flip them over onto their sides right on top of those spots. Set your timer for another 10 minutes and put them back in the oven.

Fig 6: Real men's potato wedges - men cook!

Get a plate ready and start cleaning up the mess you made so when they come out you can be ready to eat them or share them with your girl. If you’re sharing you can go for some presentation like in Figure 6. That will score some points with your lady and you may even get a silver star – if you know what I mean. Most of all, make sure you clean the kitchen!

Hey, that’s it! Here’s the finished product with a little style to the serving. If you have buds over you’ll need one plate like this for each two people. Just increase the cooking time by 5 minutes for each additional potato and make sure you add the appropriate amount of ingredients for the number of potatoes, too. Don’t go for 2 eggs until you hit 7 potatoes but everything else can be increased by .25% per additional potato.