Friday, February 25, 2011

Now that I've invented potato and kale flatbread, what do I do with it?

    I wasn't trying to invent potato and kale flatbread, of course. I was trying to invent potato and kale chips. However, I couldn't find any recipes for how to make potato chips out of mashed potatoes and I couldn't think of any way to mix in the kale without mashing the potatoes first. (Why kale? I'm still off of dairy so I need the calcium. And my last bunch of kale was starting to yellow, so I needed to use it up anyway.)
    Not to bury the lead any more than I have already, it was really, really good. Well, it was RR good while it was hot. It was fair to pleasant once it was cool. But I bet it would reheat well, too. (I'm the boy who has no microwave, so I can't be too sure.)
    It was easy to make, though it took a long time since I had no idea what I was doing. I took a largish baking potato, punched holes in it on all sides with a fork and wrapped it in aluminum foil and tossed it in a 350 degree oven. I let it bake at least an hour, took it out, unwrapped it, peeled it and tried to mash it with a fork. No go. So I cut it up, drizzled some extra virgin olive oil on it, rewrapped it, and gave it about another hour. I don't know why it took so long; it wasn't that big a potato. Maybe I needed to punch more holes, or deeper ones. Dunno; perhaps a potato baking expert can comment.
    As to the kale, you want to steam it a long time. If you are from England or Charleston SC, this can mean anything from two weeks to a year. If you're from anywhere else, however, 10 or 20 minutes ought to be sufficient. When the kale is sufficiently steamed, tear it into the tiniest pieces you can. A food chopper or a food processor could help a lot here. I have the former and it did a good job.
    When your potato is mashable and your kale is tore up, mix them up and mash the heck out of your potato with a fork. Add more olive oil and salt and pepper to taste, or until your arm gets tired. I then put a sheet of aluminum foil on a pizza pan and spread out the potato mixture on it with my hands like pizza dough. I cooked it for a half hour at 300 degrees. As I said, expecting a gigantic potato chip, I wound up with potato flatbread. The middle was kind of wet but the edges were fairly browned. I flipped the whole thing (OK, I tried to; in fact I flipped a lot of big pieces) onto the pizza pan, turned off the oven and left the flatbread in there for another half hour to firm up a bit. Result? Wonderful!
    So we return to the question: what do you do with potato/kale flatbread? I mean besides eat it all up in a minute.
    Edit: Upon further reflection, it occurs to me that this might be a primitive manifestation of twice-baked potato. Probably a good deal healthier than the usual approach, though. Maybe I'm weird or maybe I'm Irish, but I crazy-mad love potatoes per se, and don't really need all that gick anyway.

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