Corn in the Potatoes

I had a dream...


Well, it was more of a plan.  I've been furiously working on my website and in the midst of thinking of different elements to add (mind you at 2 in the morning, too excited to sleep), it hit me: Mix the corn INTO the mashed potatoes.  Buahahaha, genius!  That night, it would be served, and the next morning? Blogged.  I drifted off to sleep with a little drool on my pillow.

Corn is incredible.  In summary, a great source of vitamins B1, B5, C, and E; as well as phosphorous, magnesium iron and zinc.  High fiber so that'll be helpful later.  The corn link claims that it's a poor source of protein because of a lack of amino acids, but that when you combine with other delicious veggies that's taken care of.  I don't know if potatoes count but normally corn is eaten alongside beans.  Or, in my case, with either margarine and salt or lime and chili powder... mmm...

I could have dubbed this Corn in the Potatoes in a Pepper, but the pepper is optional.  I'll include it in this recipe since that's what the picture is of.  Please note the incredibly awesome coffee table we have made.

CORN IN THE POTATOES
4 servings

CONTENTS
6 medium potatoes, roughly chopped
2 large garlic cloves
2 small ears of corn
2 TBS margarine
1/4 cup of milk
2 sun-dried tomato halves (so 1.5 sun dried tomatoes? teehee...)
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried thyme
1 large bell pepper
2 cups of spinach
pinch of salt
drizzle of olive oil

Just part of the ingredients... the rest has been pictured before!

FASCIST DIRECTIONS
1. Put a large pot of water on to boil.  Set your oven to 400F and cut the bell pepper in half.  Then remove the stem and inside flesh and seeds.  If you hack off the top first then you'll have a scoop rather than a bowl.  Prepare a baking dish of some sort and bake about 30 minutes total.

2. Meanwhile, cut your potatoes into chunks.  Keep the skins on if you want all those awesome vitamins.

3. When the water is boiled, add the tater chunks and boil about 15 minutes, til pretty soft but not TOO soft (there will be an extra boiling step in a second so read on to gauge time).

4. While the potatoes are boiling, mince the garlic, remove kernels from the cob and chop up the sun dried tomatoes.  Keep them separate!


5. When the taters feel pretty soft, toss in the corn kernels and boil another 5 minutes.  At the end of this your potatoes should be soft.  Drain the water using a fine mesh colander and return them to the hot pot.

6.  Add the margarine, milk, herbs, salt and sun dried tomatoes.  Probably in that order, mixing and mashing at each addition.

7. At about 25 minutes into the baking/roasting pepper time, remove the pepper...


...and add the spinach to the baking pan or sheet.  I wanted you to see the bottom of the roasted pepper because it's so pretty!

Drizzle with olive oil and mix up.  Return to the oven and bake/roast another 5 minutes.  The spinach should have begun to wilt.  When you stir it it should all get mooshy and delicious-looking.  Sprinkle with a little teeny bit of salt if you'd like and mix well.


8.  Layer as follows: pepper bowl bottom, a couple of heaping spoonfuls of mashed potatoes (1/4 of the batch per pepper), and top with spinach.  Viola, done!

Rod really enjoyed this one.  I'm glad, because in my mind it was guaranteed to be awesome.  But it's always good to run it past the taste-tester.  He's good in this role because despite being hedonistic, he has... shall we say... a refined palate when it comes to food texture ;-)  I'm not saying picky eater, just very particular.

Oh yummm... let's see the coffee table picture again :-)  I need to post an album of our coffee table, it's pretty bad-ass.

Remember you can click on the images and they SHOULD either open up in the same tab/page you're looking at or in a new tab.  You can also right+click and say open in new tab/window.  The blogspot editor sacrifices some of the quality of the photos for the quality of my excellent writing skillz.