Dry Potato Curry Meets The Best Damn Home Fries You'll Ever Eat

If I had to pick two staple ingredients to represent my family’s cooking - it would be potatoes and peanuts.

Undoubtedly, this harkens back to my dad’s roots in Uganda where the groundnut/peanut is one of the most important crops grown in the country and my whole family’s Indian roots where “farali” food - food permissible during fasting - comes into play often.

My mom is a devout Hindu and often fasts to ensure the spiritual well-being of her heathen family.

Turns out that if you state your religion is, “I just do whatever Bruce Springsteen tells me to do,” - most major world religions consider you a heathen.

Also, once in a moment of frustration, Mom asked me which God made me the way I am and my response was, “I dunno. You’ve got like, 3000 of them. Pick one.”

The fact that she didn’t club me to death with my own arm is a testament to her grace.

The kind of fasting Mom typically engages in isn’t nearly as austere as when Muslims fast for Ramadan (no water, no food from sun up to sundown) and merely limits the type of food you can eat.

On the approved list - potatoes, peanuts, sago (starch extracted from the Sago Palm) and yuca.

As a result, we grew up eating a lot of this stuff and if Mom doesn’t have at least five pounds of potatoes in her home at any given time, it’s a sure sign of the apocalypse.

Potato curry is a family staple and I started messing around with the idea of mixing it up a little.

I love the traditional recipe but you know what else I love? Really good crispy diner style home fries and holy shit, you know what I found in the fridge? The roasted chickpea flour and peanut masala I made a little while back.

Yeah. This is gonna be good.

Dry Potato Curry

Serves 2

There are two components to this curry - the dry-roasted masala and the potatoes. When I make masala, I usually make a bunch and just store it away for future use. It makes things so much easier for subsequent meals. Especially with a dish this easy.

Dry Roasted Spices

1 cup chickpea flour

1/2 cup ground roasted peanuts. You’ve got a couple of options here. You can buy dry roasted peanuts and blitz them in the food processor real quick or you can buy raw, unshelled peanuts and roast them in the microwave as shown here. The first method is much easier but the second tastes better and is probably healthier as raw peanuts are way less processed.

1 tbsp sesame seeds 

1 tbsp desiccated coconut

1 tsp salt

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp sugar 

1 tsp chili powder

Blitz peanuts in food processor for a couple of turns. Not too much - you’re not making peanut butter.

Mix with chickpea flour, turmeric, sesame seeds and coconut. 

Toast in a dry skillet until chickpea flour starts smelling nutty and delicious. This will only take a few minutes and you should definitely stir often and keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn.

Remove from heat.

Add sugar, salt and chili powder.

Mix thoroughly. 

Refrigerate and set aside until needed. 

Potatoes

2 potatoes, washed and chopped into cubes. Leave the skin on, that’s where the fiber lives.

1 onion, chopped and diced

2 tbsp oil/butter

1/2 tbsp pinch cumin seeds.

1/2 tbsp pinch mustard seeds

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp asofetida (hing) (optional. It’s the resin from the ferula plant. It is stinky and delicious and you should use it sparingly)

1/2 tsp salt 

Par boil potatoes in salted water for about ten minutes or until semi-soft. Set aside.

Heat oil in cast-iron skillet on medium heat. Yes, it has to be a cast-iron skillet. it’ll taste better. Trust me.

When oil starts to shimmer, add cumin and mustard seeds. They’re gonna splutter and pop like teeny little missiles, so be careful. I have all of these freckles on my throat and I’m like, 87% convince they’re not actually freckles but rather mustard and cumin seeds that exploded and stuck on me.

Add onions, turmeric, asofetida and cumin.

Stir until the onions are covered in turmeric and look golden.

Cook until onions start to brown and your kitchen smells magical. 

Add potatoes and stir.

Add chili powder and salt.

Stir.

Taste. Does it need more chili? It needs more chili. Look, we’re in the middle of a goddamn pandemic. The least we can do for ourselves is season our food properly.

Remember that chickpea flour masala we made earlier? Grab it from the fridge and add a tablespoon of it to the potatoes.

Stir.

Eh, throw some more dry-roasted spices in there. You’re not driving. 

Cook until potatoes are soft to touch and crispy around the edges like the best diner home fries you’ve ever had. I typically crank the heat to high about three minutes before serving and burn the shit out of the bottom but you do you.

Serve with literally anything - bacon, super fennel-y sausage, a fried egg with an oozy yolk, scrambled eggs with a ton of sharp cheddar, roasted chicken or just in a bowl by themselves topped with your favorite hot sauce.

These are pretty much the best goddamn potatoes you’ll ever eat.