Thursday 2 May 2013

My Big Fat Twice-Baked Greek Potatoes



Two random things you should know about me:

First, I hate to waste food. A great many of my recipes come about because I need to use stuff up.

Second, I love potatoes.  I mean, seriously. love. them.  I'd happily eat them at every single meal if my waistline would allow for it.

This particular recipe came to be because of both of those things.  I had a bunch of stuff in my fridge that needed using up, and I wanted potatoes for supper.  

It was clean-out-the fridge day at my house, and I needed to find a use for two, rather anemic looking, winter tomatoes.  To sweeten them up some and intensify the flavour, I decided to roast them.  

I cut the tomatoes into large pieces, tossed them in a little oil, spread them on a parchment lined pan and sprinkled them with some salt and pepper.  

I baked them in a 400F degree oven for about 20 minutes. 

When they were done, they looked like this:


While the tomatoes were cooking, I dug around in the fridge and found this stuff:


I combined the found stuff with the tomatoes in the following quantities:

  • 1 cup homemade ricotta (storebought will work fine too)
  • 1 cup feta
  • 3/4 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained (left over from making Tacsagne)
  • 1/2 cup pitted, coarsely chopped Kalamata olives
  • 1 cup roasted tomatoes (I ran my knife through them to cut them into smaller pieces; about the same size as the chopped olive)
  • 1 Tablespoon Greek seasoning mix

and stirred them together until well combined.


I had two leftover baked potatoes in the fridge too, so I cut them in half and scooped out the insides.  

I placed the potato shells on a parchment lined pan.


I mashed the scooped potato with a fork, added in about half of the cheese and spinach mixture and stirred the two together. 

(I put the rest of the filling in the freezer to use another time.)

I spooned the mixed filling back into the potato shells, heaping it into mounds, 


and baked the stuffed potatoes at 350F, until they were heated through and had taken on some colour.


They weren't the prettiest girls at the dance, but - as many plain girls do - they had great substance and were really interesting.


I'll be making them again.