Chaat Masala Smashed Potatoes

Tonight we made our second recipe from October’s cookbook club selection – Indian-ish! Participating in the cookbook club has already expanded our cooking horizons and we’ve only been doing it for about 6 weeks. The first one this month was Indian-ish Chicken Breasts. We tweaked this recipe a little, but the Indian(ish) flavors are definitely still there. This side dish is definitely spicy and full of flavor. It was close to being too spicy for me, so if spice is intimidating, maybe cut down to one serrano pepper or eliminate altogether. We also cooked with chaat masala for the first time here, which is always fun! We love trying new (to us) ingredients! Selim grew up eating a lot of Indian food, but I didn’t so these were different flavors for me especially. Side note, the original recipe called for topping the potatoes with fresh chopped cilantro. We (cough, Selim) may or may not have accidentally bought parsley instead of cilantro, but we think it’s probably great here, so we left it in the recipe even though we didn’t taste it that way.*

Chaat Masala Smashed Potatoes

(Adapted from Indian-ish)

Ingredients: 

• 1 lb baby red potatoes
• Kosher salt
• 1/4 cup plain yogurt
• 1 tbsp minced/grated fresh ginger
• 1/2 small onion, diced
• 2 Serrano peppers, diced
• 1/4 cup white wine vinegar
• 2 tsp chaat masala
• Fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped*

Instructions: 

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Bake potatoes on a cookie sheet for ~45 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, prepare the toppings. After dicing the pepper and onion, place them in a bowl and cover with the vinegar to macerate for at least 15 minutes.
3. Once cooked, pierce each potato with a knife and then smash each with the back of a large utensil.
4. Top the potatoes with a sprinkle of salt, then a dollop of yogurt on each potato, and evenly divided portions of the ginger, peppers, and onions. Then sprinkle with the chaat masala and generously top with cilantro.