This time last year it was a source of pride in this house that almost every dinner that was cooked in our house was made from scratch. I’m a firm believer in being able to do it yourself and not rely on ready made meals, sauces in a jar or prepared meat. I make my own chicken nuggets, soup, curry and pizza and the kids love all of it. Over the last twelve months though things have started to slide. It started with jars of curry sauce and then moved on to pasta sauces and frozen pizzas.
Yesterday I decided that it had to stop but all I had in the house was chicken and potatoes. Other than herbs and spices there wasn’t really anything else as I haven’t done the weekly shopping yet so I wondered how to come up with something that was a little different. It couldn’t be anything elaborate or time consuming so we decided on fried chicken and chips but how we were going to do that I hadn’t quite worked out yet. Our deep fat fryer has no oil in it at the moment, which is a good thing, and plain fried chicken is well…plain.
A quick root around on pinterest ended up with us finding a recipe for oven baked parmesan seasoned chips and the kids liked the idea of it and I found some cajun seasoning in a cupboard for the chicken. What was a problem though was you don’t get Old Bay Seasoning in the UK so I played around a little.
Ingredients:
1kg of potatoes
3 tbsp of Olive Oil
1/2 tsp Dried Thyme
1/2 tsp Dried Oregano
1/4 tsp Dried Rosemary
1/4 tsp of Garlic Powder (I didn’t have any so I minced 3 cloves of fresh garlic)
1/8 tsp of Ground Ginger
1/8 tsp of Ground Cinnamon
1/8 tsp of Ground Cloves
1/8 tsp of Ground Nutmeg
1/8 tsp of smoked paprika
1/8 tsp of salt
1/4 tsp ground black and red pepper
5 tbsp of grated parmesan cheese
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 220C/425F/ Gas Mark 7 and look out a couple of old rectangular cookie/pizza trays.
Wash and cut the potatoes into thick chips leaving the skin on.
Mix all of the spices and cheese together in a small bowl before placing half of it into a large sealable freezer bag. Put half your chips into the bag along with 1 1/2 tbsp of oil, seal it up and then shake them all about to get them evenly coated. Pour them out evenly on to one of the trays. Repeat for the rest of the potatoes.
Bake in the oven for about 30-40 minutes until they are cooked through and lightly golden. After about 30 minutes start checking on them as final cooking time will depend on the size of chip you cut. I also gave them a wee shake half way through to make sure they were evenly cooked.
So after all that I thought I’d get some comments from those that ate them.
Nairn – *munch munch munch*
Erica – I don’t like these dada. They’re too herby (she cleared her plate)
Greer – ooo crunchy!
As for myself and Vonnie? We’d have them again in a heartbeat!
