Guacamole and Potatoes

This is a dish served at my family's favorite mexican restaurant and is affectionately known at GP. We had a mexican party last night in honor of my Aunt Kathy's birthday and I attempted to replicate the GP. It was a pretty good first attempt....we'll see if we can't improve it over the years.

We made the following potatoes for brunch and then reheated them for dinner, so they can certainly be made ahead if you are hosting a big dinner. We probably only used 1/4 of the potato recipe as listed below for GP for 11 people.

Crispy Roasted Potatoes

adapted from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food, December 2009

serves 8

total time: 2 1/2 hours (about 2 hours of this is baking time)

3 Tablespoons butter, melted

3 Tablespoons olive oil

4 pounds yukon gold potatoes

4 shallots, thickly sliced lengthwise

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)

8 sprigs thyme

Preheat oven to 375F.

In a small bowl combine melted butter and olive oil. Brush the bottom of a 9-inch round baking dish with some of this butter mixture.

With a sharp knife or mandoline, slice potatoes very thin, crosswise. Arrange potato slices vertically in a dish. Wedge shallots throughout. Sprinkle with salt and red pepper flakes (if using); brush with remaining butter mixture. Bake 1 1/4 hours. Add thyme and bake until potatoes are cooked through with a crisp top, about 35 minutes more.

Notes:

*If you want crispier potatoes, slice them as thin as possible (we used the 1/16th of an inch setting on the mandoline) and don't pack them into the dish to tightly.

*If you were trying to make this dish healthier, you could probably get away with less of the butter/olive oil mixture. There was a bunch left in the pan. Next time I will try using half the butter and oil.

To use these potatoes for GP. We let them cool and them spread them out in a single-ish layer on a flat baking sheet or jelly roll pan. It was a bit difficult to get them in a single layer because the potatoes wanted to stick together, so some of the slices had 2 or 3 layers of potatoes. We baked them at 300F for about 10 minutes, really just to warm them up.

Guacamole

I don't really have a recipe for guacamole, but here are the general proportions used last night. This served 11 people.

6 avocados

1/2 large onion, finely chopped

1 medium tomato, finely chopped

6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

juice of 3/4 of a lime

salt to taste

Taste with tortilla chips and adjust as necessary. The only risk in guacamole, in my opinion, is using too much onion. So I always start small with the onion, tomato, and garlic and keep adding, a little at a time until it tastes good.