My oven broke down on Saturday. I had prepared a beautiful lasagna for the week-end, and when the time came to put it in the oven, it didn't work. You should have seen the look on my husband's face when he got the news! I told him not to worry, I have a solution. Of course he didn't believe me until I served him the much awaited lasagna. My solution? Simply cut the lasagna dish in two, transfer one part to a microwavable dish and microwave on high for 4 minutes, then two minutes and another two minutes until it's done. Keep the other half refrigerated, or better yet, freeze it for another dinner. You're certainly not going to eat lasagna for two consecutive weeks. Actually, I used to do it in the old microwave oven that took the whole pan to save time. Saturday I did it for necessity.
This made me think of what to do until the oven is fixed, or we get a new one. My husband had asked for stuffed potatoes, and he got the same look when he thought about the impossibility of having them since the oven was not working. Don't worry, I assured him, I'll think of something. So here is what I did.
STUFFED POTATOES # 2
You might remember this dish from a previous blog. This time I'm trying to make it without an oven, on the stove. So the main idea is to cook it in a sealed or covered pan, large enough to hopefully hold all the potatoes in one layer. I have a 7 Qt covered non stick pan that I think will do the job. The second problem is preventing the potatoes from sticking to the bottom of the pan, when you cook them in the oven you don't have this problem, since the heat is all around the pan, but on the stove the heat source is on the bottom. So what kind of protective layer can I put on the bottom? The solution is simple: I first thought of putting a layer of the potato shavings, then I said "what if I add some veggies?" And I did. It came out perfect and so fragrant that mom asked from her room upstairs about what was cooking that smelled so good. You'll need:
10 to 12 potatoes large enough to cut in 2 or 3 pieces
About 2 cups of browned ground beef
1 (6 oz) can of tomato paste
1/2 small red onion, finely chopped
4 celery stalks, finely chopped
1/2 large carrot, finely chopped
1 tsp oil
Oil for frying
Salt and pepper to taste
Peel the potatoes and cut them in 2 or 3, depending on their size, crosswise. Put them in salted water to prevent them from changing color. With a vegetable peeler dig a hole in the smaller tip of each potato piece: you'll get small cones of potato, then continue shaving the hole to make it large enough to fill with meat. Just make sure that you don't go all the way to the bottom and pierce it. For the middle parts of potato: start by making the first hole, then another one near it and another one, then connect them to get a large one. Keep the potatoes in the salted water until you brown the ground meat. Just add some onion/garlic mixture to it, plus salt and pepper and let it cook in a non-stick skillet, turning often to prevent lumps, until it absorbs all its liquid and gets browned.
In the large pan, cook the onion, celery, carrot and potato shavings in the tsp of oil until soft. Of course don't forget to add some salt and pepper. Set aside. Drain the potatoes, and start frying them, and the small cones that you got from carving them, in oil until light golden. When you remove them from the oil, make sure that they don't have any oil in their cavity, and put them on paper towels upside down to drain any possible oil left in their cavity. When they are cool enough to handle, stuff them with ground meat and arrange them in the pan, over the veggies. Add the larger cones of potato around the stuffed ones to fill in the gaps. If you did like I did, I browned a large quantity of beef, so I transferred the meat that I didn't use to a container and refrigerated it for later. In the same pan cook the tomato paste adding 3 to 4 cans of water to it, stirring until it's all dissolved and bring to boiling. You may add a pinch of garlic powder and some salt and pepper, but remember that all the other elements are already salted.
With a ladle add the tomato sauce to the potatoes so that the stuffing doesn't fall out, and just up to the edge of the potato. I had them in one and half rows. Cover the pan, bring it to boiling, then reduce heat to the minimum until the potatoes are fork tender and the sauce reduced and thickened. The only down side of this method is that I had to serve it in the pan, I was afraid to transfer the potatoes to a serving dish for fear of breaking them. But when I did, I was careful and they came out OK, so I guess it's safe to transfer the cooked potatoes, carefully, to a serving dish and then add the sauce with the veggies on top.
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