I love going through recipes. When I checked Jamie Oliver’s site, I chanced upon this simple but interesting recipe called April’s Rosemary Straw Potatoes with Lemon Salt. It is a simple dish with a variety of flavors. So I decided to play around with the recipe and add other ingredients.

“A recipe is merely words on paper; a guideline, a starting point from which to improvise. It cannot pretend to replace the practiced hand and telling glance of a watchful cook. For that reason feel free to stir your own ideas into this dish. When you cook it once, it becomes yours, so personalize it a bit. Add more of an ingredient you like or less of something you do not like. Try substituting one ingredient for another. Remember words have no flavor, you have to add your own!” –Michael Smith, Chef at Home

Ingredients:

Zest of 1 lemon

4 tablespoons sea salt

4 cups cooking oil

1 lb potatoes

Fresh rosemary

3 cloves garlic

1/4 teaspoon paprika

First, make the lemon salt by pounding on the lemon zest and salt using a mortar and pestle. You can also put the salt and lemon zest in a small container and store it overnight, by then the flavors would have infused.

Peel and slice the potatoes to the size that you desire. Some prefer it really thin to make it crispier. Soak them in water. Pat the fries dry before frying.

In a frying pan or deep fryer, heat the oil. Drop in a potato strip right away. Once it floats, the oil is hot enough. Remove the cooked potato you used to test the oil temperature. Fry the potatoes for 2-4 minutes, until they are lightly browned. Drop the garlic and rosemary in the last 30 seconds or when the fries are almost cooked. Make sure that the potatoes are not crowded in the fryer.  Let the oil cool in between batches. Drain the oil from the fries using paper towels.

In a brown paper bag or covered container, combine the salt and paprika. Transfer the fries in the bag/container and shake it until the fires are covered in the salt mixture. Serve warm.

Photo Courtesy Of: joyosity