Famous potatoes

[Guest guest]

Hare Krishna.

 

An old friend asked me today for this recipe, and I thought I'd post it here

as well. I may have done so in the past, but it bears repeating. Try this

recipe at your peril -- plain mashed potatoes will never be the same again.

 

Here goes:

 

South Indian Mashed Potatoes

 

Make the mashed potatoes:

 

5 LB white potatoes

Milk (maybe 2 - 3 cups)

Butter (at least ½ stick, the more the better)

Salt 1 TB

 

Boil the potatoes until ready to mash. Mash them with the milk, butter and

salt. They should be a little on the thin side as they will firm up later.

 

Make a chaunce:

 

2 - 4 TB ghee

1½ TB black mustard seeds

1 cup Toor dhal

1 cup Urid dhal

1 cup whole cashews

2 TB sharks (whole red chili peppers)

4 medium Jalapeno peppers, sliced in rounds

handful of sweet Neem (curry) leaves.

 

Add the ingredients to the hot ghee, as follows:

 

Mustard seeds until done popping

Toor dhal until it starts thinking about thinking about being brown

Urid dhal until it starts thinking about being brown.

Cashews until all ingredients are nicely brown. (This is the tricky part.

But carbon is good for you.)

Remaining ingredients. Stir for 30 seconds or so.

 

Add chaunce to potatoes, mix well, offer to Krsna.

 

You can play with the quantities of the above chaunce to a great degree, to

suit your own taste. You can substitute Bell Pepper for the Jalapenos and

omit the sharks if you don't like spicy food. *For Ekadasi potatoes, omit

the dhals.* If you don't have Urid or Toor dhal, you can use split yellow

mung (cook very lightly or they will burn) or yellow split peas (cook those

really well.) The Neem leaves, Cashews and mustard seeds are the essential

ingredients.

 

I learned this recipe from my old boss at Govinda's North Park restaurant in

San Diego, Prassanatma Dasa. He used to call this chaunce "that same damn

chaunce." He used it, with variations, in practically everything - all kinds

of rice and subjis. I'm not as inventive as he is, but here are some rice

variations:

 

Lemon rice:

 

Make rice with tumeric. Omit neem from chaunce. Add lemon juice to rice,

then add chaunce.

 

Spinach rice:

 

Make plain rice. Omit neem from chaunce. Add fresh spinach to chaunce at

end. Cook until spincach is cooked down, add to rice.

 

Yogurt rice:

 

Make rice. Stir in tons of yogurt. Make chaunce, stir in. Chill

 

Regular chaunce rice:

 

Make rice. Make chaunce as above. Stir in.

 

You get the idea.

 

Hare Krishna -

 

your servant, Balarama Dasa.