Botana de Papas Locas aka “Crazy Potato Snack” with Pineapple Vinegar

Okay, so as my friend Carolyn noted, this dish doesn’t look especially appetizing. And to be honest, I mainly made it in the first place because of the funny name. But I made it a second time because, as Carolyn also noted after her first comment, it’s delicious!

The recipe calls for mild vinegar. Since the recipe comes from Diana Kennedy’s My Mexico, which is the first place I heard of pineapple vinegar, I decided to make it with that.

I’ve used both homemade and storebought pineapple vinegar. The homemade is pretty simple to make, recipe here. It’s tangy and spicy. The great thing about it is it actually uses the rind of the pineapple. So if you are making something else with a whole pineapple, you can first wring a little extra life out of the rinds before composting or tossing.

My friend Sarah and I went on a big long quest for pineapple vinegar once, to no avail. Then she spotted this brand in a Seattle Safeway. Here’s a Chowhound post about it in case you want to try to track it down where you live.

If you can’t find either, just use any mild vinegar without too strong of a flavor. The storebought kind has 4.3% acidity, equivalent to a mild white rice vinegar.

One thing I would not substitute is any other chile powder for the chile de arbol as its flavor really elevates the dish. I think most stores with a good Hispanic food section will have it with the other little packets of spices and chile powders.

Other than the potato boiling time, this is a fast dish to make. Diana Kennedy’s recipe recommends serving it with toothpicks as hors d’oeuvres, but it’s also delicious as a side dish for a Mexican entrée.

Botana de Papas Locas aka “Crazy Potato Snack”

Adapted from My Mexico by Diana Kennedy 

• 1 lb small new potatoes
• ¼ cup pineapple or other mild fruity vinegar
• 3 Tbls olive oil
• 2 medium white onions, thinly sliced
• 2 tsp chile de arbol
• 1 lime
• Salt to taste 

1. Put potatoes in large pot, cover with water, add vinegar and large pinch of salt. Bring to boil and cook cover over medium heat for about 20 minutes until just tender, then drain.
2. Heat the olive oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add potatoes and fry for about 5 minutes until lightly browned.
3. Add onions and chile powder and cook, stirring occasionally to preventing sticking and burning, until the onions have lost their raw smell, about 5-10 minutes.
4. Remove from heat, squeeze lime juice over it, salt to taste, and toss.

Short & Grown-Up Sweet: Pineapple Rum Cilantro Sherbet or Granita

Continuing with my series of burning off somewhat boring but potentially useful posts, here's this one in time for your holiday partay.

I had a bunch of cilantro left over the other day, and the answer to "What do I do with this now?" was, as it so often is: frozen dessert.  

I looked around and found this recipe for a Tequila-Cilantro Sorbet.  I didn't have enough lime and no tequila, but I did have some leftover cans of pineapple juice and some rum, so I made up this recipe for Pineapple Rum Cilantro Sherbet (cuz to my American mind, sorbets don't have dairy).  

It worked really well.  While the rum does make this more a grown-up treat, I wouldn't skip it as it helps keep the texture smoother.

If you don't have an ice cream maker, there's also a granita method below.

Ingredients 

• 1 1/4 cups whole milk
• 1 1/4 cups water
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped cilantro
• 3/4 cup pineapple juice
• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
• 3/4 cup rum
• Pinch of salt

Process 

1. In a saucepan, bring milk, water, and sugar to a boil, and stir to dissolve the sugar.
2. Remove from heat and add cilantro.
3. Chill overnight in fridge.
4. Strain mixture through a fine sieve set over a bowl.
5. Stir in pineapple and lime juices, rum and salt.
6. SHERBET: Freeze the sorbet in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.
7. GRANITA: Pour mixture into a chilled 9x13 baking dish. Freeze for about 2 hours or until the mixture has frozen around the edges.  Use a fork to break up the ice crystals around the edge and draw them into the middle.  Repeat this process 3 or 4 times, about every 1/2 hour or so, or until the mixture is completed converted to ice crystals. (The goal of the breaking up is to keep those crystals small to make the mixture smoother.)
8. Serve!

Pineapple Princess

Back in high school and college, I had a habit of buying brightly-patterned 60’s mini-dresses that I would never in ten million years be able to fit into.  I probably occasionally had a passing thought that if I got dead skinny I would wear them, but really it was more that they were so pretty and happy I just wanted to have them around.  

One, in deep turquoise, lime green and white, was patterned with flowers and pineapples.  It was so cheerful and fun that I hung it as décor on my wall in the Lafayette St. apartment I shared with the President of the Debate Club back when I lived in New York.  She is small enough to actually sport it once but I think it was snug even on her.

When the Prez was in Seattle for a visit recently, we spent a delicious afternoon picking through every rack at Red Light in the University District, finding some unexpectedly awesome vintage items at a fraction of what she would normally find them for in Manhattan.  

I think we had probably finished reminiscing about my old dress-buying habit in general, and that pineapple dress in particular, literally just a couple minutes before we happened upon a dress made of the same pattern and fabric, albeit in a different color scheme.

I didn’t try it on (why break with tradition?) but it was cheap enough that I bought it anyway for old timey’s sake.  

And what do you know?  Once we got home from a pretty perfect day of trotting around on foot in the sunshine, hitting the farmer’s market and tooling around with no schedule or agenda, I tried it on.  And it didn’t not fit!  I’m probably one more month of 30-Day Shred away from it actually not looking too shabby.  Now I just need to develop a lifestyle where I have a reason to wear a hostess dress patterned with pineapples.  The good news: I already have the right shoes.

Anyway, what do this has to do with food?  Well, pineapples appear to be a recurrent fruit right now in my life, and you’re about to see a bunch of posts featuring this rather oddball fruit.

My mild embarrassment at my total inability to select a decent one, as gently pointed out by Captain Ahab during my run-in at the grocery store, inspired me to research them for a Getting to Know You: Pineapple that I haven’t yet finished to post (but soon will).

Additionally, ever since my friends Amy and Alice both noted their favorite cake is a pineapple upside-down cake, I’ve been a little obsessed with trying to find the best possible recipe for the cake.  I have a possible nominee, but have one more recipe to work through, and will be posting about that soon as well.

I recently posted about one super find on my Mexican grocery store day trip with Sarah, but I didn’t mention the major disappointment of the day, namely our failure to hunt down Pineapple Vinegar, a condiment referenced frequently by Diana Kennedy in her book My Mexico.  I couldn’t find it out, nor could I find it online in any sort of commercially-available form.  

I did find two recipes, so decided that the next time I made some of my pineapple upside-down cake, I would check those out.  What is great about the recipes is they actually use the rinds, not the fruit, so it’s another “Every Part of the Buffalo” winner.  I have made one, but will make the other and post about the results as I see what they turn out to be.

So if you are going to be heading back here any time soon, I hope you like pineapple.  But how could you not?  Much like those silly dresses, there’s something just intrinsically cheerful about them.