During the collection of recipes for the book Shisanyama, I received a number of versions of baked and braaied potatoes with cheese. This is my version, drawing inspiration from various solutions to the same problem, which is how to do some nice potatoes and cheese on the braai. To my mind, it’s always easier to get potatoes soft with a bit of boiling in a potjie, as opposed to trying to bake them soft from scratch. By using your cast-iron potjie, you limit dishes and impart maximum flavour. Feeds 6.
Ingredients
- 1 kg bag of baby potatoes
- 2 tots olive oil
- 2 tots butter
- 1 onion (chopped)
- 1 bell pepper (green, yellow or red, seeded and sliced into strips)
- 8 garlic cloves (crushed)
- 1 tsp salt1 tsp pepper
- 300 g Cheddar cheese (grated)
- ½ tot paprika
Method
- Wash the potatoes, add them to your potjie and boil in water until soft.
- Now drain the water from the potjie but keep the soft-boiled potatoes in the potjie. Add the olive oil, butter, chopped onion, bell pepper strips, garlic, salt and pepper to the potjie and now stir-fry everything for a few minutes until some things become caramelised and golden brown.
- Now use your wooden spoon or braai tongs and press on some of the potatoes so they burst at the seams, allowing some extra flavours to develop and penetrate the potatoes. Stir-fry for another minute or three.
- If things at the bottom of the potjie get sticky and want to burn, add a bit of water, olive oil, beer, wine or stock and scrape lose anything sticky.
- You now add the grated cheese and sprinkle paprika on top of that. Close the lid of the potjie and take the potjie off the fire. Add a generous helping of coals onto the lid of the potjie – as much as you can fit onto the lid – and wait a few minutes for the cheese to start melting. Once the cheese has melted, your potatoes are good to go!
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