Sunday, September 16, 2012

Spicy Cheese Mashed Potatoes


Couple of days ago I was hungry and decided to whip-out some mashed potatoes. I always have a canister with mashed potato flakes that I keep for these infrequent mashed potato cravings. I use all kinds of potato flakes, but keep them all in the Idahoan brand canister, because it is convenient. In the photo you can see the ingredients that you will need to make such mashed potatoes like I did. You can substitute for whatever brand of products you want, but you generally get the idea.



First, start with a cup of cold water and a cup of milk. I just use whatever milk is available and cheapest at the local food mart. For water I use tap water; its free and its right there in the kitchen.



Now add some butter. I prefer the not salted butter.



Garlic powder and other seasoning go next.



Some Parmesan cheese and cheddar cheese powder.



Dried parsley does not do much, but I add it anyway.



And top it off with hot sauce, I use Red Hot because I have plenty of it and it is a quality sauce.



Stir it all up and let it reach the boiling temperature.



Now add some mashed potato flakes and turn off the heat.



And mix it all together. Done.



I also added some turkey bacon, smoked herring and little bit of pickles. Potatoes came out pretty much like I planned them to be, but only a bit spicy due to extra Red Hot sauce, but thats no-biggie for me.



They had a sale on the packed herring at the local baza (Russian food store) at $1.99 per pack, so I grabbed it and decided to give it a try. I had not eaten herring in a long time and I have really bad memories of it: back in Kiev in the 90s, the herring that was sold in the Russian stores was nasty most of the time, and it had those tiny bones in it. But times have changed and now they make all kinds of herrings, and the one that I bought came from a large Belorussian fish factory. They use modern technology and make sure that their products are tasty and of quality. No more stank shit from the wooden barrel.



They also had these 3 other versions: standard/classic, green herbs and seasoned. All were $1.99 on sale. I believe that the brand makes around 8-10 different varieties of herring, but the assortment inside the baza is only of 4 version.



I ate everything.

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