I woke up craving potatoes and with stark memories of a certain special birthday last year.
This breakfast is so easy to create but it tastes really special.
There’s a nifty trick to making home fries or pan-fried potatoes and it’s this: chop your potatoes into 1/4 inch chunks and par-boil them in salty water until they can be penetrated with a knife but are still far from cooked through. It makes the frying process a hell of a lot easier and gives the potatoes a delicious fluffy interior while still achieving the amazing crunch of fries.
I decided, based on my cravings for recreating that birthday brunch, to make some harissa and I highly recommend giving it a go. I made it up as I went but I had heard harissa is basically comprised of tomatoes and paprika so I combined about 2 tablespoons tomato paste with two teaspoons smoked paprika, 1 teaspoon cumin and a dash or two of garlic salt.
All I needed was a touch with each bite to appreciate the flavours but I would love to experiment with a real harissa recipe sometime.
Sweet Potato and Chorizo Hash
Ingredients
[serves two]
- 2 sweet potatoes (or 1 of each sweet potato and Yukon gold potato), chopped into 1/4 inch chunks
- one medium onion, finely chopped
- 2 tbsp butter or olive oil
- 3 oz spanish chorizo, diced
- sea salt
- fresh pepper
- smoked paprika
- garlic salt
- 1 tbsp parsley, diced
Directions
- Bring a pot of lightly salted water to a boil and add the potatoes. Boil until a fork can just penetrate them. Strain.
- Meanwhile heat 1 tbsp butter in a pan. Add onions and saute until soft and slightly brown, about five minutes. Remove and place in a small bowl.
- Re-heat the pan with the remaining butter and add the potatoes, pushing them down with the back of a spatula. Cook on one side until browned and sizzling, about 5-7 minutes.
- Turn potatoes over and cook other side for 5-7 minutes.
- Meanwhile, in a separate pan, heat a little olive oil or butter and add the chorizo. Cook until slightly brown, about 6-8 minutes. Remove and set aside with the onions.
- Once the potatoes are cooked to your desired level of crispness, add the onions and chorizo and season with salt, pepper, paprika and garlic salt, or your choice of seasonings.
Serve immediately, perhaps with fried eggs and guacamole. Garnish with parsley.
Sometimes a sweet breakfast is all you crave but on lazy weekend mornings when there’s still some beer in the system from the night before, salty, savoury plates like this really hit the spot.
What’s your favourite savoury breakfast?
