blue cheese bacon potatoes
Posted: May 9, 2013 Filed under: sides, The Best Of The Best Recipes | Tags: bacon, blue cheese, butter, milk, pepper, potato, salt, shortening, sour cream Leave a comment
You Say “Potato” …
I Say … “Get out of my way, It’s mine!”
There have been some great “home run” recipes in Mom’s cookbook and this is one of them. While blue cheese sometimes makes my nose turn and run for the hills, this dish isn’t smothered with the sharp and salty taste.
With the arrival of the microwave to modern cooking, potatoes were often “zapped” because who wants to wait for an twice-baked potato!?
After I made this recipe, I’m reminded of the slow-baked potatoes Mom used to make … they arrive on your plate super soft all the way through! And well worth the wait.
Cheers To My New Spud Bud
to coat | shortening
4 | baking potatoes, medium
½ cup | sour cream
¼ cup | blue cheese, crumbled
¼ cup | milk
4 tablespoons | Falfurrias brand butter (per Nanny)
¾ teaspoon | salt
dash | black pepper, freshly ground
4 slices | bacon, crisp-cooked, drained and crumbled
ii. what to do
0. Preheat oven to 400°F.
1. Rub each potato with shortening. Place them in the oven uncovered or wrapped and cook for 1 hour, or until done.
2. Remove potatoes from the oven. Cut a lengthwise slice into each potato (the potatoes are hot so be careful)! Scoop out the inside of each potato and mash the innards (yup, I wrote “innards”) in a medium-sized mixing bowl.
3. Add sour cream, blue cheese, milk, butter, salt and pepper to the potatoes then beat with an electric beater until fluffy. Some remaining potato lumps are OK.
4. Spoon the blue cheese potato mixture back into the potato shells.
5. Place potatoes on a baking sheet and return them to the hot oven for 15 minutes or until heated through.
6. Remove from oven and sprinkle with the crumbled bacon.
Yields: 4 Servings (or 1 meal, if you’re me)
foodie tips ~
♥ It may take some practice but try and keep the potato from breaking into 2 separate halves. 1. When slicing, don’t cut it all the way through top-to-bottom. 2. When scooping, you can leave about an 1/8″ of the potato’s inside with the skin to give it a happy but hollow foundation.
♥ This is a great sidekick for this steak diane recipe that I also made on the 2 year anniversary of BCN. It’s also a good side for this barbecue pork chop recipe. Come to think of it, it’s really just a great recipe all by itself!
♥ Note below that this recipe hails from Better Homes and Gardens, March 1968. Why, I was just a young tot of one way back then!
danish tomatoes
Posted: March 29, 2013 Filed under: appetizers, sides | Tags: blue cheese, croutons, sugar, tomatoes Leave a comment
Some Things Never Change.
And fortunately some things DO change! Like taste. Who hasn’t heard that your “taste buds change over time?”
As a kid I couldn’t have cared less about this statement. But what a sad life I would have lived without my accidental BFF, the tomato.
I’m happy to say that while I wanted to be seated as far across the table from Miss Tomato growing up, my taste buds love them to this day. Go figure.
Which reminds me of one of the “dirtiest” jokes I remember Mom telling. She learned it at Catholic school and regardless, I’m sure the Nuns would have smiled…
Question: Why did Miss Tomato blush?
Answer: She saw Mr. Green Pea.
And with that, we’re off to the tomato races!
i. ingredients
4 | tomatoes, firm
to taste | sugar
to taste | salt
to taste | pepper
to taste | buttered croutons
to taste | blue cheese, crumbled
ii. what to do
0. Preheat oven to 375°F.
1. Cut tops from tomatoes.
2. Sprinkle cut surfaces lightly with sugar, salt and pepper.
3. Bake in oven for 10 minutes; remove and top each tomato with a few buttered croutons and a spoonful of crumbled blue cheese.
4. Return to the oven for about 5 minutes or until cheese is melty-soft.
foodie tips ~
♥ Mom wrote that this danish tomato recipe was a good side with steak, so I made these on the same night as this sirloin with mushroom gravy. Home run. She was right!
♥ A spoonful of blue cheese? Or spoonfulls.
Betty's Cook Nook 