sardines and tatties

sardines and tatties

serves one - with a little leftover

contents

butter – a blob

spuds – a few medium ones

onion – one

garlic – clove

spinach – a handful

sardines – one tin

cream

salt and pepper – to taste

It starts with hunger and a vague glance around the store cupboard.

One of the things I always have in my cupboard is a tin of sardines. I don’t think I need to mention the potatoes…surely they are a given? Now this is a proper comfy dish, it’s creamy, it’s warming and it’s filling. You can picture it; winter in the middle-of-nowhere – Scotland, huddled with a blanket and all the curtains shut.  Grabbing this yummy, bubbling creamy pile of goodness out of the oven and pairing it together with a good book, or, dare I say it, a massive glass of red wine?

I think I might have stolen the idea for this from dauphinoise potatoes, a relative staple in my little sisters eye. Something she always makes whenever she can. I have to say, I’m pretty rubbish at them. Which is a shame, but it just means that every time she makes them, they’re extra special. This dish is much quicker than “dolphin” potatoes (as both my sisters like to call them), or more quicker as this is for one person, whereas when cooking for the fam damn it’s helpful to make an even bigger amount than normal…just in case seconds are required.

Chop up the spuds into little bite size cubes, don’t bother taking the skin off and boil them for about 5 minutes. Melt the butter in a pan and add the potato cubes, sliced onions and chopped garlic. Move around the pan for a while until the potato is browned, season furiously, then take off the heat and add the spinach leaves to wilt them through the mix.

I’ve tried cutting the potatoes into bigger bitties and into matchsticks, but I think it’s easy that they are bite size and the cubes look pretty cute! The spinach in this dish makes it extra extra yummy. It also gives it a little bit of greenery.  I think probably spring onion or rocket leaves could be substitute if you don’t have any spinach. Or maybe even some quartered mushrooms if you have some.

Butter an oven-proof dish and break up the sardines and make a sparse layer in the bottom of the dish. Then place a layer of the potato and onion mix and repeat with a layer of sardines and the rest of the potato and onion mix. Top up with cream, add a little more seasoning and pop into the over for about 10 minutes at 180°C or until the cream is bubbling.

bubbling, warming, tasty dish with potatoes, cream, spinach and sardines

 

If you’re not a big fan of sardines you could substitute tinned mackerel or even fresh fish if you wanted. Or some ham if you have it or even some sweet corn if you don’t want to use meat. This is one of the things I truly believe in, testing and changing recipes and moulding them to suit your needs and wants, and of course, to suit whatever foodstuffs you have, or haven’t got.

Make sure you don’t put too much cream in it, it bubbles up a fair amount and evenly coats the potato cubes. Put in too much and it’ll just bubble over completely – a bit of a waste really – and it’s really no fun to clean burnt cream off an oven tray.

I admit it is annoying that this dish does involve a little more washing up than I prefer, but at least you can wash the pot and the frying pan whilst it is in the oven.

It is so definitely worth it though! I don’t think I can stress enough how yummy these creamy, sardine-y potatoes are. So yummy that as I have written this blog post I can’t stop thinking of them. So yummy that I need to go and make some right now before I explode.

Good night.