Tadig (rice with crispy potatoes on the bottom)

One of my former bosses was Iranian, and when she would invite me to dinner, she would always have this really tasty rice dish as the side. Crispy potatoes were on the bottom of the rice, and it was a special treat to get the potatoes. It turns out the dish is called Tadig, but all the recipes online called for cooking basmati rice.

Well, I decided to give it a try on my own. I don't have fancy basmati rice; I'm more of a Minute rice type of cook. However, I decided not to let that stop me.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

I got an 8x8 inch Pyrex baking dish. I poured only enough olive oil into the dish to cover the bottom. You don't want the bottom to be dripping in oil, but you need the oil for the crisp.

I peeled a small potato and cut it in thin slices to cover the bottom of the dish. You can sprinkle a bit of salt on the slices of potato.

As I said, I use Minute rice. Not only do I use Minute rice, but I use the kind that cooks in five minutes!  Undaunted, I boiled 1 1/2 cups of water with 2 tablespoons of butter, some salt, and some pepper. When the water came to a boil, I stirred in 1 1/2 cups of rice. Then I poured the mixture on top of the potatoes in the Pyrex dish.

Cover the dish with aluminum foil and put it in the oven. Bake for around 90 minutes. It takes that long for the potatoes to crisp, and surprisingly, the Minute rice also turned out just fine!

Since I didn't use a lot of rice, the whole dish had a good crispy texture. You can add more rice if you want.

As you can see by the picture here, it all turned out just great. Even with instant rice, you too can make a very tasty dish of Tadig.

Potato Chip Cookies

I was in the mood to make a different cookie, so I started hunting around for ideas. I found a potato chip cookie recipe that turned out a tasty little treat!

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter (I use light butter and put it out so it gets soft at room temperature)

1/3 cup granulated sugar

3/4 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup flour

1/3 cup of crushed potato chips (comes out to around 1 ounce of chips. I used low salt Wavy Lays)

1/3 cup chopped walnuts (around 1.5 ounces of nuts)

1 Tablespoon of granulated sugar (when you smash the cookies before they go into the oven--put this sugar in a small flat dish)

powdered sugar 

Cream the butter, 1/3 cup of sugar, and vanilla until they are well mixed. Add the flour, and mix well. Then add the potato chips and walnuts. Mix it all up really good. Then cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and put it in the refrigerator for around an hour. This will make the dough easy to handle.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Get your dough and ungreased baking sheets. Roll the dough into little balls, and evenly space around the baking sheet. They say 2 inch balls placed 3 inches apart, but use your eyes and common sense with this one. You don't want the cookies to touch when you smash them.

Put some oil on the outside bottom of a glass. Dip the glass into the 1 Tablespoon of sugar. Press the glass down on a cookie. This flattens the cookie and puts some sugar on it.

Put the cookies into the oven for 12-15 minutes. They won't look brown on top, but you can see the bottom browning. That's when they are done. My cookies took the whole 15 minutes.

After they cool on the sheets for around 7 minutes, take the cookies off and put them in a container, and  dust with powdered sugar. 

I only got 2 1/2 dozen cookies from this recipe, so if you are feeding a ravening horde of kids, you may want to double or triple the recipe.