Hash, Hash, Baby.

I have had a lifelong love affair with the potato. Fried, mashed, baked, twice-baked, au gratin. Shredded, cubed, julienned, chipped. If there is a way to cook a potato, chances are, I will eat it. There is nothing like that starchy high, the comfort of perfectly executed spud heaven. The potato grounds a dish, gives it substance, and acts as a vehicle for other flavors. It is the great unifier in western meals, as rice and pasta are in so many other parts of the world. We love us some potatoes, but we tend to look down on hash. It is often seen as cheap and associated with poverty, but it shouldn't be! It is an amazing way to bring new flavors to your plate, and can really add variety to your dinner menu.

Hash is as fancy as you choose to make it, and there are as many ways to make hash as you can think up. It need not be relegated to being a breakfast dish only, as my face-melting curry hash can attest to. A good potato paired with fresh vegetables and meat and a little invention with the spice rack are the keys to turning a poor man's meal gourmet. I looked through my cupboard and these are the items I started with:

With these few ingredients, you can make:

Chorizo Hash with Roasted Red Peppers and Mushrooms

4 medium potatoes
4 large white mushrooms
3-4 garlic cloves
1 lime
Dried rosemary
Dried thyme
Parsley flakes
5 oz. roasted red peppers
2 Tbs. EVOO
2 large chorizo links

A word about chorizo:

Chorizo is badass tasty. It is spicy and a little greasy but not chewy and grisly. It is good in so many dishes and should be used on a regular basis. It is also usually made out of pork. We don't eat pork in this house because we are Muslim, but I converted, so I had a whole history with tasty swine for most of my life. I had found really good substitutes for bacon and pepperoni and even Italian sweet sausage. But I truly thought that chorizo was lost to me forever. Until I went to, you guessed it, the most badass spectacular gorgeous Mexican grocery store of all time! There it was, two fat, spicy links of tasty goodness labelled, "chorizo pollo". It was one of the best days of my life. I brought it home and got right to making this lovely little hash with it.

Speaking of that hash, start by cleaning, peeling, and chopping up your vegetables. Potatoes should be cubed, garlic minced, mushrooms sliced, and the peppers roughly chopped. Aren't my mushrooms pretty?  

Set your vegetables aside and start warming a large non-stick skillet to mudium-high. Thrown in your chorizo, squeeze half a lime over it, and let it sear a little bit on each side. Remember to turn it and not to leave it in too long; sausage of any kind rarely takes long to cook through. Sometimes, when you buy your sausage handmade and fresh, the tubing or intestines the meat was packed in might split. It may not look pretty, but there is nothing wrong with the sausage. Just roll with it. My chorizo split in a few places, so I took a sharp knife and continued the split down the side of both sausages. I turned the opened side of the sausage down and let it sizzle away. Once you have a little brown on each side, remove your sausage and set aside. With the grease from the sausage still in the pan, add a few dashes each of the rosemary, thyme, and parsley. Add your potatoes, squeeze the other half of your lime, and stir until they are evenly coated with the oil and spices. If the spices char to the bottom of the pan, add about 1/4 cup of water and stir it around. It will pull all of the cooked on flavor from the pan and give your potatoes a beautiful light brown color. After a few minutes of crackling and browning, add your mushrooms, peppers, and garlic. This is what mine looked like:

I just love the way the potatoes look in that picture, like they own the pan! Saute your vegetables until the mushrooms tighten up a bit, and when you are done, spoon them into a butter-lined baking dish. Nestle your chorizo into the hash and bake in a 375 degree oven for a half hour. I like to do this with the hash because I want the sausage and potato flavors to really mix together, so it becomes a more cohesive dish. When the half hour is up, your hash should look something like this:

This is what mine looked like when I plated it up:

Look at the steam rolling off that baby! I have to say, for all the spice of the chorizo, this was definitely a comfort food kind of meal. It was supremely fast and easy to make, and the result was incredibly savory and smooth. The best part was the potatoes, small and soft, full of zesty goodness. They got the attention they deserved, and it really paid off! I hope you love this recipe and make it for yourself and your family soon. Knives down and aprons off! It's time to dig in!