I remember eating this dish for the first time in a seedy bar in Madrid…with several glasses of wine. It tasted fucking awesome. It’s called Patatas Bravas…which translates to “Fierce Potatoes”. It’s basically a “tapas” dish of fried potatoes and dressed in a savory sauce (like spiced mayonnaise or spicy tomato sauce).
I ketofied this dish, using rutabaga in lieu of potatoes. While rutabaga is a root vegetable, it has significantly less carbs than potatoes. Its texture is much like a waxy potato, and its flavour is a tad bitter. This is why I use it in this dish - where by deep frying the rutabaga and pairing it with a spicy sauce, I can conceal its bitterness.
To start, I filled a sauce pane half way with water, and added some sea salt, dried poblano chile powder, Spanish smoked paprika, cumin and a couple of bay leaves
I let the spicy mixture come to a boil
While the spiced water was coming to a boil, I started carving a rutabaga
First I got rid of its tough outer skin
Then I split it in half
Then I chopped it into cubes, trying to make the size as even as possible
I dropped the cubes into the boiling mixture
And after about 20 minutes, the cubes were fork tender. I removed them from the liquid and let air dry
While the rutabaga cubes were boiling, I was able to prepare some spicy hollandaise. I used the recipe as shown at this link. Otherwise, I could have used a mayonnaise instead.
I started with crushing some fresh garlic
And then I added some dried poblano powder, smoked paprika, cumin and sea salt
I then used a bit of red wine vinegar
I added the vinegar, little by little until I got the spicy hollandaise at the desired level of tang
The final sauce looked and tasted delicious
To fry the rutabaga cubes, I started with putting about an inch of lard in a sauce pan
When the oil was hot, I dropped in the rutabaga cubes
It took about 18 minutes for the cubes to reach a nice brown colour
The fried cubes were removed from hot oil and transferred to paper towel to soak up excess grease
While the cubes were draining on the towel, I started making the salt blend
I added sea salt, dried poblano powder, smoked paprika, fresh ground pepper and ground cumin
The ingredients were mixed to form a spicy salt blend
I then tossed the patatas in the spicy salt, making sure they were evenly coated
Plating of the patatas bravas
But to make it authentic patatas bravas, as you would find as a tapas in Spain, I added toothpicks
Close up
The perfect bite
Haven’t made them in a while and using the hollandaise and lard in the process,would counter the carb content of the rutabaga nicely and still keep BG low, at least, that seems to work for me.