Making a Mess

Today I'm cooking with a craving for fried potatoes.

I spent a lot of my adulthood making a mess— on set, in life, online, and late at night cooking drunk in my own kitchen. The works. To the point where I have been reluctant to participate in any type of chaos for the last three years. But every now and then, a recipe comes along that’s so good it’s worth the mess.

Enter aruk, a potato fritter I made not once, not twice, but three times within the span of two weeks last December. The grease splatter on my stove and countertop was unimaginable. And somehow they’re still not out of my system.

Tonight I’m frying off a small batch: one pound yellow potatoes*, one egg, one Tablespoon flour, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, 1/4 teaspoon each smoked paprika, garlic powder, and turmeric, plus an absolute shitton of herbs from the garden.

I’ll aslo be mashing in a tin of lemon sardines from Kinda Collected. If you’re an idiot like me, you will enjoy how funny the packaging is; I laugh at that lil sardine getting a lemon juiced on its head every time I open my pantry. I can’t wait to eat them piping hot alongside a cold, crunchy salad of romaine, cucumber and leftover broiled feta + grapes from last week, tossed in Trader Joe’s vegan dill dressing.

*I find there are two tricks to getting these extra crispy— 1) use old potatoes and 2) boil or steam the potatoes skin-on and whole, then let them cool on a wire rack before mashing. If your mix looks too wet or isn’t getting crispy, consider adding extra flour.