Hors d'oeurves anyone?Here, try my Tater Pig Puffs!

First, and most importantly, let's discuss the inspiration for this dish. While we all know that this site is inherently gay, it hasn't been nearly gay enough for me lately, so I thought I'd toss some sprinkles of fabulous on this bitch and tip my metaphorical hat to my personal deity:

Cher.

For this challenge, I channeled not just any incarnation of Cher. I channeled Cher as Ms. Rachel Flax of the grossly under-appreciated film Mermaids.



If you've ever seen the movie, you may recall that Rachel Flax's sole cooking style consists of hors d'oeurves.

With that inspiration, I set forth to create the Tater Pig Puff.

Ingredients:

1 package (consists of 2 sheets) of puff pastry
1 large (or 2 medium) Idaho russet potatoes
3 good sized sausage links (for you size queens)
1 cup medium or sharp shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup sour cream
1 Tbs. butter
2 Tbs. finely chopped chives
Kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper
Makes approximately 30 Tater Pig Puffs

Directions:

Puff pastry needs to thaw for approximately 40 minutes on a counter top before you can start working with it, so prepare for that wait time accordingly. Then preheat your oven to 400 degrees, set some water up for boiling on the stove top and get ready to have an inappropriate amount of fun!

I started out by peeling the potato, chopping it into thick pieces and tossing them into a pot of boiling water. The idea here is to make a good, basic mashed potato. I didn't take a picture of this because I was drunk at the time.



After the potato gets going, chop up the sausage into fairly small pieces and throw into a skillet with a bit of salt and pepper. I used Falls Brand sausage to make this an extra authentic experience. Go Idaho! Anyhoo, fry the sausage bits on medium to medium-high heat for about 7 minutes. After it's done cooking, drain it on a paper towel-lined plate.

While the sausage is cooking, you can cut up your pieces of puff pastry to the desired size - about 1 1/2 inches square each. Put the puff pastry squares on an ungreased baking sheet and cook in a 400 degree oven for 8 minutes. They will come out of the oven looking comically puffy like this:



After letting those cool down for a minute, you can smoosh them down with your (clean) fingers.

Your potato should be done by now (about 18 minutes), so it's time to mash it up with 1 Tbsp. of butter, 1/2 cup of heavy cream and a lot of salt and pepper. Best to do this with a handheld mixer, but manually will work too.

After your potato is mashed and your sausage is cooked and drained, it's time to start piling the ingredients onto your smooshed down puff pastry squares. Like so:



You'll start with a sprinkling of cheese, then a tablespoon of mashed potato, then a sprinkling of little sausage bites. Put the baking sheet back into the 400 degree oven for another 4 to 5 minutes.

Top off with a dollop of sour cream and a few finely chopped chives and VOILA!



I have to say, I wasn't expecting these appetizers to actually be as good as they were. I was going for funny, but I accidentally ended up with delicious! And they look good too!

In closing, I would like to thank Cher. For everything. Amen.

Soy una patata del taco! Muy bueno!

This Tater Pig Challenge entry comes to us via a very Claymazing med student. He, like Country Gay, ran with the twice-baked potato idea, but gave it a Mexican flair. Olé!

Twice-Baked Taco Potatoes

Ingredients

5 baking potatoes

4 links of chorizo sausage (~1 lb)*

½ large white onion, diced

1 jalapeno, diced, seeds removed

1 poblano pepper, diced, seeds removed

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp garlic powder

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1 Tbsp tomato paste

1 cup chicken broth

1 cup sour cream (I used light)

1 1/2 cups shredded cheese, divided (I used a Mexican blend)

Chives, chopped for garnish

* Chorizo is made with different amounts of spices depending on where you get it from. You may have to increase or decrease the suggested amounts of other spices for the taco mix to account for this.

Preheat oven to 400°. Scrub potatoes and place them on a baking sheet. Do not wrap in foil. Bake for about 1 hr 15 min, or until fork tender.

While potatoes are baking, prepare taco mixture. Brown chorizo in a skillet, then add onion, peppers, and spices. Once the onions have softened, add tomato paste and chicken broth. Mix well. Allow the mixture to simmer uncovered until it is the consistency of taco meat (i.e. not soupy). Set aside until potatoes are baked.

Remove baked potatoes from the oven. Let them cool for about 5 minutes, but slice them in half while still warm. Holding them with a towel works pretty well. Scoop out the insides of the potatoes into a bowl, leaving just enough on the outer skin for it to support being stuffed.

Set oven to 350°.

Mash the potatoes to desired consistency. Add taco mixture, sour cream, and 1 cup of shredded cheese. Mix well. Use a spoon to fill each of the potato halves with generous amounts of the taco stuffing. Place stuffed potatoes back on the baking sheet. Cover potatoes with remaining shredded cheese, and return to the oven for another 15 minutes or until heated through. Garnish with chives.

Eat me. I'm an Irish tater pig.

Because of my exceptionally busy social life, I'm not going to be home when the deadline hits, so I'm delivering my post now. (And I drafted this yesterday, so the post date makes it look like I'm super early.) Enjoy.

Before I went to the grocery store to buy ingredients for my reinvented tater pig, the biggest question in my mind was, "What kind of cheese should I use?"

It's no surprise that I am a fan of all cheeses, and for a moment I thought something like a bleu cheese or gorgonzola could be interesting. However, I quickly ruled these out because I feared the taste would be too overwhelming. While shopping the cheese area of Fred Meyer, I saw one of my new favorites: Dubliner. It has a sharp taste and a flaky consistency. It has just enough of a bite to make it interesting but not overpowering. I knew that would be what I needed for my cosmopolitanized - and slightly Irish - tater pig.


I had also made a decision to make the tater pig a twice-baked tater pig. In my family, twice-baked potatoes are a holiday favorite. They're rich and stuffed with sour cream, bacon, butter, and cheese. I decided to play off of my mom's recipe for twice-baked potatoes and hoped I'd come out with something more sophisticated than the fair's tater pig.


The beginning is simple: prepare a baked potato. Because I knew my week would be busy, I did this a couple of days ahead of time and refrigerated the potato until I was ready to use it. When I was ready, I split the potato down the middle and did my best to scoop out the innards. This is unlike a normal twice-baked potato where one would cut the potato in half, scoop out the inside, and then refill the halves. I liked that I was going to be putting the potato back into a full-sized potato; however, this also proved slightly difficult (but manageable).


After I had scooped out the insides, I mashed the potato with a spoon, shredded about 1/4 cup of cheese into it, and added a large dollop of sour cream. I also added just a bit of salt and pepper, though in retrospect I think there was enough seasoning in the sausage to take care of that.

As for the sausage, I went with an unexciting Jimmy Dean sausage patty for my sausage choice. Actually, I thought it would be unexciting, but there was a bit of a spicy kick to the sausage, which was a surprise in a good way. I fried four of the patties, knowing I'd only use two in the recipe. I used the other two as an appetizer, which made me excited to get to the sausage actually in the tater pig.


When the sausage was done, I simply patted the grease out with paper towels and tore one of the patties into the potato, sour cream, and cheese mixture. I placed one patty in the bottom of the potato and then stuffed the mixture back into the potato skin. This, again, was a bit challenging because I didn't want to tear the potato, and because of the added ingredients, the space wasn't really big enough for the filling. However, this allowed the filling to be piled high on the skin.


The potato went into a preheated 350 degree oven for about 35 minutes, just enough to heat everything through. In retrospect, I should have sprinkled some cheese on the top and let it bake a bit longer to give a crunchier top.

Brad eyed the potato, but I wasn't going to let that little gnome eat all of my hard work. Unfortunately, my digital camera has problems taking close-ups of food, so the photos of the finished product turned out terribly. You'll just have to look past Brad's head for an idea of the finished Irish tater pig.


The potato was tasty, and the Dubliner cheese added a different taste than what one gets with the regular spicy nacho cheese. The sour cream was a bit much, so I would probably put in a little bit less in the future. But the sour cream also causes the dish to be extremely rich, which helps makes this its own meal.

The most exciting part of my reinvented pig was the way the sausage was spread throughout the potato. At the fair, an eater gets one sausage link (which I'm sure is plenty for some). Because of the patty in the bottom of the potato and the sausage sprinkled throughout the mixture, there was a bit of sausage in every bite. This helped feed my love for the sausage.

The potato was filling on its own, but it is a time consuming concoction. Baking the potato takes about 80 minutes in a 350 degree oven, preparation time takes about 15 minutes (which is mostly cooking the sausage), and reheating time is about 35 minutes. While I might not make this often, I can see me using it as a side dish in the more traditional twice-baked potato way but with the reinvented filling.

The tater pig seems like such an Idaho county fair stand by, but by adding a bit of an Irish twist, the fair guilty pleasure becomes a slightly refined and filling meal. However, even with the refinement, there is still a very country feel to the new and improved pig.

Challenge Countdown

In only 25 short hours, the first City Gay/Country Gay challenge will conclude. If you haven't bought your taters and slaughtered your pigs yet, get on it!

Oh wait. That's 25 hours in my time zone. If you are in City Gay's time zone, you have more time. Tricky!

Hello, sausage my old friend...

The challenge is on, bitches.

I made my new tater pig tonight, and it was tasty. Full details to come upon the deadline.

Challenge Numero Uno

In light of my recent devouring of a tater pig at the fair, City Gay and I have decided on the first challenge - for ourselves and our reader(s).

Your assignment, should you wish to accept it, is to put a new spin on the classic tater pig. For those still unschooled in what a classic tater pig is (or who are too lazy to scroll down and read what I said about it), a tater pig is simply a baked potato stuffed with a sausage link and cheese whiz. (There is a variation in which chili is used; this is something you might want to consider.) One usually adds butter and sour cream to the tater pig to finish it off.

Here are the guidelines:

• You must use the main ingredients: potato, sausage, cheese (does not have to be "whizzy"), and sour cream.
• The sausage does not necessarily have to be placed inside the potato, but it does need to be part of the dish.
• If you are one of those vegetarian-types, you may use some sort of soy sausage

The deadline for this competition is Sunday, September 16 at 5:00 p.m. If you would like to participate, submit a photo/recipe to me (CountryGay@gmail.com) or City Gay (CityGay@gmail.com). All submissions will be posted at the same time to thwart cheating. (Of course, City Gay and I could steal everyone's ideas, so take your chances.)

If you have any questions, ask... or make up your own answers.

Love always,
Country Gay