Dutch Potato and Apple Mash with Minced Meat and Smoked Bacon

We have family from Australia bunking at our place this week, so it’s a great time for me to try out a new recipe or two.

I saw this one for Dutch Potato and Apple Mash with Minced Meat and Smoke Bacon (otherwise more elegantly known as Hete Bliksem) on Almost Bourdain. After drooling over the beautiful pictures on Ellie’s blog and eyeballing the recipe ingredients, I decided it would be the perfect thing to make to welcome our house guests when they arrived at dinner time on Sunday night.

Besides the hefty amount of washing up that had to be done after, this was great fun to make. It’s not everyday you get to cook and mash a whole bunch of apples for your main course. (Plus, I always get a kick out of putting some mileage on the brilliant apple divider that my husband got me last year from Williams-Sonoma.)

The result was mushy indeed, and for some reason mine looked a fair bit mushier than Ellie’s! But it was very delicious. And nutritious too – carb, protein and vitamins all in one little dish. I thought it looked sort of like baby food for adults (at least the way mine turned out =O), but it was very tasty, and the texture was perfect for our dinner party because the baby in our midst could have some too. And he seemed to enjoy it =).

I’m reproducing the recipe here, almost verbatim because Ellie’s instructions are very clear. But you really should go read her excellent blog post for the background to this Dutch comfort food.

Dutch Potato and Apple Mash with Minced Meat and Smoke Bacon

(adapted from Almost Bourdain)

Ingredients (serves 4):

500g sweet (red) apples, peeled, cored and chopped
500g tangy (green) apple , peeled, cored and chopped
1 kg potatoes, peeled and cut into pieces
300 g smoked bacon, in one piece (I couldn’t find this in the supermarket so I bought a pack of smoke bacon strips)
25g butter
300g minced beef and pork (seasoned with salt and pepper)
Salt and freshly ground pepper
50ml milk
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

1. Prepare apples and potatoes (peel, chop etc.)

2. Put potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with water. Scatter chopped apples over the potatoes and place smoked bacon on top. Partially cover and cook about 25 minutes until apples are soft.

3. In a frying pan, heat the butter and stir-fry the minced meat until brown.

4. In a saucepan, heat the milk with the cloves and cinnamon.

5. Drain the potatoes and apples and remove the bacon from the pan. Dice the bacon.

6. Mash the potato and apple mix to a puree. Add just enough spiced milk to make a creamy mash. Mix in the minced meat.

7. Scoop out individual servings and sprinkle diced bacon over the top. Serve immediately.

Ellie says the Dutch use many different meat and vegetable combinations for their mash dishes. Something tells me this one is going to be just the first of many that I make…