Deepfrieddiamonds

I’m coming at you Diamonds with a little two for one special on this lazy, rainy Tuesday afternoon! I thought it would be super fun to introduce a dish to all of you that you can create really quick, and easy, while being able to construct it in two totally different ways. I often think some of us forget how many side dishes are so versatile, especially during the summer months when the grill is opened for business! 😉 Even though these two potato plates are polar opposites, they’re also similar in some ways. Your choice is to decide if you want more of a straight up ranch vibe going on, or if you want to bump up the flavor with some decadent melty, creamy cheese, oozing right over top of them! These grilled potatoes are perfect to make all year round if you have a grill pan to use on the stove, but they really do hit different during this time when we wonder what else we can pair with our stacked up cheeseburgers, and wonderful hot dog bars.

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Ranch Coated Potato Wedges Topped With An Herby Sour Cream:

These hot and steamy wedges are crunchy, crispy, smooth, fluffy, and creamy! Everything you could ever want from a simple, yet super succulent plate of food!

The first step to both of these potato recipes are to bake the potatoes as if you were only going to make a plain baked potato! Set the oven to 400 degrees, and bake them for an hour, or until fork tender. Before popping them into the oven, rub them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

• The ranch seasoning packet that we’re going to be using is garlicky within itself, but the garlic and onion flavors in this dish is truly what it going to make it all so delicious!
• After they come out of the oven, let them cool for a little, so that you can handle them with care. To get them into the nice wedge shapes that we are longing them to be in.. cut the whole potato in half, and then in half once more.

Place all of the potato wedges into a bowl, and drizzle them with olive oil.

Depending on the punch of ranch flavor you’re looking for will depend on how much of the seasoning packet you will add. I added a little less than half of the packet because once they come off the grill we’re going to sprinkle some over top for garnish and extra flavoring, as well as adding it into the sour cream mixture for the drizzle at the end.

    Grab your bowl of potatoes, a pair of tongs, and head out to the grill! 

• Preheat the grill to medium heat. Set the potatoes on the grill face down. I know usually when you do chicken, fish, or some sort of protein with skin you cook the skin side first, but I don’t normally choose to do that when I make potatoes of any kind!

Once you let the potato wedges cook for three minutes, flip then over to the other side, and cook for another three minutes, or just until it gets to the darkness that you want them to be. I wouldn’t suggest letting them get too many black markings on it though because you definitely don’t want these to give off any type of burnt flavor. No one likes that unless its a hot dog! 😉

This herby dressing we’re going to make to drizzle on top of our gorgeous grilled potatoes is really as easy as pie! Dump half of a container of sour cream into a serving bowl with the rest of the ranch seasoning packet, along with a dash of Worcestershire sauce. It’s going to pretty much remind you of a very, very thick ranch dressing.. just without a few other ingredients that I wouldn’t miss out on if I was making my traditional, famous ranch dressing!

     So herby, so creamy, and so so good! 

I love presenting these wedges like oversized jenga blocks. 😉 Then for the best and final part.. drizzle the herby ranch sour cream dressing all over the potatoes! Garnish with fresh cracked black pepper, a sprinkling of the ranch seasoning, and chopped parsley. These are going to be your go to “French fries” from now on because let me tell you Diamonds.. once you have these puppies, throwing frozen French fries in the oven definitely will not suffice!!

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Grilled scallion and cheese halved potatoes! 

These are very similar to the previous potato wedges, except these are just halved, and loaded with two melty, mouthwatering cheeses, and instead of the ranch filled sour cream, this sour scream is filled with an inviting bite of green onions for that extra snap of flavor!

After baking the potatoes the same way as the last at 400 degrees for an hour, let them cool for a few minutes, and cut them all in half.

Even though the goal with this isn’t for them to scream RANCH, we still want that delicious salty garlic, and onion flavor, so we’re going to shake a few shakes of that on to all of the halved potatoes. Then rub them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and dried parsley to get them ready for the hot grill.

just like the ranch wedges.. I placed these all face down on to the grill that was set to medium heat. Since these potatoes are already fully cooked all we are searching for is that gorgeous, crispy brown color, along with those great grill lines that everyone loves when they’ve cooked something from the grill.

The color and texture of these are exactly what you want them to be! No less, no more. As I said before you really want to make sure you’re not letting them get a burnt after taste to them when everyone is going to try to be enjoying them. As soon as you flip them onto their skin.. pile each one with a slice of American cheese. This cheese is what is going to give them that luxurious taste that we’re looking for when it comes to this particular dish.

After you’ve placed the American cheese on each one, pile a small handful of sharp shredded cheddar cheese so that it could get melty, stringy, and ooze off the sides of each potato as it finishes its process on the grill.

When they start looking like they are almost fully melted, you may shut the grill off, close the lid, and leave them sit for another final minute.

Have a serving tray, or platter sitting on the side of the grill so that you can easily take them off; having somewhere to place them to carry them back inside!

You don’t have to make as many of these as I’m showing here, but we were having my family over the house, so we doubled up on these bad boys because I knew people would be going up for seconds. Without a doubt these will be the life of your party! It’s like a baked potato times 100!! For the sour scream on top as I said, just chop up a bunch of scallions and mix them in with it, along with salt and pepper. Lastly, garnish with the rest of the chopped scallions, and voila! 🙂 The most marvelous, melty, grilled topped potato you will ever have in your life! 

Now that you Diamonds know how easy these are to whip up, and how delicious they look.. you’ll want to continue to make them for your side every single night once you find out that they taste as delicious as they appear to be!

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ENJOY DIAMONDS, XOXO

This salad truly couldn’t be more simple, fresh, and wonderfully delicious! I love salads where you put together a few wholesome ingredients that compliment each other to a T, and then just gently lay it all over a bed of beautiful greens. You could use any fluffy, leafy, crisp green that’s going to hold up to all of the the oil & vinegar that is going to get poured over top of everything, but I chose green leaf lettuce that I got straight from my local farmers market. Now, if you are like me and have become obsessed with getting all of your produce from the farm.. just be aware that if you purchase any kind of lettuce there to wash it extremely well when you get back home. I wouldn’t even recommend washing it only when it’s whole either. Wash it before and after you cut it because it could have an insane amount of dirt on it, and we definitely don’t want that anywhere near our delicate dish, along with having tiny little bugs crawling along the crinkles of the leaves, so we want to be certain it is free from all of that nonsense!

To kick off our salty, creamy, and yet a little sweet salad.. cube a whole block of mozzarella cheese, medium dice a small jar of roasted red peppers, and half a nice handful of briny kalamata olives.

• When you empty out the jar of roasted red peppers, do not get rid of the liquid inside!! We will use some of that later! 
• Let’s talk mozzarella cheese for a second: I did mention a “block”, and you might be wondering what that means because you’ve only ever seen it shredded in bags, or fresh in a ball. Those assumptions are both very true, although there are brands that create mozzarella cheese in a square block form, and on the package it says “firm”. I want you to use the more firm mozzarella as I did if you’s can; being that the dressing will hold up on it much better, and if there are left overs the cheese will not get soft, and soggy as quickly as it would if you used it from the softer “ball”.
• Now.. for some kalamata olive talk: If you don’t love olives, or you think you dont.. still give this a try, and do not skip on the olives! The salty punch you get from olives when you take a bite mixing with the sweet, and smokiness from the pepper, along with the creaminess of the cheese is just phenomenal!

As I already mentioned earlier.. make sure your bright, leafy green lettuce is washed well! That is super super important, especially if you’re making this dish for your whole family, or even more importantly.. you’re having guests over! You surely wouldn’t want anyone running into anything they don’t want to be running into. Lol. If you don’t have the lettuce fully chopped how you wanted when you washed it, you can go back in, and make those cuts, or rips. With an incredibly leafy green like this, it’s easiest to just tear pieces from each other unless you were making a “chopped” salad, but that isn’t the look we’re going for with this. I like an Italian inspired plate such as this one, to look rustic.. which is why I chose to put it in a textured wooden bowl. You Diamonds know how I feel about gorgeous presentation, and the contrasting of colors!

After you have chopped up our three super stars for this salad, you can add our vinegary bites to the bowl of the mozzarella cheese.

Once everything is all mixed up together in the bowl, go ahead and pour really good olive oil over top of everything, so that it nicely coated, and shiny! Along with the olive oil, drop in a tablespoon or so of balsamic vinegar, or even the glaze if you have that on hand. If you didn’t add the glaze and just used the vinegar, drizzle in some honey. You Diamonds might have figured it out already if you’ve been coming on the blog for a while now, but if you haven’t.. I love, love, love including honey in a majority of dishes that I create! We definitely can’t forget about seasonings since that is what I believe takes things to a whole other dimension! Sprinkle in salt, pepper, parsley, Italian seasoning, dried basil, garlic powder, and onion powder to taste. I never measure seasonings, or want to almost demand all of you how much you have to put in because everyone is different, and we all love different tastes. What tastes strong to you, may not taste strong to me, and vise versa!

• We are going to use that roasted red pepper juice that I told you to save earlier, as well as the same amount of liquid from the jar of kalamata olives. These two ingredients are going to have a lot of flavor impact in this dressing.. which is going to allow it marinate so stunningly.

After letting the trifecta sit in the cold fridge letting the dressing soak in, marinating everything together marvelously.. now is the time to spoon it all on top of the lettuce. Leave the marinated salad on TOP of our lettuce instead of mixing it in because we want this to look dressed with so many delectable goodies to make it look like all of these yummy things are actually garnishing our lettuce leaves!

You know whats next Diamonds! Garnish, garnish, garnish! Even though this plate already looks really radiant, these few little steps to make it even more pretty will just heighten it’s presentation game!

• Drizzle the top with more olive oil, fresh cracked black pepper, chopped parsley, and grated parmesan cheese. 
• Parmesan cheese on a salad like this with a ton of oil & vinegar flavors is just pure magic!

This marinated mozzarella, roasted red pepper, and kalamata olive salad is exceptional, and everyone that comes over will adore it! This is a dish that can be brought to any party, any cookout, and paired with anything. I can assure you that it’s going to taste as incredible as it looks! I made this with sticky honey mustard grilled chicken thighs, and loaded baked potatoes, and let me tell you Diamonds.. it was the most perfect compliment to the meal. My parents were in awe over how flavorful it was because there honestly isn’t much to it at all! As I have said many of times before.. you don’t need an over amount of ingredients to make something unique, delicious, and popular for that matter!

We have one more month of sensational summer eats here on Deep Fried Diamonds until I switch over to some warm, and fabulous fall food that I know you all will adore so much, so get excited for the next season to come, as you still continue to enjoy the rest of what summer on the blog has to offer! I’ll be back with more simple, yet succulent dishes next week Diamonds! 🙂

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XOXO

Avocado toast should get the gold medal for being the absolute best toast in the world! Am I right Diamonds?! 🙂 The reason why it is just the BEST besides being so simply succulent, is the fact that there are a million different ways you can spice it up, and top them off!! They are incredibly fun to make, and even more fun to eat! Avocado toast is probably one of my most favorite things to eat of all time whether that would be for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, or a snack no matter where the sun, or moon may be. Although I do have so many foods that I adore more than anything, this plate will always be on my to die for list!

I’m pretty certain you have never had avocado toast in this fashion, but Diamonds let me tell you, once you do.. you will never go back to having plain avocado toast with a squeeze of lime juice over top of it again. Okay, okay you might, but not very often! Not that that isn’t super delicious on it’s own, but once you kick things up in your life, you usually don’t end up going back to what you were once used to! The flavors of this toast are truly so so impeccable! Every time I make food I make sure every single thing you’re going to taste off of it is contrasting to each other. I don’t enjoy when I’m eating something and all I am tasting is too sweet, or too tangy, and so on! It has to connect with on another, and everything must marry beautifully!

Since the hardest part about making these little pieces of toasts are cooking the eggs, let’s start with that! While you have your toast in the toaster, crack two large eggs into a small frying pan that’s sprayed with butter spray! You could also choose to use a pad of butter instead, but the spray works just as well, and still gives off great flavor. Just make sure the spray you are using is butter flavored! Fry these babies on medium-low heat for about two minutes, and then flip them over. Once you’ve flipped the eggs over, put a slit straight down the middle of the eggs, so that they can become separated for each piece of toast. Now.. if you wanted two eggs per slice, that’s totally up to you!

While you are waiting for your toast and eggs, break apart four kalamata olives opened from it’s pit, then chiffonade ( long, thin strips of leafy greens) three basil leaves.

If your avocado is small than you may use a whole one, but mine was big enough that I was able to use only one half of an avocado to make two pieces of toast. Add salt & pepper to taste! Avocado loves loves loves salt & pepper!

SMOTHER THAT GOODNESS AROUND!  😉 

After the avocado is nicely spread to a thick layer on the toast, go ahead and sprinkle as much mozzarella cheese as you would like. You might think you don’t need any more creaminess because of the avocado, but we’re not necessarily looking for creaminess as much as we are stringiness! The cheese pull you’ll get when you bite down, mixed with the velvety texture of the avocado, along with the buttery drip coming down from the egg is seriously superb! 

• This briny and sweet basil avocado toast comes from delicious Greek kalamata olives getting cozied up with some sweet sweet drizzles of sticky honey. These two ingredients take the silky avocado to another dimension. It is just down right incredible.
• To top off this tasty toast, I tossed on a chiffonade of bright, fresh basil leaves. The basil really rounded this dish out! Besides the herb, I finished everything off with how I usually always finish every piece of toast off that I consume, and that’s with a sprinkling of black pepper, and everything but the bagel seasoning!

    Get toasting Diamonds! 

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XOXO