Here’s a pretty simple and delicious recipe that really satisfies – it’s a potato dish, so it’s good for the carb lovers among us, and it’s not shy in using cheese. But it’s more than just a simple cheesy potatoes dish – it pairs some bite-sized fingerling potatoes with mimolette, a French cheese that isn’t so common in the U.S. If you’ve never had the chance to work with mimolette, take this as your chance: it’s a very distinctive-looking cheese that tastes somewhat like Parmesan. We adapted this dish from a recipe from Bon Appétit, and decided to make these potatoes after we visited a cheese shop that had mimolette prominently featured. It seemed like a sign from the universe, so we picked some up and then got to work. You can serve this as a side dish, but we decided to make it a small meal for ourselves, and we really enjoyed it – so here’s the quick and easy steps to cook it up on your own.
You’ll need:
- Olive oil
- 2 pounds of fingerling potatoes, or another variety of small potatoes
- Butter
- A lime
- Smoked paprika
- 1/4 pound of mimolette
You’ll want to start by cutting all your potatoes in half, then warming 1/4 cup of olive oil over medium heat in a large cast iron pan. Place in the potatoes, add in salt and pepper, and cook, moving them around in the pan every so often, for about 10 minutes or until they all start to brown.
Next, slice up 2 tablespoons of butter and put that in the pan along with the juice from your lime, 2 teaspoons of smoked paprika, and 1/2 cup of water. Turn the heat down to low and cover the pan to let the potatoes steam for another 10-15 minutes, until they’re tender enough to eat and the water in the pan has evaporated.
Place the potatoes in a serving platter, and grate up all your mimolette.
Gently mix most of the mimolette with the potatoes, then sprinkle whatever is left over on top. And that’s it – now you can enjoy your potatoes!
This was a great recipe for a day when we didn’t feel like putting in a lot of work, since all you have to do is cut your potatoes in half, let them sauté and steam in your pan, then grate cheese and mix it in. But thanks to the mimolette, these felt rather elevated and fancy for the amount of effort we put in. We liked using two different cooking methods here – pan frying the potatoes in oil first gives them a crispiness on the outside, and then steaming them in the pan gives them a perfect tenderness inside. The mimolette’s saltiness and nuttiness are a good complementing flavor to any small potatoes, and the vivid color of the mimolette adds a really nice look to these fingerlings as well. All in all these were some great potatoes to sink our teeth into, for a tasty, interesting but not too heavy meal.