Fondant potatoes

Vegetarians, look away now!

I'm finally getting around to updating this post.  On this very day (the one the blog is for, not the day I'm finally getting to write the post), I was looking forward to staying over at my mum's for the night.  Her and my step dad were going out for the evening, I planned to put the child to bed and then make myself a really nice steak with fondant potatoes and then spend the evening by myself reading recipe books and channel-hopping.

Of course, nothing ever goes to plan.  The child was an angel all day.  She got ready for bed, said goodnight to the grandparents, I took her upstairs, put her in the travel cot and she promptly climbed out.

The travel cot is something we've used when staying at my mum's for the last two years and I was hoping to get at least one more stay out of it.  Sadly not.  Miss A is very tall for her age and really doesn't like going to bed.  Many parents will be shocked, but she's still got the sides on her cot bed at the moment as we've not gotten round to resolving all the inherent dangers in our house to allow us to even attempt to let her sleep in an open bed.  We live in a townhouse with stairs that aren't suited to baby gates so not only do we have to stop her getting downstairs in the night but we also have to worry about her getting upstairs.  Or in the bath.  Or climbing the cupboards in her room.

Steak and potatoes.  Good, hearty food.

Anyhow, knowing that my mother's house is a death trap for an unattended toddler at the best of times, I ended up taking her back downstairs with me whilst I attempted to cook my tea.

The recipe from potatorecipes.co.uk was an interesting one as for four large potatoes, it suggested only 75ml of stock.  I would've thought that you needed far more to poach even one fondant potato but with having to ensure the child didn't break twenty million different ornaments, pull the telly upon herself, fish in the cat litter tray, discover butchers machetes in the kitchen drawer, open the cupboard where the cat food and bleach lives etc etc, I didn't have time to find another recipe or advice.

In the end, the potatoes were okay if a bit burnt because the liquid just evaporated.  The steak was perfectly cooked because I didn't have the time to leave it in the pan too long and I even had time to savour it because my really fussy child decided that a medium-rare steak looked like a good thing to eat and she sat perfectly at the table and munched on a bit whilst I ate mine.  Sadly I didn't have the time or energy to cook any veggies to go with it.

As for recipe book reading, it didn't happen.  I was in bed by 8pm with a slumbering toddler taking up 5/6ths of a double bed so no chance of lights on for reading.

So veggies, I'm sorry for the picture of the potatoes with a huge steak, but if you're looking for a good recipe I'd try a different one.  In fact, next time I'm going to try the BBC Good Food Garlicky Fondant Potatoes, as recommended to me by the lovely @EversNanaJules.