POTATO BALLS

Over the past couple of months, various cooking techniques have particularly piqued my interest. I follow a few YouTube channels that demonstrate easy cooking styles. My taste buds are still not accustomed to different cuisines, so quite often the seasonings are customize to my taste which is purely Bangladeshi. Just the night before Ramadan started, I stumbled upon something called potato balls. It was uploaded in a Chinese cooking channel, I don't even know the name of the channel since they used Chinese characters. Now, potato is a staple vegetable in Bangladesh. No matter how much we mess it up, it is still quite edible to us. So instead of hydrating myself thoroughly the night before Ramadan started, I tried this out. Plus they were steaming the potatoes, I really wanted to try doing that. I have seen a number of people start by steaming some dumplings but turns out I am not a big fan of dumplings so potato it is.

So first I peeled some potatoes, sliced it up and steamed it in the rice cooker. Interestingly steamed potatoes are creamier than the ones boiled in water. I then added corn starch to it little by little to get a firm enough dough, it shouldn't be sticky to the hand. The YouTuber used potato starch but since I didn't have that, corn starch it is. I added in some salt and finely chopped carrots. After mixing them up and rolling them in small balls of two centimetre diameter, I placed them in the steamer again and steamed it for 15 minutes in the rice cooker. Next, I had to prepare a topping to go with the potato balls. So in a frying pan smeared with oil, I added in some ground beef and seasoned it with salt, red chili flakes and minced garlic followed by chopped onions and chopped red bell peppers, after the beef was partially cooked. Once everything was cooked completely, I finished it with corn starch water to thicken it. To go with the potato balls and the beef topping, I made some Japanese-style egg fried rice. It is pretty quick to make, mainly I beat up an egg, mixed it with cooked rice and fried it thoroughly. I didn't have any particular plans of making it but somehow whipped it up. Finally to a bowl of rice, I added in some potato balls and topped it off with the beef.

Apparently, this didn't taste as good since neither my taste buds nor my hubby's taste buds could take it. It definitely looked delicious but just wasn't right for us. You should know by now that I don't like wasting food (especially from my mug cake fiasco). It is one of the prime reasons why I can't experiment too much at a time. So, to make use of the left over potato balls, I added in some onions, red chili flakes and mustard oil to it. Basically incorporated the taste of Bangladeshi styled mashed potato and sided it with rice. This apparently tasted better but what blew my mind away was potato balls with lentil soup. I didn't even take a snap of it, thinking it wouldn't taste good enough. I don't think I will be making these any time soon, since my hubby didn't enjoy any of the three ways. But if I do, it will be "Potato balls with lentil soup" next time.

INGREDIENTS:

For potato balls:

3 pcs medium sized potato

3 tbsp corn starch

0.5 tsp salt

2 tbsp finely chopped carrots

For beef topping:

1 cup ground beef

0.5 tsp salt

0.5 tsp red chili flakes

1 tsp minced garlic

1 tbsp chopped onion

1 tbsp chopped red bell pepper

2 tbsp corn starch water