Eat for Eight Bucks: Gravy Cheese Oven Fries with Roasted Garlic
Shopping List
3 large russet potatoes (about 1 3/4 pounds) - $1.78
16 ounces beef/chicken/vegetable stock - $1.59
4 ounces Gruyère cheese - $3.95
2 heads garlic - $0.70
Pantry items:
Flour, butter, olive oil
Total cost: $8.02
When it's as cold out as it's been this week, my inner carb-monster crawls out and demands to be fed. Problem is, she's got my outer sloth-monster to contend with. When I'm bundled up at my writing desk, the fewer the steps, the more appealing the recipe.
This weekend, I came up with a dish to appease both beasts. Call it mock poutine or tarted-up disco fries, it's a comforting mess of thick-cut oven fries, shredded Gruyère, and rich beef gravy, strewn with roasted garlic.
In addition to being unapologetically stodgy, it's flexible. You can use any good melting cheese in place of the Gruyère, from Emmenthal to Cheddar to Fontina, and the gravy can be made with a full-flavored chicken or vegetable broth instead of beef. Best of all, it's really not much work at all. You don't have to peel the potatoes, there's no boiling oil to deal with, and—serendipity!—the garlic takes about as long in the oven as the fries.
Gravy Cheese Oven Fries with Roasted Garlic
Be sure to cut your fries nice and fat, or they may break during turning. To prevent sticking, toss them carefully in the olive oil, leaving no fry uncovered.
- serves 2 -
Ingredients
3 large russet potatoes (about 1 3/4 pounds), peeled or scrubbed, cut lengthwise into 1/2-inch-wide planks, each plank cut lengthwise into 1/2-inch-wide strips
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
2 bulbs (heads) garlic, intact
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
16 ounces low-sodium beef, chicken, or vegetable stock
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 ounces Gruyère cheese, grated
Procedure
1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Place potato batons in a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons olive oil and toss to coat thoroughly.
2. Remove papery, outermost skin from garlic, but keep the bulb intact. Slice off top 1/2 inch of bulb, exposing each clove; discard trimmings. Drizzle each bulb with 1/2 teaspoon olive oil and rub with fingers to ensure top is evenly coated. Wrap and seal each bulb in aluminum foil.
3. Roast potatoes and garlic parcels on top rack of oven. After 20 minutes, turn potatoes with spatula. Roast until potatoes are tender and golden around the edges and garlic cloves are soft when pressed, about 20 minutes more. Sprinkle fries and garlic with kosher salt.
4. While potatoes and garlic are roasting, prepare gravy. In a saucepan, over medium heat, combine flour and butter. Stir until incorporated and cook, stirring frequently, until mixture is the color of peanut butter, about 3 minutes. Add the stock in small increments, whisking to incorporate after each addition. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until mixture has thickened, 15 to 20 minutes. Season well with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and keep warm.
5. Pile fries on a rimmed plate and top with grated Gruyère cheese and hot gravy (reheat if necessary). Place one bulb of roasted garlic on each plate. To eat, squeeze the cloves from their skins and smear onto fries.
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15 Comments:
I suppose I can scrape up the extra 2¢ in the couch cushions. ;)
Adam Kuban at 3:53PM on 03/05/09
Oh, man. I am SO making these.
yogurtsoda at 3:56PM on 03/05/09
so what do you do with the garlic?
Timothyrows at 4:03PM on 03/05/09
@Timothyrows Sorry to be unclear; I've amended the final step of the recipe. The cloves are squeezed out of their skins at the table and smeared on the fries.
Michele Humes at 4:08PM on 03/05/09
i think an angioplasty should be factored into the final costs...but i'm going to make these anyway!!!!!
dmarina at 5:10PM on 03/05/09
As long as I have box of pasta, some ramen or a potato in the house, my inner carb-monster and my outer sloth-monster cohabitate nicely...
bito35 at 5:15PM on 03/05/09
Angioplasty is a bit overwrought—the entire dish contains seven teaspoons of olive oil (and that's presuming you eat every drop of the oil, that none is left on the roasting sheet or on the garlic), two tablespoons of butter, and four ounces of gruyere cheese. On average, that's a total of 91g of fat for the entire dish (the potatoes, garlic, and broth contribute negligible fat). With 28 ounces of russet potatoes and about 30 cloves of garlic, the entire dish (serves two) comes to 1936 calories, with the potatoes and the gruyere adding the most calories to it.
That's not an "everyday" food, for sure, but compare it to the Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries appetizer: weighing in at 18 ounces (so far fewer potatoes), it contains a whopping 182g of fat and 2900 calories. And no roasted garlic! Leaving out roasted garlic is never a good choice.
Want to lower the fat? Try turning the roasted garlic into a creamy hummus as a dip instead of using gravy and cheese, but go easy on the tahini if you do. (Dean Ornish had a great recipe for fat-free hummus using the flavorful, thick liquid that canned chickpeas come in.)
Or use a lower-fat cheese that you like, or skip the gravy (287 calories, 23.2g of fat in the recipe come from the butter, flour, and veggie broth, and the broth contributes 960mg of sodium, about two-thirds of the 1424mg sodium in the total dish [excluding whatever salt you add for seasoning]).
But if you've just got to have loaded fries, this is a lot tastier and healthier than a lot of the alternatives I've seen. As always, eat rich things in moderation, but don't skimp on the roasted garlic!
(An old Cook's Illustrated tip: if you'd rather not squeeze individual cloves of roasted garlic, put the entire roasted head, cut side down, in your potato ricer and squeeze. The garlic comes through as a nice puree, and the skins stay behind in the hopper. Use any leftover roasted garlic on bread [like crostini], in salad dressing, mashed potatoes, or anyplace else you can imagine.)
mdeatherage at 5:42PM on 03/05/09
Coming from Pittsburgh, I must say there is nothing better than french fries and brown gravy - but this looks heavenly!
floridayaya at 7:01PM on 03/05/09
I consider myself a healthy eater, but when I was living in England, sometimes chips for dinner from a proper chippy is all I needed for a rainy evening! I don't like gravy or cheese on really good chips, though.
HeartofGlass at 7:29PM on 03/05/09
@mdeatherage, consider a sense-of-humor-plasty, seems yours is obstructed.
saltcrystal at 8:15PM on 03/05/09
I'm a heart patient, saltcrystal, and have to take things a bit more seriously than I used to when it comes to food—both noting the bad things that are hidden in common foods (cough tons of salt cough) and the good things that get a bad rep.
This is the latter, I think. I'm fixing it for dinner now. :-)
mdeatherage at 9:14PM on 03/05/09
Nice, this reminds me of my homemade interpretation of poutine, but you're much more industrious than I, I resort to the freezer bag of "fast food style fries". But then, you write a food blog, I'd expect you to go the extra mile! And the roasted garlic is a touch I'll be working in!!
@mdeatherage, thanx for the ricer tip for the roasted garlic!!!
chanterelle at 9:48PM on 03/05/09
This is also how I do homemade poutine - roast the potatoes in the oven to avoid the deep frying and playing with the cheeses just makes great dinners (though I still have to go back to the real nice squeaky cheese curds every once and awhile. Just something about them)
I will definitely have to try the addition of the garlic - I love roasted garlic. Next time!
JJLoa at 6:36PM on 03/06/09
Not to be so Canadian about it, but this recipe is more like American cheese fries than a poutine (esp. since it lacks cheese curds - which add to the texture). Actually - the poutine has become a point of Canadian nationalism, as demonstrated in this video here by the CBC (our public broadcaster):
http://archives.cbc.ca/lifestyle/food/topics/1371-8372/
For the best, most authentic poutine, I hope one day you'll be able to make it up to Quebec City, to see what we Canadians love to rave about!
mcebacal at 6:52PM on 03/07/09
Ease up folks, these aren't your every day fries. Like any one has fries on a daily basis. And these are a lot healthier than my guilty pleasure of pulled pork smothered fries from Baldy's in Bend Oregon.
No, I don't know the fat and carb count although I assume it WAY up there. I split em 3 ways, and they are oh so delicious and a treat!
I like the fact of the oven multitasking and myself would roast either more garlic or something else to be energy concious.
Thanks for a nice post.
rlwycoff at 5:26PM on 03/15/09