Spiced potato

Ridiculously over-spiced potatoes. Much like the aloo part of gobi aloo, except more severe and a bit out of kilter. If you were ever to have something like this served to you then you would most likely return it. I love it. Although I do prefer irregular chunks of potato over these shoestring cut pieces. I already knew that but I tried it again anyway.

The thing is, I have tons of spices and I want to combine them into homemade curry type concoctions and see what happens. I keep chile powders in the freezer that I picked up from the spice shop; aji amarillo (that means 'yellow'), chipotle, which doesn't taste exactly like chipotle in adobo, ancho, which barely resembles actual dried poblano that I know as ancho, and habanero which will burn your face right off no matter what its form, and the like. I bought all the varieties the main downtown Savory Spice Shop had that day along with a bunch of other things. Surprisingly, it did not cost a fortune, I was prepared to accept much worse. 

So all those chile powders went into hot vegetable oil. One by one, I added cumin, coriander, my two favorite things, cinnamon, celery salt, that's only part of the 'C' category,  turmeric, regular kosher salt, white pepper, but not crushed black pepper, because -- what? -- do you think I'm insane? 

A single teaspoon of mango chutney is plopped into a mixing bowl to await the cooked potatoes.

A single medium-size Yukon Gold potato is cut into matchsticks then parboiled in water. Strained to air-dry then dumped into the  seasoned oil. 

You know what? I learned from a video recommended by a commenter here, Peter Hoh, I think,  that you must add turmeric late in situations like this because it gets wiped out and fails if it is added too early. 

The parboiled and fried potatoes are lifted into a strainer again then dumped on top of the mango chutney and tossed around to coat. The chutney cools, moderates, compliments, contrasts, expands the profile, freshens all of the nearly oppressive combined powders, especially the fierce and insane culmination of chiles.  

I'm thinking, "Man, if I have a worm in my gut like that awesome colonoscopy video that was passed around recently, then it's probably freaking out all over the place." My mouth is still in a happily dazed state of shock.