Crushed New Potatoes with Caper Berries, Pink Peppercorns and Roasted Garlic

When I was on holidays I went on a Nopi ingredient buying spree and although many of the ingredients I didn't find or were horrendously expensive ($45 for one recipe is not on) one that I did get was caperberries and I've been wanting to use them, and the pink peppercorns, since then.

And this looked like an easily achievable side dish for a mid-week meal. The usual problem when cooking for one is to decide whether to cook the recipe as is and deal with leftovers or use my awesome maths skills and fiddle with proportions. I chose the latter.

First problem was that I didn't actually have new potatoes or even small potatoes. So it was one big potato chopped into new-potato-sized pieces. So sue me.

Having assembled the ingredients it was outside to gather herbs. The mint is looking a bit sad after all the heat and the other Nopi dishes have been using a lot of mint too but I managed to find enough. It needed stalks and all so that part was certainly easy. And there was no shortage of rosemary!

Next problem was that on a hot night, I didn't feel like firing up the oven to roast the couple of garlic cloves I'd be using. Solution was to wrap the garlic, oil and the herbs in foil and throw them into a pan on the hotplate while I prepared everything else. I think it worked OK.

The rest was plain sailing. Boil up the potato with more herbs. Put the garlicky, herby oil in a pan and fry up the potato. Add chopped up caper berries, the roasted garlic and some butter. Then add more herbs, some lemon zest and sprinkle with the pink peppercorns. Pretty.