Roasted Herbed New Potatoes

Dinner tonight was quite a success - my honey pie ate with gusto and appreciation.  Really, is there anything that makes a cook happier?  I cooked a pork tenderloin encrusted with cheese and breadcrumbs in a brown paper bag.  Here's the link for the original post on that and a photo of the tenderloin before we got busy slicing and eating it!  It's crispy on the outside and tender as can be on the inside.  It was the first time my husband has tried it and he was pulling the crust remnants out of the baking paper sack it was so yummy! 
Yay :-)

The rest of our dinner included these awesome herbed new potatoes, steamed and buttery asparagus, a fresh baked loaf of bread with soft creamy butter, and a bowl of deliciously gigantic "holiday grapes" from Central Market in Austin.  When my hubby shows up with bags of goodies from Central Market it makes my heart beat faster.  He knows these are a particular favorite and only available for a couple of months of the year.  If you can access them, you should definitely get some!

Now, let's get on to talking about how easy and delicious these little potatoes are.  I bought a little bag of new potatoes, not sure what I would do with them and then I saw a stem of rosemary sitting on the table next to my husband's chair.  He'd picked it off of a plant and walked around with it in his jacket pocket just because he likes the way it smells.  I snatched it away, and put it together with some basil he also brought me (the cold snap last week did in my porch basil darn it).  My mind went to the new potatoes and I decided I would roast them with herbs.  I'd also bought some garlic bulbs on my last grocery trip so that got mixed into my mental recipe as well.  Here's how it finally wound up...fast and easy, and oh so delicious!

ROASTED HERBED NEW POTATOES

Ingredients:

1 pound of small red potatoes
1 stem of rosemary
Several basil leaves
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
Fresh ground black pepper
Kosher salt to taste
Extra virgin olive oil

Method:

Cover small jellyroll pan with aluminum foil.
Cut new potatoes in half (or quarters if they are bigger).
Remove rosemary from stem and finely chop.
Roll the basil leaves to a little cigar, slice them long-wise, and chop into 1/2 inch pieces or so.
I used the Martha Stewart garlic press/garlic slicer I bought earlier this year to get beautifully even slices of garlic with no effort whatsoever!.
I dumped all of the potatoes onto the jellyroll pan, sprinkled the rosemary and basil and garlic all over, generously ground black pepper over it all and salted with Kosher salt.
Drizzled the whole mixture with a generous amount of olive oil and tossed with my hands until thoroughly coated.

Baked in pre-heated 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 25 minutes, turned everything with tongs, making sure nothing was sticking and each potato was cut side up.  Returned to oven for another 20 minutes until garlic was roasted crisp and the potatoes were fork tender.

Pour into a bowl - including any remnants on the foil and the extra oil and toss with a spoon.

Serve immediately!

My family loved these potatoes.  I could have eaten every piece of that gently crisped garlic - it was perfectly crisped and almost sweet.  YUM.

Family dinners - they are what keeps me in the kitchen - striving to hear that "wow, this is great" response to a meal well- prepared and served!

Bon Appetit, Y'all!!!

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