Just out of the oven, waiting to be sliced up and served. 
Sticky Roasted Potatoes are an economical and easy way to feed a crowd. 


I finally managed to take a seat and eat breakfast just before 10 o’clock this morning (better late than never) and gosh the wait was worth it. The Pig and Pastry cafe in Petersham serve up a truly superior bacon and egg roll. It is the combination of home made tomato sauce, runny organic egg, soft cafe baked roll and my favourite, the thin, crispy smoky-flavoured bacon. I always start off this meal by nibbling on a bit of bacon, just to tempt my tastebuds. You see, I REALLY like bacon. Breakfast, lunch or dinner there is a spot for this streaky, super tasty piece of produce. Bacon can successfully lift even the most ordinary savoury meal out of its mediocre mid-week state. Bacon adds punchy flavour, nose enticing aroma, eye-catching colour and moisture to a dish. 

I remember going through a silly phase as a teenager where I tried to avoid eating fat. It was a short lived phase, because when my late maternal Grandmother, Baba Joka, spotted me slicing the fat off my bacon she gave me a lecture. It was along the lines of food deprivation during World War Two and how both of my grandparents didn’t even see bacon for those horrific four years. Baba just couldn’t fathom why I would want to remove the fat when she and my grandfather would have wept for joy at the sheer sight of it during the war. I ended up eating everything on my plate. Including the fatty strip I had originally removed. I have been enjoying the entire rasher ever since. 

Despite bacon being on my list of favourite foods, I am in no way enormous. The opposite actually. The trick to enjoying your favourite ingredients and dishes is to EAT IN MODERATION. As the French do. I will savour a single, long rasher of beautifully cured bacon but I won’t eat the entire pack. That would be gluttonous and unhealthy and end up spoiling those first few memorable mouthfuls. 

Lightly seared and waiting to go into the oven. 

This evening I was keen to incorporate a bit of bacon into dinner and inspiration came in the form of Chicken Kiev. Plump, boned chicken thighs were freshly stuffed with herbs, mustard, butter and cheese, wrapped in a perfectly paper thin piece of bacon and expertly bound into little bundles by the butchers at AC Butchery, Leichhardt. I briefly seared them in a baking pan, then transferred them to a ceramic dish and baked them in a preheated oven at 200 degrees for 20 minutes. 

The baking pan contained delicious juices extracted from the searing process and I wanted to use this to also flavour the Sticky Potatoes. I chopped up and added to the baking pan, 4 medium sized French shallots, a quarter of a cup of olive oil, 1 teaspoon of mixed herbs (thyme, rosemary, capsicum, garlic, sage), along with ground sea salt and black pepper. The 10 extra-large potatoes were sliced into chunky wedges, coated with the flavourings and then roasted for 40 minutes until they were crispy brown along the edges but still sticky with the juices from the onion. 

A pot of Braised Baby Carrots, Corn and English Spinach drizzled with honey, provided a boost of essential vitamins and edible colour to the meal. 

Next time I’m going to buy a few extra little chicken bundles because they went in a flash. I had predicted the potatoes would be popular so I threw in a couple of extra spuds. This covered second servings for everyone, including 8 month old Maksim who was quite content munching on the chunky pieces which he held in both his little hands. These potatoes by the way, make an excellent first finger food for babies. Definitely a “must make again meal”.