Monday I made J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Stir-Fried New Potatoes with Hot and Numbing Spices from his The Wok cookbook.

Nothing out of the ordinary in the ingredients aside from the Hot and Numbing Spice Blend.

The stir-fry involved first boiling the potatoes until tender, then shallow-frying in the work before adding the aromatics and spices and tossing everything to combine. The directions for the shallow frying instruct “until browned and crisped in spots.” I’m not sure the potatoes ever got “crisped,” but it otherwise went as expected.

My wife and I both thought the potatoes were great. We kept going back for seconds until my wife took the bowl of potatoes out of my reach. My store sold the new potatoes in bags of 24oz, whereas the recipe calls for 32oz. So I bought two bags and stir-fried a pound of the potatoes without aromatics (just salted afterwards). My daughter, an admitted lover of potatoes, really enjoyed those. My son tried a plain potato and thought it was fine but didn’t care for more. We will make these again.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.