When I go grocery shopping, I rarely make a list of the stuff I am going to buy. I usually just walk through the isles picking ingredients up imagining in my head what I can do with them. This sometimes becomes a problem when I need to decide what to do with unused ingredients, cook them or let them go bad. In those occasions I stand in front of the refrigerator creating crazy new combinations in my mind that sometimes don’t work out as expected.

That is what happened to me a couple of days ago. I had a couple of potatoes and some ground chicken that needed to be cook. Although the chicken was frozen and probably could stay that way for a long time, I wanted to cook it because I don’t like keeping food in the freezer for long periods of time.

I was thinking about baking the potatoes or maybe mash them, but I would’ve needed more meat than the pound of ground chicken I had to go with them. Fortunately, this chef John’s recipe gave me an idea of what I wanted to do with the potatoes.

There is a dish that they used to serve in my parents’ restaurant in Mexico called tortas de papa (fried potato cakes) They used to stuff them with cheese so I thought I wanted to make them and try to stuff them with the chicken I had and bake them instead of frying them. But since I didn’t remember exactly how to make the tortas I ended up making baked potato shells and topping them with the chicken prepared with chipotle pepper, cheese, and sour cream. The result wasn’t exactly what I was going for, but it was good enough. And when I wrote down what I did it turned out not to be a very difficult dish to make. I will definitely make it again and try different toppings.

Here is what I did.

Ingredients

2 large potatoes
1 lb ground chicken
1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
½ cup milk
1 egg
1 chipotle pepper
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
chopped onion
chopped garlic
salt
ground black pepper

The chicken

Preheat olive oil in a saucepan.
Saute onion and garlic.
Add the chicken and chipotle pepper and stir constantly to avoid big chunks of meat to form.
Add salt to taste.
When it cooks remove from fire and let cool.

The potato shells

Peel and cut the potatoes in 1″ cubes.
Boil them for about 15 minutes or until they are tender.
Drain them and mash them slightly.
Add salt, black pepper, milk and butter and continue smashing until you have a pulp (just like mashed potatoes)
Let it cool, add the egg and mix.
If the mixture is too runny, add some flour and mix. It has to be a somehow firm mixture, but you donâ’t want it to be too doughy either.
Preheat the oven to 400° F
On a greased cookie sheet place the potato mixture with a spoon and flatten it to make small cakes. These can be as big or small as you want, just make sure they are not too thick to reduce baking time.
Bake for about 20 minutes or until they are crispy and light brown.
Remove from oven

Top the shells with chicken and cheese and return to oven for another 10 minutes.
Remove from oven and let it cool before serving.

There are many things that could be used as toppings like ground beef, vegetables, refried beans, or they can even be used to make mini potato pizzas or as snacks. I think the possibilities are endless.

It wasnâ’t the tortas de papa I first expected, but it didn’t turn out bad, either.

I hope you enjoy this recipe, any other idea on how to use these potato shell is welcomed.

Buen provecho!