Food Friday!!: Potato Parcel Meal

Parcel meals have become things I really enjoy to prepare and to eat now especially as I am at uni till quite late at night often (some times I don't get home till 11pm). With parcel meals, you don't have to keep standing by a stove. All the work you need to do is to just cut up some ingredients, pile them together, wrap them up and stick them in an oven. It's so simple! Here's my recipe for a delicious potato parcel meal.

Bon Appétit!

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Ingredients

• Potatoes
• Plantains
• Mushrooms
• Onions
• Red bell peppers
• Tomato sauce
• Rosemary
• Chives
• Black pepper
• Sea salt.

Preheat your oven to about 200 degrees Celsius (about 398 degrees Fahrenheit)

Method

• Wash the potatoes, plantains, mushrooms, onions and red bell peppers.
• Slice the potatoes horizontally forming circles a bit thicker than a crisp (I believe Americans call them chips).
• Slice the plantains vertically twice in order to form four sections (+) and horizontally, cut the plant letting each section be about a centimetre to two centimetres long.
• Slice the mushrooms in thin vertical strips.
• Chop up the onions finely (or make thin vertical strips).
• Chop up the bell pepper (or make vertical strips).
• Spread out some foil paper/parchment paper and arrange the ingredients on it. In the centre of the foil paper, make a layer of potatoes followed by a bit of tomato sauce, the plantains, mushrooms, onions and bell peppers. Make another layer of potatoes and repeat with the tomato sauce, plantains....the last layer should be just potato slices, but  put a bit of tomato sauce on the pile before layering on the potatoes. Note that when adding the tomato sauce, only about table spoon should be added each time.
• Season the pile with some rosemary, chives, black pepper and sea salt (all to taste)
• Fold the widths of each side of the foil paper so they cover the pile created and then fold over the lengths of the paper. You should not be able to see the pile after doing this. If you still can, wrap another piece of foil paper over this parcel.
• If you are using parchment paper, hold up each corner of the paper, squeeze them together and give them a bit of a twist then tie the ends together using oven-safe twine or by rolling/folding up a thing strip of foil paper and wrapping it round the ends to secure them in place.
• Place each parcel on an oven tray and let them cook in the oven for about 15-20mins.
• After 15-20mins,  open up the top of the parcel (untie it or pull apart the lengths folded over) and let the food continue to cook for another 5-10mins or until the potatoes are cooked through.
• Take the parcels out of the oven once they are done cooking and transfer their contents onto a plate.
• Serve as a side, as a whole meal or as part of a main meal.

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