...becoming a culinary genius

Okay, that may be a bit of an overstatement. But I have been surprisingly pleased in the last few weeks at my adventures in cooking. Rice and beans dominate the Honduran culinary landscape - pouches of refried beans are a ubiquitous grocery trip acquisition. I've got nothing against rice and beans, but I certainly like to get other things in my diet - it's just healthy. And certainly other produce and meat are readily available at the supermercado, but I'm not big on preparing multiple things for a meal. I'm not a fast cooker, and I have lots of procrastination to do. So I tend to just throw everything in with my rice and beans - tomatoes, onions, canned corn, green pepper more recently, salsa, hot sauce, "crema" (kind of like a sourer sour cream - really good in stuff, a bit face-puckering by itself), or any combination of these - mix it all up in a pot on the stove, and then dish it into a bowl and eat with tostadas or "Dippas" - kinda like Doritos without any seasoning (aka tortilla chips, but they are actually a Frito Lay/Dorito product). I'll make something like this 3 or 4 times a week. However, I have tried getting a bit more daring as of late, and I am blown away by my latest attempt to cook something new. So I'll share this "recipe" for Something Something Smashed Potatoes (in my own typical style, of course).

Ingredients:

Something like 2 lb smallish potatoes you managed to find at the grocery store when you've never seen that kind at any grocery store before. They might look like Washington Golds? Is that a kind of potato?
1/3 head of garlic, each clove smashed with side of knife to remove the skins
Just under a quarter stick of margarine
1 large meaty sort of tomato, kinda like a roma (by large I mean large for that kind - most juicier tomatoes are bigger than this one)
3/4(?) cup of chopped onion, unchopped
1/3 large can of canned corn
"crema"
salt
curry powder
hot sauce

Preheat oven to 150 or 160 Celsius. You can't tell because the scale on the dial isn't the greatest. Rinse potatoes. Boil them on high in a large saucepan with the smashed garlic cloves. Begin chopping the tomato and as-yet unchopped onion. Warm kinda rusty, the kind that leaves bright rust spots if you don't dry it completely upon washing, 9x9 pan on another burner on low so that you can effectively coat it with up to half of the rather crappy brand of margarine your roommate bought. Let the potatoes boil for 15-17 minutes after you first notice the waters's actually boiling. Drain the potatoes and garlic into a strainer and let sit for 3-4 minutes. Mince one or two of the boiled garlic cloves and discard the rest. Arrange the potatoes in the bottom of the "buttered" pan, then smash them with the bottom of a glass, leaving them rather chunky. Put 4 pats of the remaining margarine on each quadrant of the pan. Drizzle crema over the top of the smashed potatoes as thickly as you'd apply mustard to a sandwich. Dump the tomatoes, onions, corn, and minced garlic on top of the whole mess, then sprinkle a healthy bit of curry powder and not quite as much salt on top. Mix everything with a wooden spoon, then smooth the top and put in oven. Let it bake for as long as it takes to wash all the dishes and utensils you've dirtied so far, and maybe a few things from breakfast if you're a fast washer. Remove dish after 10-12 minutes, mix with wooden spoon again (dang! you shouldn't have washed that one) and serve.

Serves one man with a rather large appetite. Twice. And his roommate who just wants to try a little because it smells so good.