Hasselback Potatoes with Pesto

A few days ago I saw this blog post by Joy the Baker and decided right then and there that I needed to make it for dinner this week. Her post shows step by step how to make this wonderful dish. Basically, you take a baking potato, cut slits in it, stuff slices of garlic in the slits, drizzle olive oil and salt over the potato, place a tablespoon of butter on top, and roast it for one hour in the oven (basting the potatoes every 10 or so minutes). Sound tempting enough? Potatoes, garlic, salt, olive oil, and butter. What more do you need?

She tops her dish with spinach pesto (recipe listed on her blog post), but I just used the basil and parsley pesto I had in our freezer. Easy peasy. The potatoes are good enough on their own, but just a smidge of pesto adds a little sumtin sumtin. Honestly though, mine didn't look very pretty with the pesto. I guess it's what I get for putting the cold icy pesto on top of the super hot potatoes, but it got all melty and runny and looked quite unappealing. But, hey, it still tasted awesome.

Here is a picture of the potato looking pretty, before I ruined it.

Taters and succotash. I never even knew succotash was a type of food until Lucas and I started dating. I always assumed it was just a silly word that the writers of Looney Tunes made up (Sufferin' succotash). Now, I know it as a delicious side dish that I like to drench in melted butter.

I realized after the fact that I didn't make as many slices in my potatoes as Joy did. I think next time I'll be sure to do that to ensure that more of the potato insides get covered in the butter and oil. It'll also allow me to stuff more garlic in there. Mmm. Garlic.