Potato Nests with Cheese and Bacon

For more recipes by Finy, check out my website: www.finysfood.blogspot.com.au/

Dinner (2274) Lunch (1798) Family (1525) Snack (848) Cheese (387) Potato (144) Broccoli (72) Lunchbox (22) Gouda cheese (1)

potato,nests,with,bacon,and,melted,cheese

I'm not Irish, but I love anything with potatoes!

This recipe is made into a potato nest, baked, and then filled and baked again.

I made a broccoli and Gouda cheese salad to go with it.

Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Cooking Time: 45 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients
For the potato nests
625 g potatoes
1 large egg
3 tbsp flour
350 g cheese, grated
250 g shortcut bacon

For the Broccoli salad
1½ cups broccoli florets
4 tbsp red onion, chopped
¼ cup tiny tomatoes, halved
¼ cup slivered almonds
100 g Gouda cheese, cut into small cubes
Bit of red wine vinegar
Bit of sugar

Method
For the potato nests

Heat the oven to 180°/160° fan forced, and spray a large muffin pan, or use paper patties.

Cut the bacon into small pieces and fry until it is brown but not too crisp as it will get baked further.

Grate the potatoes. Squeeze some of the water out of the potatoes and put them in a large bowl with the egg and flour - you may need to add a bit more flour so that the mixture sort of "sticks together".

Divide this mixture among the 12 muffin compartments.

Bring the potato higher up the sides than my photo

I inadvertently left a huge amount of the grated potatoes in my grater, so made a big pancake out of it! Hence I only got 11 filled compartments, and mine were not quite high enough round the edges!

Using the back of a spoon, press them down and up the sides of the compartments making a thin "nest" which will be filled.

Bake these in the oven for about 25 minutes or until they are just starting to go brown.

Take out of the oven, and put some cheese in each one.

Add the cooked bacon to this.

Return it to the oven and bake for another 5 to 10 minutes or until the nests are a golden brown, and the cheese has melted.

cooked,potato,nests,filled,with,cheese,and,bacon

For the Broccoli salad

Any time while the nests are cooking, make the salad by boiling the broccoli for just a minute and then putting under cold water to stop it cooking further.

Drain and rinse again with cold water.

Mix the broccoli with the onion, tomatoes, nuts and lastly the Gouda cheese.

Mix a bit of olive oil, vinegar, sugar, some salt and pepper to taste, and pour it over the salad - toss to coat.