Many years ago, my mother clipped an article from Southern Living with a full menu telling what to serve at a properly modern Southern wedding. I salivated over the photos of elegant cheese wheels and towering cakes, but the recipe that caught my attention was the mosaic potatoes. In the magazine photo, they looked like little jewels, with thin flaps of translucent potato allowing green herbs to show through.
We didn’t serve them at our wedding. We didn’t have time to make anything this labor-intensive — we served buffet-style, Cuban picadillo with rice, boiled shrimp, and green bean salad. We bought a beautiful 3-tier cake that tasted like cardboard and had an elegant brass sailboat on the top, and my Mom made a delicious chocolate groom’s cake and topped it with a tiny plastic computer. She knew my future husband better than I realized. That was 15 years ago, and he was destined to become a mouse potato — the computer version of a couch potato.
Speaking of potatoes, it was about 14 years later that I finally made mosaic potatoes and took this photo. They were not just beautiful, they were delicious!
24 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 inch white or yellow new potatoes, scrubbed (about 1-1/2 lb)
1 bunch flat-leaf parsley or 48 fresh sage leaves (about 1/2 to 3/4 oz)
Sage butter (optional)
Place a sheet of parchment paper or brown paper on a baking sheet. Brush with olive oil; set aside. Scrub potatoes, then cut each in half crosswise. Using a sharp vegetable peeler, knife, or slicer, cut a paper-thin slice off the cut side of each potato half. Try not to cut all the way across, so you have a thin flap . Place a leaf of parsley or sage on each potato half and replace the thin potato slice over it, covering the herb leaf.
Place potato halves, cut sides down, on prepared baking sheet. Brush with olive oil. Bake, uncovered, in a 375 degree oven about 35 minutes or until tender. Serve with sage butter (optional). Season to taste. Makes 8 servings.
Serves 8; 103 cal per serving without the sage butter.