Rosemary Potato Roses

If I tell you that roses, besides being beautiful, can be delicious, I'm not just practicing the art of rhyme; I want to propose an easy and charming way to present edible flowers, like these rosemary potato roses, to share with your loved ones. You only need potatoes, rosemary and a kitchen mandoline or a slicing cutter. You'll see how simple they are to make and they look so pretty you'll feel guilty eating them!

In case it hadn't occurred to you, a kitchen mandoline or a spiralizer for vegetables are perfect tools to make long, wide slices of all kinds of vegetables. What can we do with them? From fully plant-based lasagnas (how about replacing pasta sheets with zucchini or potato slices?), to cannelloni, original garnishes for our salads... Or potato or zucchini roses like the ones I'm bringing you today!

I hope you enjoy today's recipe: rosemary potato roses, and recipe variations so each time you make them they taste different.

Ingredients

• 6 potatoes cooked until slightly firm* (approx. 180 g each)
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 150 ml olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• A bit of pepper

*They will finish softening in the oven.

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.
2. Cut a potato (already cooked) into slices using a kitchen mandoline or the spiralizer of your KitchenAid food processor. You can leave the skin on. Place the strips on top of each other until you reach a length of about 40 cm.
3. Roll the potato strips, not tightly so they don't break, and cut them in half crosswise (the video at the end of this post will help you, see at second 0:20) and place them in one of the spaces in the muffin tray with the cut side down. Do the same with the remaining potatoes.
4. Chop the rosemary and mix it with the oil, salt and pepper, then pour the mixture over the potato roses.
5. Bake for 45 minutes in the middle of the oven.

*You can make this same recipe with ham, cheese... I encourage you to keep reading the variations we bring below.

Recipe variations:

• Cheese and potato roses:

With 200 g of semi-hard cheese (for example, Gruyère) cut into strips with a vegetable peeler. Place the cheese on the potato strips, roll them without tightening, cut them in half and put them in the tray molds. Bake as instructed in the original recipe.

• Potato and salami roses:

Place six slices of salami on the potato strips, roll them without tightening, cut them in half and put them in the tray molds. Bake as instructed in the original recipe.

• Potato and ham roses:

Place strips of ham the width of the potato strips between the potato strips, roll them without tightening, cut them and place them in the tray molds as in the original recipe. Bake and you'll get delicious potato and ham roses.

• Zucchini roses:

Instead of potato, you can make the roses with zucchini strips. But zucchini is softer to begin with and will cook quickly in the oven, so you can prepare them with raw zucchini, without pre-cooking. Likewise, you can make the variations we've suggested: zucchini with cheese, with ham or with salami will be delicious!

Recommendations:

• Use St. Gallen blue potatoes instead of firmly cooked potatoes.
• You can serve the potato roses with lettuce as a main dish for 4 people or as a side dish at barbecues for 6 people.