TGIFood

#10: The best potato side dish for a juicy steak — in your air fryer

11 Dec 2024

In the mists of time, a fabled Cape Town City Bowl steakhouse served a potato side dish that every customer loved. Here’s my air fryer take on it.

There’s no trace of Buccaneer any more. This small but excellent steakhouse closed before restaurants were findable online, but in its heyday it was one of the places to go in Cape Town for a fine steak. The premises on the corner of Orange Street, near the Labia, are now occupied by Nonna Lina, and only memories linger of chef Joseph making his extraordinary steaks, his Béarnaise and pepper sauces, and his signature side dish of diced potatoes and fried onions.

Sounds so simple, doesn’t it, but that’s how things often work in cuisine — often the simplest of things can be among the best. Potatoes, onions, oil and seasoning. A touch of thyme and some garlic. Simple as that.

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Cook the potatoes first, only adding the onion for the last period of cooking. And, towards the end of cooking, decide for yourself whether they are done or need a few minutes more. My Kenwood cooked them in the times stated below, but in some air fryers they may be ready a bit sooner.

Tony’s air fryer diced potatoes onions

(Serves 4-6 as a side dish)

Ingredients

4-6 large potatoes

1 large onion, diced small

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

3 or 4 thyme sprigs, leaves picked

Cooking oil to coat

Coarse salt and black pepper to taste

Method

Peel and dice the potatoes into cubes of about 2 cm x 2 cm. Peel and finely chop the onion and garlic. Pick the thyme leaves off their stems.

Pour a little oil into a bowl.

Add the potatoes and season with coarse salt and black pepper. Toss well to coat.

Preheat an air fryer to 180°C.

Add the potato mix to the air fryer basket (there’s no need to spray the basket as the contents have already been coated with oil).

Cook for 15 minutes at 180°C, shaking the basking quickly every few minutes and shutting the drawer again.

Turn the temperature up to 200°C and air fry for 10 minutes more.

Now add the chopped onion and garlic and the thyme leaves, toss, and cook for 10 minutes more at 200°C, shaking the basket now and then.

Finally, give them one last 5-minute session, still at 200°C. But do check along the way, as some machines behave differently to others. They may be ready to eat before this point, but in one drawer of my Kenwood twin drawer machine they were perfect after the times stated above. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023

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This dish is photographed on a plate by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.

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