Our friends Ron and Anne invited us to dinner last night. Dinner was a fish fry: razor clams, oysters and trout all caught in the last two months by our hosts. With that they served a cabbage salad and a bowl of the most stunning potatoes. They were red potatoes that Anne had cut into about six wedges each and then tossed with oil, salt and pepper and rings of small red and orange sweet peppers. Those all went onto a cookie sheet and were thrown into a convection oven to bake for about 40 minutes--when the peppers started browning, the potatoes were baked through. They didn't brown, they just kind of sealed up and because they were red potatoes, they held their shape and had good mouthfeel without having to get crisp. Too, being baked instead of fried made them a better contrast for the seafood. I could have eaten an entire plate of them.
I never would have thought to combine potatoes and peppers this way. (I know, Potatoes O'Brien, but that takes place in a skillet.) Never. Nor would I have baked them that way--crowded, and not looking for color on the potatoes but getting color in the dish from the peppers. It was a brilliantly tasty dish and an excellent way to prepare a generous quantity (one large cookie sheet full fed eight) with very little effort, especially with so much last minute effort required for the fish fry.
Nice idea all around, and one I'll probably borrow in the future.