I know we’ve been spoiling you to death with all these pork and steak recipes, so for this week’s edition of Food Gold, we’re going to show how to make two inexpensive and utilitarian veggie side dishes. C’mon, make your mother (and Morrissey) happy, eat your veggies—with wild style!

Mustard Glazed Carrots:

Here boring carrots are elevated to a sweet and spicy new level thanks to punchy Dijon mustard and brown sugar. This dish goes great with lamb and other “earthy” meats.

• 1 pound peeled baby carrots
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon sugar, ideally brown sugar if you have it
• 1 tablespoon country-style Dijon mustard, that’s the spicy stuff
• fresh thyme for garnish (optional, but it’s great for color and taste)

1. Cook carrots in a pot of boiling salted water (taste to test it out, it should be seasoned like a nice gentle soup broth) until just tender, about 8 minutes. Drain.

2. Melt butter in pot over medium heat. Once the butter starts to smell a little nutty, stir in de sugar. You really want to keep the butter and sugar moving so they don’t burn. After about 30 seconds, add mustard and carrots and stir to coat. Season with salt and pepper, toss and enjoy!

*Special shout out to Mustard, you won’t even see dude in the club without this dish on his rider!

Parmesan Smashed Potatoes

Real talk: frying potatoes at home is a pain and often quite messy. But here, we break down the recipe into two basic steps (boiling and sauteing) that are very easy to execute. A lovely Fall dish.

• 1.5 pounds small red potatoes with skins on – make sure you get tiny little potatoes, this won’t work with those big fat baking potatoes
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• 2-3 tablespoons olive oil depending on how large your skillet is, you want a nice even coating
• Salt and Pepper To Taste

1. Throw the red potatoes in a large pot of water. Cover and bring the water to a boil. Unlike pasta you do not add the potatoes to boiling water. Here the potatoes and water come to a boil together. Also, you don’t want the boil to be rolling super hard (shout out to the Hacienda.) It shouldn’t look like a washing machine up in there.

2. Gently boil until the potatoes are fork tender, meaning that when you poke them with a fork, you will get little to no resistance when you remove it, about 15 minutes. You want to go by texture here and not by time.

3. Drain potatoes well and let them cool down for about 8 minutes.

4. Once cool enough to handle, smash the potatoes lightly using a fork. You want to try to keep the skins intact, as those are the dudes that you want to be all crispy for the final product.

5. Season with salt and pepper. Remember you are going to be adding salty Parmesan in the end, so don’t go nuts here.

6. Heat up a large skillet over medium heat for about 1 and a half minutes. Then add your olive oil and heat it until it moves in waves across the pan. It should shimmer and glisten a bit.

7. Carefully add your smashed potatoes to the oil, one at a time. Drop them in AWAY from you. Grease burns are NO FUN kids. You want to have as much of the potato skin in contact with the hot oil as possible. More surface area equals more crispy skins!

8. Let the potatoes cook up until they are golden brown and crispy. It’s important not to mess with them once you add them to the pan, as that will interfere with the crust forming. After the first sides are crisp, turn over and cook for slightly less time on the other side.

9. If they turned out too greasy, drain on a paper towel. If not, add that fresh Parmesan and any extra salt and pepper and go to town!

Hope you try these out guys! Liberate yourselves from dull side dishes!

Fork The World,

Elliot