Over dinner tonight my husband and I were discussing and dissecting recent meals and what should make it into the April column. Should it be the smashed cucumber salad, with all that dill and tinned mackerel? What about the sourdough pizza that tastes like we crossed the border into Williamsburg? 

Then, from across the dinner table, something remarkable, unusual and encouraging happened: Our grumpy tween, with an — ahem — discerning palate, looked up from their plate of roasted potatoes with smoked salmon, radishes and sour cream and said, “I don’t know how you did it, but you took every ingredient I can’t stand and made it taste incredible.” 

This was all the more incredible because this dish was kosher for Passover, a holiday this kid chooses to “pass over” in most respects. Being kosher for Passover, it’s gluten-free. It’s also easy enough to pull together on a school night after all the marathon cooking sessions that happened a few days prior. 

My inspiration was nachos, which in my mind is a perfect dish. But here I replaced the crispy corn chips with perfectly roasted potatoes: crispy on the outside, and soft on the inside. No melted cheese, but definitely sour cream, in my case, lactose-free. For protein, I tore up pieces of lox. Then I added thin slices of radish, in a nod to the Victory Club nachos at Lone Star Taco Bar in our old neighborhood in Allston. 

I finished it with lots of chopped tarragon and fresh chives. If you have pickled onions on hand in your fridge (something that often happens in our kitchen) this would be a good place to sprinkle a few on top. 

I served this with a bracing salad of grape tomatoes and hearts of palm, to cut through the richness of the dish. 

From start to finish this dish takes less than a half hour. I prepped the radishes and herbs while the potatoes roasted in a hot oven. 

Baltic Nachos

Ingredients

1 bag of mini potatoes 

Olive oil or Avocado oil for roasting 

Kosher salt

About a half cup of sour cream 

One sheet of lox

One tablespoon of tarragon, chopped

3 chives, chopped

3 radishes, cleaned and sliced into discs

Directions 

Preheat the oven to 400 F. While the oven preheats, prep your mini potatoes by cutting each one in half. 

Once halved, add to a baking sheet and pour about a tablespoon of oil and sprinkle about a teaspoon or two of kosher salt. Make sure that most of your potatoes have their bellies on the baking sheet for the roasting. This will ensure they will brown. 

Bake in the oven. Check at 15 minutes. The potatoes will probably need another three to seven minutes. 

Once the potatoes have developed their brown crust and a fork slips easily through them, remove from the hot oven. 

Using oven mitts, transfer the hot potatoes to your serving dish. 

Dollop the sour cream on top of the potatoes. 

Rip the lox and place on top of the sour cream and potatoes. 

Finish with radishes and the fresh herbs. 

Enjoy. 

Molly Parr lives in Florence with her husband and two young daughters. She’s been writing her food blog, Cheap Beets, since 2010. Send questions or comments to molly.parr@gmail.com.