Smashed Potatoes...made a little livlier

For a short time many years ago, I lived with my friend Susan and her husband Dave while I was in a transitional time in my life. Because I love to cook I was jokingly called “the Kitchen Wife”. While Susan cooks well, she’d rather do other things around the house.
When she cooked, she sometimes took typical shortcuts – like using instant mashed potatoes rather than making them from scratch. On one of the first nights there, Dave saw me making mashed potatoes from scratch one day and teased his wife that she made great mashed potatoes, but I was making “smashed potatoes” like his mom used to do.
Since then, I always refer to this favorite side dish as “Smashed Potatoes”.
And, since I’m not fond of gravy on my potatoes (I just taste the gravy when I do that so I feel like I’m wasting the potato…but that’s just me), I add flavorings in the potatoes. Lots of people make roasted garlic mashed potatoes. I know one woman who puts purees peas in her potatoes, but that just reminds me of baby food.
One of my favorites is roasted red pepper. It adds a little sparkle of flavor to the potatoes and looks pretty to boot.
Often I will roast red peppers and keep them in a tightly sealed jar in the refrigerator to use in this and other recipes as needed.

Roasted Red Pepper Smashed Potatoes

Roasted Red Peppers
6 large red bell peppers
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
Salt and pepper, to taste
Paper bag
1 teaspoon coarse salt
Preheat broiler or grill. Cook the whole peppers over high heat until they have blackened spots and blisters and are tender.
Place the peppers into a brown paper bag and roll up the top to seal, close to the peppers. Set aside until the peppers cool.
When the peppers are cool, remove the skins. Slice the peppers open and scrape out the cores and seeds. Rinse under water quickly and dry well. Cut into strips or halves.
In a clean jar, combine salt, olive oil, garlic and parsley. Add peppers and store in refrigerator for up to three weeks.
Smashed Potatoes
5 potatoes (peel them if you like, but I like the skin on mine)
1 tablespoon butter, chopped
1/4 cup milk
Put two quarts of water to boil on the stove and cut potatoes into chunks. Put the potatoes in the water and cover.
When the potatoes pierce easily with a fork, drain off the water and mix in the butter and milk.
Whip at high speed with an electric mixer until fluffy.
Cut a half dozen strips of roasted red peppers (bring to room temperature) into half inch pieces and mix into the potatoes.

Vegan.