Nice Potato Salad

 

 
Not exactly a Nicoise salad, but still pretty nice. Har har. Moving right along...

I said I'd bring potato salad to Jej's picnic, and I'd had some little potato finger-food thingies that were 'nicoise inspired' which gave me this idea. Traditionally, Salad Nicoise has potatoes, green beans, olives, eggs, tuna and sometimes tomatoes on it. The hors d'oeuvres  were basically just tiny tuna-deviled potatoes with a green bean stabbed through the top and a sprinkle of "egg mimosa" which meant little crumbs of egg yolk to make it look fancy. The green bean was awkward to eat. But I liked the potato part, and as silly as it was, the green bean tasted really good. Still, what I wanted was potato salad, not tuna salad, so I came up with this.

1 lb tiny yellow potatoes
1/2 lb fresh green beans
a handful of parsley, chopped
a green onion, sliced fine
2 cold, hard boiled eggs, sliced
1/2 cup olives, coarsely chopped
zest of a lemon

dressing:

juice of a lemon, about 1/4 cup
2 T fish sauce
1 T sherry vinegar
1/3 cup olive oil
pepper
2 T minced fresh thyme

Mix all the dressing ingredients in a small jar and shake them up. Set aside.

Boil the potatoes whole until you can stick a fork through them. Drain them, then let them cool completely. Meanwhile blanch the green beans. To do this, bring a pot of water to a boil, then dump in the beans. Leave the beans in the water just until they turn translucent and bright green. Drain the beans then either dump them into a pot of ice water or run them under cold water until they are chilled.

When the potatoes are cold, cut them into bite sized bits. Cut the green beans on and angle to increase the area of cut surface (and to make them prettier). Put all the salad ingredients in a large bowl and toss with dressing. The orange things in the picture are nasturtium petals, they're just to make it look fancy.

Ok, this was a pretty good salad, but some things occurred to me later, namely

1. It would have been better if I'd roasted the bitty potatoes instead. I think little toasty parts would definitely add  a more complex and interesting flavor.

2. I might put in tiny red tomatoes. Both for color and because tomatoes.

3. Tuna in olive oil. Yes, the fish sauce is fine, but the fish itself is actually more important to the whole nicoise thing than just being a way to add a certain fishy something-something. I think partly it's texture, and partly because fish sauce is fermented, which gives a very different character to things.

4. It would look better if you just decorated the top with egg slices. The egg yolks get all smushed up if you stir them into the salad.

Beet Top and Potato Pie

  

  
This is a somewhat unimaginative picture of a thing I have posted about at least once before, but June is the season for using up random produce, because that is what there is. On the other hand, this pie was very tasty, and I have eaten it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on several different days and it was equally good for all occasions. (I do wish I had remembered to add cheese. You can top it with some slices of brie if you want. Strongly recommended.)

 You will need:

1 recipe of crust for a 2 crust pie. I like a half whole wheat and half white flour recipe for savory pies. Mine is

1 cup AP flour
1 cup wheat flour
2/3 cup butter, cool but not freezing
3/4 tsp salt, or a bit more if you use unsalted butter
6 tablespoons cold water

Cut the butter together with the flour & salt until the butter is no bigger than peas. Add the water and mix gently just until it forms a raggedy ball, then refrigerate it until you need it.

Filling:

2 russet potatoes, medium sized
the tops off of 4 moderately small beets
a clove of garlic, crushed
a chopped onion
salt and pepper
plenty of butter

Pre-heat the oven to 375.

Cube and boil the potatoes. Drain and set aside.

Meanwhile, prepare the leaves. Start by thoroughly rinsing them. No matter how well the beets have been washed, little gritty things will have gotten stuck down in the stems near the beet crowns. Coarsely chop the leaves, keeping the stems separate from the leafy parts.

Saute the onion in butter until it's transparent. Then add the stems because they take somewhat longer to cook than the leaves. Add the leaves last and cook until tender. Mix everything together with the potatoes. Bash the potatoes up until they are not too big, but not totally obliterated either. Add salt & pepper to taste.

Roll the crust out into an 18" circle. If it's uneven and raggedy that's fine. Pile the filling up in the middle and flatten it out until there's about 5 or 6 inches of crust around the outside. Fold the extra crust loosely up around the filling and bake for 30-40 minutes or until the crust is as brown as you like it. If you can stand to, let it get browner than the picture. The crust is fine if you don't, but I think it's even better if it has more crunch. I was impatient. As usual.

Beets are a twofer. You can think of them as just a variety of chard that you grow because they have this bonus knobby part on the bottom which you can eat later. Possibly the reverse is true- somebody didn't care for the knobs, so they just started growing the kind of leaves that doesn't make any knobs. I didn't know this about beets until I started cooking them regularly, and then the appearance of the leaves tipped me off. Then I started to wonder what made people stop eating the tops as a regular thing- one time a vendor asked me at the farmer's market if I wanted him to cut the tops off my beets and I said no, eating the tops is half the reason to buy them whole, wasn't it? He agreed, but said that some people still didn't want the leaves. Seems to me that if you're going to buy a mess of greens, you might as well just buy beets with tops on them, and get two dishes out of them for the money. At a guess, eating beets at their smaller, newer stage, is a thing that people have started to do again relatively recently. A lot of farmer's market shoppers probably had parents who never looked at a beet before it went into a can, and if you buy a large beet that has been allowed to grow for a full season, the leaves will be pretty tough and unappealing. So, yeah. New beets are tasty, and the tops are good for eating.

 

Garlicky Cheezy Taters

 

 
I actually looked at my blog the other day and I thought jeezus do I ever eat anything except tofu, broccoli, and noodles?

Yes, sometimes I eat cheese. Melty cheese is the best, and if you put it on potatoes, it is even better.

2 medium russet potatoes

2 T butter
2 T flour
1 clove crushed garlic

1 1/3 cup milk
1/2 lb grated cheese, maybe a little more
tsp Dijon mustard
dash of nutmeg
a pinch of lavender
pepper & salt

Pre heat your oven to 375.

Cut the potatoes into 1/8" slices. Butter a heavy, oven safe skillet and arrange the potato slices evenly in it. Set them on a medium low burner, and once you can hear them start to sizzle add 1/3 cup water, cover, and let them continue to cook while you make the sauce. No stirring.

In a smallish saucepan using medium heat, saute the garlic in butter until it is just barely starting to brown, then remove from heat. Mix the flour into the butter, wait a few seconds for the oil to soak into the flour, then add the milk. Put it back on the burner, and start stirring. When it starts to thicken, add the cheese. Stir until the cheese is completely melted, remove from heat, and season to taste.

Pour the cheese over the potatoes in the skillet. Top with additional cheese if you feel like it, and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until it's as brown as you want it.

Notes-

1. Yep, it's exactly like making mac and cheese. Plus garlic.
2. I used cheddar mainly, but I always think it tastes better with more than one kind of cheese. Be aware that cheap Swiss will be kinda stringy though.
3. This is very fatty. I like to put it on top of some arugula to eat it. It's like salad dressing.
4. Roux. I think the reason you melt the butter and then mix in the flour is to coat the flour particles with oil, which prevents them from clumping together when you add milk. Instead, the flour is distributed evenly throughout the liquid so that as the temperature rises you get a smooth sauce.
5. Remember not to toast the flour in the butter. If you do, the starches will have a reduced capacity to thicken the liquid, and the sauce may break, or separate into a bunch of little particles in a thin liquid. Tastes just as good, but it doesn't look very appealing.

Potato Candy

  

  
If your Mom is an old lady from the southeastern states, you have probably eaten this stuff around christmas. It is mouthwringingly sweet, and has a very peculiar texture which is at once chalky and creamy, kind of like fondant. It has peanut butter in it.Yes, it is made with a potato. There are lots of recipes online for it, but I still have no idea what the origin of the recipe could be. It's one of those things where you think about it and go 'Seriously? Who does that?'

1 baked russet potato
2 lbs powdered sugar, more or less
1 tsp vanilla
peanut butter

Peel and mash the potato. Add the vanilla and half the sugar. Mix until smooth, then gradually add more sugar until you have a stiff, rather sticky dough.

Roll the dough out between sheets of waxed paper until it is 1/8" thick, then spread a thin layer of peanut butter on it. Roll the dough up into a rope, then cut it into slices.

That's really it, but there is some stuff that is useful to know:

1. You can microwave the potato, but I think it would be better to actually bake it.
2. That's because you want to have the mashed potato be fairly dry, and also the baking will make a more pronounced potato flavor. It is Potato Candy, after all.
3. Even so, the first few cups of sugar will melt into a soup right away. That's normal. Just keep adding more.
4. Making a drier dough will make it less sticky, but it will be harder to roll out that way.
5. As you roll it out, peel the paper off the dough and rotate it frequently. It will come out smoother that way.
6. Roll slowly and gently. Violent treatment will cause the dough to resist handling.

One of the most interesting characteristics of this stuff is the handling property of the dough whereby it behaves like a solid and breaks into chunks if you cut or twist it, but it will ooze slowly through your fingers if you squeeze it gently. If you've ever played with cornstarch and water, or sand on a beach, the principle is the same. There is some cornstarch in powdered sugar, but that isn't what's making it behave that way.

When you first put the sugar in the mashed potato, the tiny sugar particles rapidly dissolve in the moisture from the potato. Eventually, the small amount of water present will no longer be able to dissolve any more sugar, and the sugar particles will remain intact, suspended in liquid, just like raw cornstarch (which is insoluble) in water. There is some kind of fancy physics explanation for why particles suspended in liquid behave that way, but I don't know what it is. I think it has to do with surface tension, but I could be totally wrong, so don't rely on me about that.

I only make this stuff about once every 4 or 5 years because I have to have forgotten that my sweet tooth is not powerful enough for me to want to eat more than 3 pieces of it. I did have one more incentive this time though: I bought a vintage potato press. It's totally neato. You fill the removable can with cooked potato, crank the handle down, and it instantly extrudes a whole recipe worth of perfectly mashed potato. I doubt it will see much use for potato candy in the future, but I do want to try making lefse. If I get up the nerve, I'll tell you about it.

Ta-Da!

Home made Gnocchi

3/4 cup flour
1 medium sized russet potato
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon minced fresh herbs
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Poke a few holes in the potato, then microwave it for about 5 minutes, or until it's quite soft. While the potato is still hot, break it open and scoop the insides out. Let the  potato cool enough to handle, then press it through a wire sieve. Toss the potato crumbs with the rest of the ingredients, then gently knead everything together. You don't need to work it very much, just until the dough comes together into a reasonably smooth ball. Squeeze or roll the dough out into a rope about 1/2 inch thick and twist off little balls. Set the balls aside until you have a large pot of salted water boiling. Dump in the gnocchi and wait for the water to return to boiling. Reduce the heat to a medium simmer, then wait until the gnocchi flip themselves over and they feel slightly bouncy against a spoon, about 3-5 minutes. Drain and serve immediately with your favorite sauce, they are nowhere near as good the next day.

Some thoughts:

1. Pressing the potato through the sieve is really pretty brilliant. What happens is that the cooked potato cells get separated into uniformly small particles without the starches inside them being turned into a heavy glob of paste, which in turn allows the potato to combine very evenly with the dry ingredients. The recipe I read suggested it and I thought well, I might as well give it a shot. Good call.

2. Add more herbs and maybe a little more salt? Depends on how you like them, and what you're serving them with. You can serve them in broth, like mini matzo balls, in which case go lighter on the seasonings. If you're doing a sauce with more flavor, you might want to punch them up a bit or they will get lost.

3. Gnocchi are dumplings, so think about what texture you like your dumplings to have. Lighter, fluffier? This recipe will do it. Firmer, chewier? Leave out the baking powder and chill them slightly before cooking.

4. In any case, don't over-boil them. Gooshy is not the same thing as tender.

5. Traditionally, you're supposed to roll each gnocchi under the tines of a fork to create ridges for the sauce to stick in. Pain in the ass. By twisting off the dough bits, the twisted surfaces of each one will remain slightly shaggy, which amounts to the same thing with less fuss.

6. Don't be tempted to make them much bigger. If you make them too big, you will have to cook them until the outsides fall apart before the centers are done. The potato dough has subtle and delicious qualities, but the drawback is that it does not have as much structural integrity as an all-flour dumpling, or one with egg as a binder.

7. What's that business about 'flip themselves over' mean? Well, as they cook, starches expand and become less dense, also, steam accumulates inside the part of the dumpling that is underwater. Eventually, enough of the dough will be affected by the heat to reverse the buoyancy of the dumpling mass, and the lighter, i.e. more cooked, part of the dough will roll upwards to the surface. Neato!

Frittata

   
  

  
I think that my love of potatoes is stymied by the fact that they take more than 2 seconds to cook. The other things I am culinarily obsessed with are sort of instant food- cheese, obviously. Eggs, which will be ready to eat if you just glare at them on a particularly warm morning. Bread counts, because even though it takes me 4 hours to make a loaf of bread, once it's done, for the rest of the week all I have to do is cut a piece off and, at most, drop it in the toaster. I have a better relationship with fruits than vegetables for the same reason. If you want to eat an apple, you just bite it. There's plenty of stuff you could do to it first, but that's all pretty much optional.

On the other hand, a potato is fundamentally an ingredient. No matter what, you have to make some substantial alterations to a potato before it's good to eat. Then once you've gone to the effort of dinking around with your spuds, usually what you end up with is a dish that is supposed to go with some other thing that you still have to make. I'm sort of creeping up on some solutions to my longing for potatoes. This is one that was worth repeating.

about 1 1/2 lb little potatoes, sliced thin
1 medium onion, sliced
about 1 cup broccoli florets, cut small
oil for frying

3 eggs
1 T flour
about 1/3 cup water
1 or 2 T olive oil
salt & pepper

about 4 oz feta, crumbled or finely cubed.

a few little tomatoes

Pre-heat the oven to 375.


Fry the onions over medium heat in a heavy bottomed skillet with a pinch of salt and a little oil. When the onions are starting to brown, add the potatoes. Stir them around a bit, add a couple tablespoons of water, and cover the pan. Turn the potatoes gently with a spatula every 2 or 3 minutes until they're about 3/4 done, then stir in the broccoli and cover again.

Mix the eggs, flour, oil, and salt & pepper in a bowl. Once the flour is well incorporated, stir in the cheese. By this time, the broccoli will have turned bright green, and you can pour the egg mix into the skillet. Poke the potatoes around a tiny bit to get the eggs & feta evenly distributed, then drop the tomatoes on top.

Finish by baking for about 20-30 minutes, depending on your oven and how cold your eggs were.

pointers:

1. Start by slicing the potatoes into a bowl of water. It will keep them from going brown.
2. Don't use reduced fat cheese. Bleck.
3. I used my enameled skillet for this because even though I love my cast iron pans, I learned back when I made bacon bread that iron can discolor onions. It made them turn a dark, inky, blue-green. Didn't affect the taste, but it looked very strange. It could be a reaction between the pan and the sulfur compounds in the onions, but  that's just a wild guess... Stainless steel would probably be fine.

I remember making frittata back at the deli. They never put anything except potatoes and onions in it, and I always thought it was the boringest thing on earth. I think it would be good with a little sausage and some peppers, with some other cheese, or you could keep the feta and put in olives and beets. I'll have to try the beet thing later, once I see some at the market that don't cost an arm and a leg.

Potato Pancakes

  

  
Not only am I not Irish, I'm not Jewish either. Several weeks ago I went and scrounged a potato pancake that Cynthia and the girls made, and I remembered that I love these things. While I was cooking them, I also remembered that the last time I grated a potato must have been about 12 years ago. Probably about this time of year, while I was prepping the holiday latkes at that deli. (Yes, I know, Passover isn't the latke holiday, that's Chanukah, but it billed itself as a jewish deli, and...you know) I'm sure that's the reason why, in all this time, I have never made latkes again. I worked with a woman who was truly, horribly, injured making latkes. I don't know how many hundreds of pounds of potatoes I had to peel or how may dozens of times I shaved little pieces of my knuckles off with that demonic peeler. Thank goodness for the Robotcoupe. We had a mixing bowl as large as a kiddie pool that we mixed the grated potatoes for the holiday latke recipe in. Sometimes I wish I had one of those industrial food processors. I digress. Please note, that I did not bother to peel my potatoes today.

about a pound and a half of yukon gold potatoes, the newer the better
about 4 tablespoons of flour
about a teaspoon of salt
3 eggs
2 or 3 green onions
2 tablespoons, more or less, minced parsley
some pepper
olive oil for frying

This makes about 8, 4-5" pancakes.

Mince the green onion and parsley, and mix them with the eggs, flour, salt and pepper. Wash the potatoes and grate them into another bowl. Grab handfuls of the grated potatoes and wring out as much water as possible before adding them to the egg mix. You may be tempted to skip this part- don't. Once you get the potatoes mixed in with the salt in the batter, they will sweat out an amazing quantity of water.

Use 2 frying pans. Put about 1/4 inch of oil in each one and heat to medium. When the oil starts to shimmer in the pans, drop about 1/3 cup of batter for each latke into the pans. I can fit 3 latkes into a 10-inch pan. Cook them for about 5 minutes on each side, until they are golden and a bit crispy. Drain on paper towels.

Notes:

1. The potatoes will oxidize very fast. Grate quickly and mix them into the batter just as soon as you want to eat them. At the deli, we used to mix up a water bath with a few tablespoons of an anti-oxidant to grate the potatoes into. The anti-oxidant was this weird substance which demonstrated a property that I learned about in high school which I think is called 'heat of solvation'. That is, when a chemical in crystaline form is dissolved in water, it will release heat, due to the fact that an organized solid is a higher energy state than a bunch of loose molecules floating around in suspension. Some crystals will release quite a lot of energy this way. If you held a scoop of that anti-oxidant and dribbled a little water on it, you could give yourself a significant burn. (That's not what happened to Ann.)
2. As I said, the potatoes emit a great deal of water. You can either squish it out before frying, as I did, to keep your pancakes neat in appearance, or if you like an eggier latke, stir it back in. The last few will be rather sloppy, but will taste good.
3. Medium heat is best. They take longer to brown, but you need to cook them long enough to get the potatoes soft. Crunchy-raw potatoes are not very satisfying to eat.
4. Don't crowd the pans. Too many latkes all at once will generate a cloud of steam which will inhibit crisping. Cooked through is good, soggy is not.
5. You don't have to use yukon gold potatoes, any kind will do just fine. I like that variety because the color is appealing, and because the skins are usually thin and tender enough to dispense with peeling.

I did not have either sour cream or apple sauce, which is ok, because I don't like apple sauce unless I make it myself. Greek yogurt and raspberry jam was very good, and a fried egg is even better.

Shandong Irishman

    

I suspect that colcannon is to Irish people what meatloaf is to Americans- everybody has their own recipe which is indisputably the only correct version. I'm not Irish. I mean, so not Irish that I'm sort of convinced that even the white parts of me aren't Irish- they're Scots, as far as I know. Be that as it may, I wasn't kidding about the napa cabbage, that thing is haunting me.

The first time I encountered colcannon was at a party at Tom Harari's parent's house. I couldn't have been as much as 12 years old, because I remember all the adults being way taller than me. I don't remember what the party was in aid of, but it probably was not St. Patrick's day. Some lady brought colcannon. I thought, "Awesome! Mashed potatoes!" because, like Jej, I have a thing for mashed potatoes.  I was really disappointed. The dish was cold. It didn't have any salt in it. The chopped vegetables in it were stiff, and undercooked, and cut up into large, unwieldy lumps. The parsley in it had sand stuck in its leaves. I kept hearing other people say "Did you try the colcannon? Try the colcannon, its great. You should try it." I started to think the name sounded really stupid. I have to assume this was one of those instances of kids having an adverse reaction to things which don't bother grown-ups- either that or the place was just full of feckless hippies who couldn't cook and didn't know any better.

The experience gave me a prejudice against colcannon for about 25 years. I don't know what happened after that, but one day I found myself thinking "Hmmm. Cabbage. Hmmm. Potatoes. Sounds good!" Now I make it several times every winter. This is the only time I've made it with a napa cabbage, though. Somehow, it didn't leap to mind, you know? But, since St. Pat's was just the other day, it seemed natural. This really doesn't come out any different from the traditional versions, because once they are cooked, napa and regular cabbage taste quite similar. Napa is a bit less stinky, and has a slightly more delicate texture, and so requires less cooking than ordinary cabbage.

about 3/4 lb potatoes. I like baby yellow ones.
about 1/4 of a medium sized napa cabbage
1 medium onion
2 tablespoons butter
salt to taste
2 or 3 tablespoons minced parsley. I like the curly kind, the bouncy texture is nice.
a little pepper

Chop the potatoes coarsely. I don't like to peel things, which is why I get baby potatoes. The skins are more appealing to eat. Dice the onion and put them and the potatoes in a heavy pot with just enough water to cover them. Bring them to a medium boil, and keep them there until the water has almost all evaporated. Add the butter and the napa leaves, coarsly chopped. Stir everything up and add a pinch or two of salt, to help wilt the cabbage. Leave it on the heat until all the water is gone and there is a fair amount of browning on the bottom of the pan. Remove from heat, let it sit for a minute, then stir in the minced parsley, bash up the potatoes a little bit, and taste for salt and pepper. Remember to scrape the yummy brown bits off the pan, they're important.

I'm not selling this idea particularly well, am I? Trust me, this is really good comfort food. It takes no brains to cook, and anything that has onions browned in butter gets automatic approval from me.

There's cheese in the picture. I think everything, nearly, goes with cheese, and this particular cheese is a favorite of mine. Cashel Blue, besides being appropriately Irish, is a very mild, soft blue cheese. TJ's has it this month. Then there are the little oranges which I mostly put there for compositional reasons, but also because they're very chinesey, but I later realized that actually eating all these things together is a good idea. There is a tremendous amount of fat and salt in the cheese and potatoes, which is balanced by the sweet/acid from the clementines.

Special Spud Salad

It's really only special looking; purple taters don't taste any different from regular ones. But the color does make them more fun to eat.

a pound & a half of new baby purple spuds
about 2 tablespoons each of whole grain mustard, cider vinegar, and real mayonnaise.
the green part of a scallion, chopped fine
1/3 of a yellow bell pepper, finely diced
some fresh parsley, minced
salt & pepper

Boil the potatoes in generously salted water. Mine were so new the skins could be scraped off under running water, but otherwise I wouldn't bother peeling them. They cook surprisingly fast, be a little vigilant or they'll boil into porridge before you know it. Once they're done, drain them and stick 'em in the fridge until they're about 90% cool, then break them into chunks with your fingers. I think they look better that way. Mix all the other ingredients together, toss with the taters, and taste for salt and pepper.

Hey, remember the strawberries I posted about? Well, the ones this week are even better. They look just the same, but these are like magic. I obviously respond strongly to food, but they did stop me in my tracks at the farmer's market today. They're these huge, firm red things, incredibly sweet and so intensely berry-tasting that you'd think they'd been treated with some flavoring agent. I think I annoyed the booth operators by buzzing their sample tray once too often. Note to self: the next strawberry plant I buy should be the variety named 'albion'.

Causa!

Yes, it is mashed potatoes. Awesome mashed potatoes. You know why? Because the people who invented potatoes make 'em like this, that's why. I've had the causa at Andina twice now, and it was one of those dishes that the first bite made me feel giddy with excitement. I may even have bounced in my chair a little bit. I'm not saying my recipe is that fantabulous. They make a fancy crab salad and top it with ahi tuna ceviche. And a crunchy fried shrimp. Mine ain't so costive, but it does cure the jones.

about a pound of yellow potatoes
1/2 cup small cooked shrimp
a generous tablespoon of finely diced celery
the same amount of diced bell pepper, I had yellow, but red would look better
1 teaspoon minced cilantro
1 teaspoon finely minced onion
juice of 1/2 a lime
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
pinch of turmeric for color
1 tablespoon mayo
olive oil- use the good stuff, something you could just eat with bread
dash of cayenne pepper
salt
some olives
avocadoes for serving

Boil the potatoes in salted water until they're tender, then drain them and slip off the skins while they're still warm. Mash them slightly, then mix in the juice of 1/4 of a lime, about 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the turmeric and a pinch of salt. They should come out to a creamy texture a little softer than play-doh. Cover and refrigerate while you make up the rest of the stuff.

You could just leave the shrimp whole, but I sliced mine up a bit. Mix all the remaining ingredients except avocadoes and olives to make the shrimp salad. Put the shrimp mix in the bottom of a small (about 2 cup) dish, arrange some olives over it, and layer on the potato mix. Press down firmly, refrigerate until thoroughly chilled. Try not to mangle it if you want to unmold it and serve it all fancy-lookin. The avocadoes are traditional, aparently. Most of the recipes I looked up called for them either in or with the causa. Also, I think the potatoes themselves are supposed to be a little spicy. Next time.

I used to work with a guy from Peru. It seems I should have asked him about peruvian food when I had a chance.

Mushroom and Potato Pie

Giant Gallete v.2! The other day Pete called me up and said "Do you want any chanterelles? I traded a set of snow tires for 2 pounds of chanterelles and some money."  Hm. Why, yes, some mushrooms of questionable provenance would be very nice. So here is what I made. Incidentally, this is an easily veganizable recipe, just use an appropriate pastry recipe.

1 recipe of savory pastry, enough for a double crust.

3 medium-small yellow potatoes.
1 medium yellow onion
2 sprigs rosemary, or other woody herbs, like thyme or something
1 lb chanterelles (or other interesting mushrooms)
olive oil, salt and pepper

First, decide if you are going to make this from start to finish, or begin on one day and finish some other time. I did the latter, because I was tired the day I brought the mushrooms home, so that is how my directions will go.

Cut the butter and salt into the flour for the crust and put it in a sealed container in the fridge.

Slice the taters and boil in salted water until they are about 3/4 done, drain and refrigerate.

Clean the mushrooms and slice them into rather big pieces. This is really only to allow them to lay flat in the skillet. Slice the onion quite thinly. Get your skillet pretty hot, add a bit of olive oil and scoot it around with a rosemary sprig. Leave the sprig in the pan and sprinkle a bit of salt in the pan. Put a single sparse layer of shrooms in the pan and let them sear, use tongs to flip them over once and sear the other sides. Repeat until all the mushrooms are done. Set the cooked mushrooms aside and throw out the herb sprigs or you will have a bunch of twigs in your pie...forgot to do that part, myself.

When you get through the whole batch, hopefully the mushroom juices won't have burnt all black and disgusting, and you can just add a good slosh of oil, some salt and the onions. If you have significant blackening rather than a nice brown glaze, rinse the hot pan out first, then put in your oil and onions. Add about 1/2 cup of water to the onions and cover them up. As the water boils out, stir a couple times until the onions are evenly caramelized, then put them with the mushrooms. Dash a bit of water in the pan to get the last bits of yummy out of it, pour that in with the shrooms  and onions, and refrigerate until you want to actually bake and eat your pie.

Let the pastry mix set out for about 20 minutes. If it's too cold, it'll be a pain in the ass. Preheat the oven to 425. I like to heat a large pizza pan in the oven too. A stone would be nice, if you have one, but you don't need anything fancy.

Heat a couple tablespoons of oil in a skillet and lay the potato slices in it. Add a half cup of water and a sprinkle of salt if the pots still taste bland. Cover, let the potatoes develop a nice brown crust. Rough 'em up with a spatula so that more potato surface is exposed to the pan and the slices are a bit smashed. Top with the mushroom and onion mix and let it brown again. Remove from heat, stir to combine.

Meanwhile, add the liquid to the pasty ingredients and mix it up. Roll the dough into a circle almost 18 inches across. I like to use a pastry cloth, for reasons I've mentioned before. Flop the crust onto a sheet of tinfoil, dump the filling in the middle and press it down into a nice compact heap and fold up the edges of the pasty.  Brush with egg or milk, bake on the preheated pan or stone for 1/2 hour or until it's a bit brown.

My conclusion:

Cheese. Gruyere, brie, something mild and nutty. Mushrooms and potatoes are subtle, but they would benefit from a little moisture. Especially after a couple days in the fridge.

Don't burn your mouth.

Tomatillo Tagine and Cous-Wa

An unexpected crop of tomatillos + a jar of preserved limes made during the enthusiasm of summer = north african with south american ingredients.

The Tagine part:

2 onions, sliced
6 tomatillos, chopped
1 clove crushed garlic
2 frozen chicken tenders, cut up
1 large russet potato, in 1 inch cubes
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp coriander seed, ground
a generous shake each paprika and turmeric-it adds color
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
the fleshy part of 1/4 of a preserved lime plus about 1/4 tsp of the skin, minced very fine
hot pepper flakes optional
broth concentrate & water
kalamata olives or some olive mix you like.
olive oil for browning the onions

Brown the onions, tomatillos and garlic in a heavy saucepan. If it has a heatproof lid, you can do the traditional thing and finish the recipe in the oven, but I just did mine on the stovetop, so that's how my directions will go. When the onions are browned and the tomatillos are mush, add the chicken and the spices and lime. Cook until the chicken is almost done, then add the broth concentrate and potato, and add enough water to almost cover everything. Cook until the potatoes are done and you start to get some browning in the bottom of the pan. If it looks too watery, leave the lid off so it can cook down into a nice thick gravy. When you're about 5 minutes from done, add a handful of olives.

the Cous-Wa part:

And what is cous-wa? Another of Pete's recipes. His originally had basil and yellow peppers, I had no basil left, but tarragon and thyme make a good substitute.

1/2 c couscous
1/2 c quinoa
1/4 c diced bell pepper
1/4 c green beans -I used frozen
2 or 3 scallions, chopped
a dab of broth concentrate
olive oil
1 tsp mixed tarragon & thyme, minced finely
pine nuts-damn these are expensive these days! How long does it take to grow a frikkin' pine tree?!?!?

Brown the scallions and bell peppers in a bit of oil in a saucepan big enough to cook the grains in. When the onions are brown, add about 1 1/2 cups of water and a bit of broth concentrate. Bring to a boil, add the quinoa and cover. When the quinoa is almost done (it'll take about 10 minutes) check to make sure there's still about a half cup of liquid. Add a bit if necessary, put in the couscous & herbs, stir well and cover. Turn the heat off. The couscous will steam up in about 5 minutes and you can toss it up with a handful of pine nuts just before serving.

Garnish with mint for authenticity -hah- or parsley if that's what you got.

I am not a big fan of either couscous of quinoa by themselves. Too many dumbell college hippy recipes, I think. Curiously enough, combining the two made a very appealing dish. The quinoa makes up for the lack of textural character in the couscous, and the couscous ameliorates the peculiar musty flavor of the quinoa to a level that is piquant rather than obnoxious. Sometimes I remember that food like this has only been possible in the last 1/2 century, and then only for a very few of us. I feel lucky indeed.