Monday morning: I am a quarter back

It's come and gone, and here we all are in recovery mode, with plenty to digest on all levels.  I read lots of articles and blog posts in this last week about the murky and shameful historical origins of the holiday, and I think good citizenship demands being aware of those.  I also think the opportunity to gather and be grateful is one worth hanging on to.  I'm all ears if you want to weigh in on this one.

In terms of less weighty lingering questions, I rank at the top of the list "what to do with the leftover consequences of a crucial miscommunication regarding mashed potatoes?"  See below for the answer.

My breezy Thanksgiving report: I am glad I brined the turkey, but sad I overcooked it (not before undercooking it first!  I am nothing if not thorough).  I am woefully sad about the gluten-free gingerbread recipe that snookered me into buying a $9 bag of weird flour that will languish in my freezer for eons.  I am happy about my gravy, and about that ginger-carrot sauce I told you about (thank you, Marisa!).

The gingerbread misstep aside, in general the meal's successes belonged to the sweet table.  I made some whoopie pies (more on those later) that were a hit.  And my kiddos batted their contributions right out of the park.

First, the ever-popular and vastly underrated Zebra Cake, once the province of our oldest child and now bequeathed to her sister. I am sure there is a way to replicate it without buying a box of cookies and supporting Nabisco, and thanks to my mad Google skills, I have been led to what was under my nose all along.  Next year!  Meanwhile, she made it the standard way, to grand applause as usual (it is a staple of our holiday table):

The oldest and the youngest collaborated on some hedgehog cookies that will definitely make an appearance from here on out.  Said one early adopter, "these are definitely in the top five of all desserts I have eaten in my life." 

If you would like to make these yourself, and I urge you to consider it, head right over here for the recipe.  We used toasted pecans in place of the walnuts, because pecans are vastly superior to walnuts in every way in our unhumble and unsolicited opinion, especially inasmuch as they are way more woodlandy in appearance than walnuts are.  A chopstick with a pointy end makes a fine tool for painting facial features, if you plan to take action on this information.

The other culinary home run of the weekend comes courtesy of my sister, who pointed out, correctly, that the highest and best use of the leftover mashed potato is unquestionably what we have come to call the potato burger. 

It's hard to give you something that resembles a recipe.  The essentials are: re-mash the potatoes with an egg (per two cups of potato, say); a few tablespoons of finely grated parmesan or other dry, aged cheese; some minced aromatic (thyme was lingering around here, after making the turkey brine, but a case could be made for any other fresh herb, or a scallion, e.g.--whatever it is, about a tablespoon of it); and a tablespoon or two of something savory and pungent and exotic, like (in our case) capers, or (in our imaginations) ham or bacon, or preserved lemons or olives, or so forth.  Depending on how seasoned your potatoes were to start with and how flavorful your additions have been, add a little fresh pepper and perhaps a little salt.  Boost your holiday recovery with a quarter cup of flax meal, or don't--we made one batch each way, with no obvious differences.

Form patties, and fry them up in a well-seasoned skillet using a good amount of butter or butter and oil mixed, until nicely browned on each side.

I hope you all had a peaceful and plentiful holiday.  

Finally, if you are Amanda or Melissa, please send me an email!

picky picky picky

I went picking again, trying to atone for the largely-missed strawberries. I picked some more cherries, on which I will test out all the pitting methods proposed to me in your comments the other day, plus this dandy one that I just ran across.  And I picked a couple of pounds of black raspberries.  I have two quart bags tucked away in the freezer, and I feel pretty happy about that.  Like, for instance, about as happy as you might think I'd feel if I had said, I have two quart bags of gold doubloons in the freezer.  Last year was a boom year for almost everything that grows here in our zone, and my hoarding instinct didn't kick into high gear until late summer.  Before that, I was too busy eating.  But thanks to our funky spring weather, it looks like it will be slim pickings for those later fruits like apples, pears, peaches and plums, so I am trying to be more ant than grasshopper in these early summer days.

Which is one kind of picky.

As for the other, I know people who will not eat any white food, and people who will not eat cold cheese.  I know people who are avoiding (or favoring) certain foods because of beliefs about their health-giving (or -sapping) properties, and others whose diet is ruled and limited by bona fide allergies.  I know people with rigid and apparently impermeable, possibly quite wrong-headed and often nonsensical ideas about foods that upset their stomachs or other body parts, or disturb their emotional equilibrium.  I cook for people like this, some of whom are me, regularly.  Sometimes some of them go hungry.  Sometimes I'm a pandering enabler.  So sue me.  I like people to eat.

All things considered, I suppose we are a pretty good set of eaters under this roof, by many standards.  But there are always personal tastes and aversions to consider, especially here in America, and if you multiply that by five you get a pretty long list of considerations.   I get pretty excited here at the home table when I make something new and slightly insane, given the confines of the in-house preferences, and everyone eats it.  Despite being informed by one of my housemates that I was "ruining" perfectly good roasted potatoes as I transformed them with the various ingredients called for here, despite an almost universal anti-radish sentiment among the under-18 set, despite one house diner's long-held dubious stance regarding things that are very mixy, and despite the fact that my radishes were a little mature, everyone ate this.

I hope it works in your house, too.

warm roasted radish and potato salad

adapted from gingerroot's recipe on Food52

3-4 not-bigger-than-your-fist-sized Yukon gold potatoes, diced
8-10 radishes, ends trimmed, diced
Extra virgin olive oil
Sea Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
2 tablespoons Greek sheep yogurt, or any whole milk yogurt
2 tablespoons finely minced green onions
a handful of finely chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons lemon juice mixed with 1/2 t salt and 1/2 t sugar in a small bowl, until salt and sugar are dissolved

Preheat oven to 400. In a medium sized bowl, combine potato pieces with a glug or two of olive oil, a good sprinkling of sea salt, the mustard and cumin seeds, and a few grinds of black pepper, tossing evenly to coat. Roast potatoes in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 15-20 minutes, stirring and flipping them after the first 10 minutes, until they are almost but not quite done.

Meanwhile, using the same bowl that you tossed the potatoes in, combine radishes with a little additional olive oil, sea salt and black pepper; mix well to evenly coat.

Increase the oven heat to 425. Push the potatoes to one side of the pan (it's OK to crowd them now, as they are mostly cooked), and add radishes in a single layer to the other side. Continue to roast for another 7-10 minutes, or until potatoes and radishes are tender, stirring them gently midway through.

Remove pan from oven and allow vegetables to cool. Transfer to a bowl. Add yogurt, cilantro and green onions, folding with a spatula to combine. Add half the lemon juice mixture and taste.  If the salad stands more than ten minutes before you serve it, you may want additional lemon/salt to punch the flavor back up.

recipe for trouble

Back in the days when we went to a school far, far, away from our house, we used to occasionally give rides to a nice fellow in the 9^th grade who needed to make the same commute.  He had been schooled in manners and conversation and was carefully polite at all times, so he was not exactly relaxed but still a pleasure to have in the car.  He and my oldest nephew were about the same age, and said nephew was looking into a nature/survival camp that I knew this boy had attended, so one morning I asked him about it.  He warmed to the topic, especially when describing the day at camp when they made mustard from scratch.  “That stuff was amazing,” he said, genuinely enthusiastic and energized by the recollection.  “One whiff cleaned the boogers right out of your nose.” 

I thought of him yesterday, when I fell prey to a chic and gourmet-looking recipe for mustard.  You know that old saw about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing repeatedly, but expecting a different result?  This is how I sometimes feel about recipes.  I do love recipes, and thanks to them I have arrived at some lovely places.  I have a handwritten recipe card from a dearly departed friend, and one of the instructions among the sparse few given is “batter will look curdled but this is OK.”  Love that.  Love when a recipe alerts you to the likelihood that you may think you have botched it when it’s going just as it should.  I also like a recipe that warns you of actual pitfalls for disaster, and that gives you remedies to hold in reserve.  I like a loose guideline, like most of Nigel Slater’s breezy “this is how I do it but do it how you like” instructions, that empower you to make things just the way you want to eat them, and I like a schoolmarm to hold me accountable step-by-incremental-step when I am doing something complicated.

It is always possible that someone’s tastes will differ from mine, and that a recipe that causes them to write swooning words of praise will turn out to emphasize or omit the very thing I dislike or rely upon.  But this can generally be spied from a distance and corrections made for personal preferences. 

Here is what I don’t like: recipes that trick you into thinking something will turn out better than it sounds, and recipes that omit either necessary warnings or crucial information.

It seems to be a rule of the universe that I only fall prey to these when they require a significant cash outlay for ingredients I may never find a use for again or which I will waste, or which will produce a monstrous quantity of something inedible.  To wit, the gluten-free version of my revered and cherished Jim Lahey Overnight Bread, not perpetrated upon me by that walking saint but by another (this has to be the triple crown title-holder for Worst Smelling Food, Most Costly and Ultimately Useless Ingredients and Most Haunting Bad Flavor); a very pricey roast pork that was too salty even for the dogs, and the mustard mentioned above. 

About the nostril thing, I can attest that my young passenger of years back was totally on the up and up.  About how good the outcome would be, I cannot say the same about the recipe-writer.  The mustard and I have had 24 hours to recuperate, though and I begin to suspect one of the problems with the recipe is that it forgets to tell you to let it mellow for a spell before you throw it out.  It tastes significantly better today than it did yesterday, which is a low bar but still gives me hope.

Maybe you can see how this leads us directly to potatoes.  Here is how: my mom gave me a new cookbook and I immediately felt a pull towards a fennel and potato dish.  I thought I had more of the things it required than I turned out to have, by which time it was Sunday afternoon and I was not going back to the store.  I made the necessary adjustments for limitations of ingredients, and a few more for taste and the future health of the arteries.  It was delish.  Now you can see the whole arc of reason, right?  Thought so.

What is brilliant about this recipe is that it saves the harried cook from painstakingly layering potatoes and their seasonings by mixing it all in a bowl first, which custom-coats each slice of tater.  I cut the heavy cream called for with half and half, and lacking the specified onion went with garlic, which seems right.  Onions are always sweeter than I expect them to be, and the fennel is plenty sweet too—garlic kept things on a nice savory track.  Not a speck of it was left over.

fennel and potato gratin

heavily adapted from Lisa Caponigri’s Whatever Happened To Sunday Dinner?

1 large (soft-ball sized) fennel bulb

3 T olive oil

4-6 cloves of garlic, minced

3-4 large russet or baking potatoes

1 c heavy cream, divided

1 c half & half

2 ½ c coarsely grated fontina (about half a pound), divided

1t sea salt

fresh pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 350.  Oil or butter a heavy, shallow baking dish (I used my big enameled cast iron one, which is about 10x14).

Trim any stalks from the fennel bulb, slice off the bottom and remove the outer layer if it is bruised or grubby. Split it in half lengthwise and then slice it into about ½ “ strips.  I ended up with about 3 cups.

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat.  Sauté the garlic for a minute, then add the fennel and cook, stirring regularly, until it is just tender, about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, scrub and thinly slice the potatoes—no more than ¼ “ thick.  In a large bowl, combine ½ c of the cream, the half and half, 2 c of the cheese, and the salt and pepper.  Add the potatoes and toss to combine.

When the fennel is cooked, toss it in with the potatoes.  Dump this mixture into the prepared baking dish and press everything down with a spatula to even it out and submerge as much as possible.  Drizzle the remaining cream and the reserved cheese on top.  Not all the potatoes will be under the level of the sauce, but the top ones should be dressed with a topcoat of cream, between what was clinging to them and what you have just added.  

Bake until browned and tender, about 1 ½ to 1 ¾ hours.  If the top is browning too quickly, reduce the oven heat to 325 for the last half hour of cooking.  Let stand about ten minutes before you serve it.

strong to the finach

Here is the B-side to yesterday's wild greens paté, especially if taking your yard greens neat is a little too daunting a prospect.  I know it's kind of the same thing two days running, but nettle season is brief.  If you live a life without nettles, as a plus this version is more usefully adapted to polite, cultivated greens than the straight-up paté is.

Once you have created a garlicky, savory, emerald green paste from your wild or more refined greens, whip it into some mashed potatoes.  You know how mashed potatoes are kind of synonymous with background noise and naps?  This is their life-of-the-party cousin.

green taters

one batch of greens paté, minus the tamari & nutritional yeast

the reserved water from cooking the greens

3-4 large russet potatoes (about 2#)

1/2 cup sour cream (or buttermilk, for a less sinful version)

1/2 cup finely-grated parmesan

3T butter

salt and fresh pepper to taste

Peel and chunk the potatoes and cook them in the greens water, or regular water with a nice pinch of salt, until they are entirely tender.  Drain them (you can reserve that water and use it to make a helluva nice loaf of bread, if that's the kind of thing you are into) and let them rest, covered, on the stove for a few minutes.  Mash them well, adding the remaining ingredients, until you achieve your preferred degree of smoothness, and adjust the seasonings to your liking.  If you won't be eating them right away, smooth them into a buttered casserole dish, and do the top with additional butter and a sprinkling of parmesan, and reheat in a nice hot oven when you are ready for them.