Pan-Fried Potatoes

I’m just realizing, since this is the second potato post in a row, we do eat a lot of potatoes around here. Well, why not? Potatoes are tasty, they go with everything, and they lend themselves to an endless variety of cooking methods. If I have to choose between potatoes and bread — and usually I do — I’ll pick potatoes any day.

I made pan-fried potatoes last night to go with a simple cheese omelet. These “home fries” are one of my favorite potato side dishes, because pan-frying is a quick and easy method that is equally appropriate for breakfast or dinner. If you have leftover boiled potatoes, this is a great way to repurpose them.

I usually parboil the potatoes before frying. This ensures that they cook all the way through and that the insides are creamy. I plan on one medium Yukon Gold potato per person. Here is the method:

1. Peel the potatoes and cut into cubes of about the same size.
2. Put the potatoes in a large pot and cover with cold water. Add a generous pinch of salt. Bring to a boil and cook until the potatoes are just tender but not falling apart–until they can just be pierced with a fork. Drain. (If you want to save the potatoes for later cooking, refrigerate them in cold water in a covered dish.)
3. Cover the bottom of a cast-iron skillet with a film of oil. Heat the skillet over medium-high. Add the potatoes in a single layer, pressing down with the back of a spatula. Season with salt.
4. Cook until the potatoes are well-browned on the bottom, about 3 minutes. Flip the potatoes in sections and cook the other side until browned. Continue flipping and cooking until they are as browned as you like.

My husband likes these with ketchup, but I think they taste fine all by themselves.

Potato Cake with Fried Eggs

I have gotten out of the habit of posting here lately, mostly because my cooking has not inspired any post ideas. Either I’ve been making tried-and-true recipes that I’ve practically memorized and that I’ve already posted on the blog, or I’ve been trying out new recipes from cookbooks, which I’m not likely to share until I’ve cooked them enough times to make them my own.

I’m going to try to get back in the habit of posting simple dishes as I make them, especially if they are easy enough that they don’t require a formal recipe. This potato cake is one of those dishes. This is more of a technique than an actual recipe, and once you learn it, you can fancy it up all kinds of ways. I topped it with a fried egg for a breakfast-for-dinner dish. A simple green salad would make a good accompaniment.

I used 1 medium Yukon Gold potato per person. Peel the potatoes and shred them using the shredding disk of a food processor. Rinse the potatoes to remove excess starch, then wrap them in a dishcloth and squeeze well to get rid of the excess moisture. Season with salt and pepper.

Heat a nonstick skillet over medium with a couple of pats of butter in it. For 2 potatoes, a 10-inch skillet is a good size. Once the butter has melted, add the potatoes and smooth them out to fill the skillet. Cover the skillet and cook for about 5 minutes. Remove the skillet and let cook another 5 minutes or so, until the potatoes are browned on the bottom.

Slide the potatoes out onto a plate and add another couple of pats of butter to the skillet to melt. Place another plate upside down on top of the first one with the potatoes, and then invert the plates. Slide the potatoes, uncooked side down, back into the pan, and cook another 5 minutes or until the bottom has browned. Let the potatoes cool off the heat for a minute or two, and then slice into wedges to serve.

Thoughts on Mashed Potatoes

English: A small plate with a serving of mashed potatoes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I made mashed potatoes twice over the Thanksgiving holiday. In one recipe, I used Yukon Gold potatoes, and in another, I used regular russet potatoes. Most recipes advise using non-waxy potatoes for mashing so they won’t get too gluey. (Waxy potatoes include the smaller red and white varieties.)

In both cases, I prepared the potatoes nearly the same way. I boiled the potatoes to cook them. The Yukon Golds were peeled and cut into large chunks for boiling. I boiled the russets whole in their jackets and removed the skins after they had cooled, as advised by the Cooks Illustrated recipe for classic mashed potatoes. When mashing, I just added butter and either milk or half-and-half, nothing else. I used an old-fashioned potato masher, not an electric beater or processor, because I don’t mind some texture and even lumps in my mashed potatoes.

It was interesting to make these two versions of mashed potatoes back-to-back, because it helped me realize once and for all that Yukon Golds are the best potatoes for mashing. They didn’t take as long to cook as the russets. They mashed easily, and the results were fairly smooth. And they tasted better.

The russets were too lumpy, even after spending a lot of time mashing and using a lot of liquid. They tasted mealier and were not as creamy as the Yukon Golds. I wasn’t nearly as happy with the results.

Pretty much every basic cookbook includes a recipe for mashed potatoes, but this is one dish where it’s best to let your instincts guide you. I start with the basic recipe in Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food, which is similar to this one. I don’t measure the milk and butter, but just keeping adding them while mashing until the dish tastes good to me. To amp up the flavors, I have had good luck substituting buttermilk for the milk, boiling whole garlic cloves with the potatoes and then mashing them too, and using Parmesan and olive oil in place of the butter and milk. From now on, though, I will start with the right kind of potatoes: Yukon Gold.

Some Old Favorites: Grilling Out on the New Deck

A recent cooking challenge that I haven’t gotten a chance to post about yet was to resurrect some old favorites. I chose backyard barbecue favorites in honor of our new, expanded, gorgeous deck, and to give my husband a chance to cook for a change.

The menu was: grilled turkey burgers, mini baked potatoes and quick pickles. I have posted the turkey burger recipe before. This is the only turkey burger recipe I have found that results in juicy, tasty burgers rather than dried-out hockey pucks. Giving credit where credit is due, the original recipe came from Sara Foster’s Casual Cooking.

That cookbook was also the source for the mini baked potatoes idea. You don’t even need a recipe for these. Just substitute medium-sized Yukon gold potatoes for russets. Poke holes in the top and bake at 400 degrees for 35-40 minutes. Load them up with all your favorite fixings. Despite being so simple, this is a genius idea, because often a full-sized baked potato is just too much.

Finally, the quick pickles came from another Sara Foster book that I’ve been featuring a lot on this blog lately: Sara Foster’s Southern Kitchen. (Expect a full-fledged review very soon.) Even though this was a new recipe I was trying, it qualifies as an old favorite because I’ve been making some variant of these pickles for years. It’s a great way to eat garden cucumbers, and it also works for zucchini.

Here’s my version of a quick recipe for quick pickles. For 1 pound of cucumber slices, combine 2 cups water and 1 cup white wine vinegar. Add 1 tablespoon coarse salt, plus fresh dill, red pepper flakes and/or sliced garlic, as desired. You can also throw in diced red onion, if you like. Let the pickles marinate at least 1 hour. These pickles keep about 1 week in the fridge.

Chicken Nuggets and Fries

Ok, I’ve been putting off this challenge way too long. First, I put off making it — illness and holidays got in the way — and then I put off writing about it.

To tell you the truth, a meal of homemade chicken nuggets and fries was not one I was looking forward to making. I think of this as typical restaurant kid’s food, not a meal I would likely order for myself. I don’t even like to order it for my kid, although sometimes choices are limited. Since this isn’t a meal I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat, I didn’t think it was one I would enjoy making either. But I was challenged to make it, and I did.

Homemade chicken nuggets.

I don’t ever deep-fry at home. My rationale is that deep-frying is unhealthy, messy and expensive when you consider how much oil is required. And it’s very easy (all too easy) to find good-tasting deep-fried foods when we go out to eat. It just doesn’t fit into what I consider good home cooking.

So I didn’t want to deep-fry either the nuggets or the “fries.” For the nuggets, after researching many different recipes, I decided to take a combination approach. I shallow-fried them for a few minutes to get the breading crispy, then transferred them to the oven to finish cooking.

Based on the recipes I read, it seemed that the best results came from soaking the chicken first in buttermilk, then rolling it in a hearty coating (heartier than flour), such as cracker or bread crumbs. I chose panko bread crumbs, which I spiced up quite a bit with paprika, cayenne and salt. I cut boneless chicken breasts into approximate nugget size before letting them soak in the buttermilk for a few hours. Then I rolled them in the coating and shallow-fried them in vegetable oil just until the coating browned. I transferred them to a baking sheet to finish cooking at about 425 degrees.

The nuggets were crispy, but certainly not as crispy or as yummy as their deep-fried counterparts would be. (I said I don’t like to deep-fry at home, but there’s no denying that deep-fried foods taste very good.) The breading had a tendency to slide off, too. I think the extra spices were essential. Otherwise, the dish would have been rather bland.

I added two dipping sauces to help with the blandness factor. One was a simple honey-mustard sauce: two parts mustard whisked with one part honey. The other was lemon juice whisked with a little olive oil, Italian seasonings and plenty of grated Parmesan. I actually liked the second sauce better with the crudites (raw broccoli, carrots, cherry tomatoes and celery) that I served with the chicken, but my husband preferred it on the nuggets.

Two kinds of oven fries.

Now for the fries. I decided to try “oven-frying” them two different ways. I cooked both batches for about 30 minutes at 425 degrees.

For one set of fries, I used peeled Yukon gold potatoes. I cut them into wedge shapes and sprinkled them with a little oil, salt and some sugar. This was based on a recipe I found online, and I think the intention was to mimic the look of French fries. The potatoes did turn spotty brown where the sugar caramelized, but they didn’t taste at all fried; they tasted sweet. My husband liked them, but I didn’t.

For the other batch of oven fries, I used unpeeled russet potatoes. I tossed them with a bit more oil, coarse salt, paprika and cayenne. Again, these didn’t taste fried, although they more closely resembled the thick-cut steak fries that you find at some up-scale restaurants. I liked them a lot better, though.

For me, this meal rated about a C. I doubt I would make it again unless it was requested, although I would make the oven fries to serve with other dishes. My husband rated it a B+/A-. He was disappointed that I didn’t make more dipping sauces, particularly a barbecue sauce. My toddler declined to eat any of it at all. I guess it’s not real chicken nuggets and fries when your mom makes it.

I haven’t received this week’s challenge yet, so stay tuned. Also, now that the recent spate of holidays has passed, I promise to get back on a weekly cooking and posting schedule, at least for a while.

Gigantic Stuffed Potatoes

This week’s challenge was to serve, as a meal, a stuffed baked potato. To be honest, I didn’t consider this to be much of a challenge. I love baked potatoes, and I have made stuffed potatoes many times before. But my husband said he wanted something different than the usual toppings, so I tried to get creative with this recipe. I also learned a new technique for crisping prosciutto, which definitely made the challenge worthwhile.

These were some really big potatoes! I made two, but my husband and I could only eat 1½ between us, so I had leftovers for lunch the next day. They were delicious as well as filling. We both agreed that this challenge was a success. (My toddler won’t touch potatoes unless they are of the french-fried variety, so he doesn’t get a vote this week.)

For the stuffing, I decided to go a bit upscale. Truthfully, I looked in my fridge and based the stuffing on what I already needed to use up. I combined sauteed spinach, sauteed mushrooms, crispy prosciutto, and gruyere cheese. The flavor combination was outstanding, and I felt like together these ingredients made for a more-or-less balanced meal.

I wanted to add something crispy like bacon to the stuffing, but not use bacon. I had some prosciutto in my fridge already, and I found this technique for crisping it like bacon. It worked beautifully. Now that I know how to do it, I will definitely be adding crispy prosciutto to scrambled eggs, salads, soups, and whatever else I can think of.

When I was shopping for this challenge, I found gigantic potatoes at the grocery store. They were as big as footballs, seriously. If you use reasonably sized potatoes, half a potato would make a great side dish as well. And this recipe is completely open to adaptation, just by varying what you stuff the potatoes with. But please, do use cheese. You have to have cheese on baked potatoes, in my opinion.

Here’s the recipe. I don’t have exact amounts for the ingredients, so you’ll have to wing it. But that only makes this recipe easier to scale up or down.

Twice-Baked Potatoes Stuffed with Spinach, Mushrooms, Crispy Prosciutto & Gruyere Cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Figure on ½-1 russet potato per serving, depending on whether you’re serving this as an entree or side dish. Scrub the potatoes well and prick in several places with a fork. Rub them with olive oil. Place directly on the oven rack to bake until they give when gently squeezed, about 1 hour. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.

Raise the oven temperature to 450 degrees. Arrange the prosciutto slices (about 1 per potato) on a wire rack and place that on top of a baking pan. Slide the whole thing into the oven. Roast for 7 minutes and set aside to cool. The prosciutto will crisp up even more as it cools. Save the baking pan, as you’ll need it later.

Lower the oven temperature to 375 degrees.

Heat some olive oil in a skillet over medium. Add sliced cremini or button mushrooms. Season with salt, pepper, and thyme. Saute until the mushrooms release their liquid and turn brown, about 10 minutes. Set aside in a bowl and return the skillet to the heat.

Add a little more olive oil, if needed. Put some baby spinach in the skillet (as much as you think you’ll need). Season and saute until the spinach wilts. Set aside with the mushrooms.

The potatoes should now be cool enough to handle. Cut each potato in half lengthwise. Carefully scoop out the flesh, leaving a shell of about ½-inch thickness. In a bowl, mash the potato flesh with butter, sour cream, and milk. Use your judgment for how much you need to achieve a creamy texture. I usually use 1 tablespoon of each per potato. Stir in shredded gruyere cheese, the reserved spinach and mushrooms, and the prosciutto, crumbled. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Carefully mound the potato filling into each potato shell. Top with a little more shredded Gruyere. Place the potato halves on the baking sheet and return to the oven for about 20 minutes, or until they are heated through and browned in spots, and the cheese is all melted. Enjoy.

Sunday Morning Scrambled Eggs

I had the idea that last weekend’s cooking challenge was going to be an easy one. It was for a Country Scramble, a scrambled egg dish that contains a lot of other good stuff besides, most importantly, pan-fried potatoes. I make scrambled eggs with stuff almost every weekend, so I thought this one would be a breeze. I even planned to make biscuits to go with it.

What I ended up with was a “plate of fail.” That’s what I call the plate where food goes before burial in the trash can. In this case, it was 3 pieces of charred bacon — I’m blaming their demise on my toddler, who distracted me during the frying process — and an entire batch of biscuits. More on that later.

The eggs themselves didn’t go on the plate of fail, and my husband said he really enjoyed them, but they were not my favorite dish. I think there was too much stuff in them. When I researched Country Scramble recipes online, most of them contained similar ingredients: diced potatoes (cooked like hash browns), bell pepper, onion, cheddar cheese and crumbled bacon. I planned to add all of these, plus some scallions for freshness and color. I diced the potatoes, onion and pepper pretty small and added them to a hot pan with some of the liquid bacon grease. (By the way, 2 slices of bacon were rescued and made it into the final dish.) I mostly let them alone, turning them with a big spatula now and again until they were browned on all sides and the potatoes were tender. If I had stopped at this point, I would have had some pretty darn good hash browns.

I pressed the hash browns into a flat layer and poured over 5 eggs beaten with some salt and pepper. I sprinkled over some grated cheddar, the 2 crumbled rashers of bacon and some sliced scallions. After letting it set for a few minutes, I began to scramble. Well, the finished result tasted good, but it wasn’t really eggy enough for me. I think I could have doubled the number of eggs used and it would have been much better, but I already had made way too much for the two of us to eat.

I think I prefer my normal Sunday morning scramble, which has more egg and less stuff. I’ll put the recipe — such as it is — at the bottom of this post. By the way, my husband did take pictures, but I’m not going to post any of them, as this was not the most appetizing-looking of dishes. Judging on looks alone, the picture probably better belongs here.

As for those biscuits… I have made a lot of biscuits, from a lot of different recipes, and they usually turn out great. Biscuits are the easiest and tastiest breads you can make, after all. But I tried a new recipe called, ironically enough, “The Best Biscuits Ever.” These biscuits were a lot of work, and I think that was their downfall. I’ve never made a biscuit where the dough was worked so much. The first batch came out looking very much like hockey pucks: hard and flat and black on the bottom. To rescue the second batch, I had to pile three biscuits on top of each other for a layered effect. They were certainly flakey, but they did not rise at all. Lesson learned. I will return to my tried-and-true buttermilk biscuit recipe next time.

Here is how I usually make Sunday-morning eggs. This recipe is designed to use up little bits of leftover food before going grocery shopping on Sunday afternoon.

Sunday-Morning Scrambled Eggs

1. Go through the refrigerator and find 1, 2 or 3 things to put in the eggs. Leftover cooked veggies or potatoes are good, or a stray tomato. Onions, mushrooms or peppers will all work. Also, that last bit of cheese. If you have a little smoked salmon, prosciutto or bacon, even better. Cut up everything into bite-sized bits.

2. Beat together 2 eggs per diner, plus 1 egg for the bowl, until just combined. Stir in a dollop of cream (or half-and-half) and some salt and pepper.

3. Heat some butter in a nonstick pan over medium. Heat through or cook, if necessary, the filling ingredients you chose (except for the cheese).

4. When the filling is ready, spread it out in a single layer and pour the eggs over. Sprinkle with crumbled or grated cheese and some herbs, if you have any. Let the eggs sit for a minute or two, until they start to set.

5. Using a rubber spatula, scoop and fold the eggs to create big, fluffy curds. Keep scooping until the eggs are cooked the way you like them. I like mine a little wet, but some people prefer them to be entirely dry. Serve immediately with toast of some sort or biscuits.

Leftover Fish, Leftover Potatoes

You may have one or two pieces of fish left over from making crusted cod. Here’s what I did with my leftovers the next day. I toasted sandwich buns and spread them with tartar sauce. Add the fish and voila! A tasty fish sandwich for lunch.

As for leftover mashed potatoes, you can freeze them, but I always turn them into breakfast patties. I stir in one egg, some grated cheese, herbs, maybe some onion and a handful of bread crumbs. Form the potatoes into small patties and coat with more breadcrumbs. It’s helpful, but not required, to firm the patties up in the freezer for a few minutes. Shallow-fry in a little hot olive oil until golden-brown. These patties are especially good topped with a poached egg or with flaked, smoked salmon mixed in.

Tried-and-True Mashed Potatoes

I have made mashed potatoes so many times that I have pretty much memorized my recipe. And I can adapt it to whatever I have in my fridge. Mashed potatoes go with just about anything, and almost everyone loves them, so it’s a tried-and-true side dish. I’ll almost always serve them with fish, for instance, like last weekend’s crusted cod.

I usually choose Yukon Gold potatoes. They seem to make the creamiest, tastiest mash. If you haven’t discovered these all-purpose potatoes, they also make great hash browns and oven fries. Give them a try.

I won’t normally buy sour cream or buttermilk just to use them for mashed potatoes, but if I already have it for some other recipe, I find it adds a nice zing to the potatoes. When I don’t have either of those, though, cream, half-and-half or even milk works just fine.

If you want to dress your mashed potatoes up, you can stir in cooked bacon, shredded cheese, fresh herbs, a spoonful of pesto or even chopped, sauteed vegetables. If you boil peeled garlic cloves with the potatoes, you can mash them in too. But I usually just serve mine with butter and cream. They’re absolutely delicious that way.

Mashed Potatoes

Select 1 medium Yukon Gold potato per serving. This may make more than you need, but it’s better to have too much than too little. (Ideas for leftovers will be posted tomorrow.) Peel each potato and cut into rough chunks. Put in a pot, cover with water and add a few pinches of salt. Bring to a boil and let simmer until the potatoes are tender enough to be split by a fork (15-20 minutes).

Drain the cooked potatoes and return them to the pot. Per serving, add ½ tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon cream, milk, buttermilk or sour cream (depending on what you have). So for 4 servings, you’ll need 2 tablespoons butter and ¼ cup of dairy. Mash with a potato masher or fork. Add salt and pepper to taste, and beat with a wooden spoon to the desired creaminess (or push the potatoes through a food mill if you want them absolutely free of lumps).

A Great Potato Gratin

My first challenge of the New Year was actually a challenge I set for myself for the Christmas dinner I was hosting. I wanted to finally master the potato gratin. Although many recipes go by the name gratin, the one I’m referring to is the classic Gratin Dauphinois, with cream and melted Gruyere cheese. This is one of my favorite special occasion dishes, but I had never been able to make a really good one.

It seems like a simple dish. It contains only four or five ingredients: potatoes, cream, Gruyere cheese, salt and maybe garlic. But every time I made it before, it either turned out very gloppy, with a lot excess liquid, or the potatoes didn’t get tender enough. It was time to stop fooling around and get serious.

For help, I turned to Patricia Wells’ Bistro Cooking, which practically has a whole chapter dedicated to potato gratins. I ended up combining steps from two different recipes, and the results were magnificent. The gratin was crusty and cheesy, the potatoes were tender and redolent with cream, and I couldn’t resist going back for seconds.

Here’s what I learned about making a really good gratin. First, slice the potatoes thinly and consistently. If you only get out your mandoline once a year, now is the time. I sliced mine 3/8 inch thick, which seemed a little thick to me, but they cooked up beautifully.

Second, pre-cook the sliced potatoes at a low simmer — not a boil — for about 10 minutes. This ensures they will be tender after they come out of the oven.

Finally, choose a shallow dish for baking. I don’t have a proper gratin pan, so I used a lasagna baking dish. I made two layers of potatoes and cheese, and that worked out very well. The gratin itself was cooked and beautiful ahead of schedule, at just 45 minutes.

Now that I know how to make a really good potato gratin, it will be a challenge not to make it more often. Here’s the recipe as I prepared it.

Potato Gratin

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

• 1 garlic clove, peeled and halved
• 2 pounds baking potatoes, such as russets, peeled and very thinly sliced
• 1 cup freshly grated French or Swiss Gruyere cheese
• 1 cup heavy cream
• Salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a low simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally so that the potatoes do not stick to the bottom of the pan. Reduce the heat to low and cook, stirring from time to time, until the potatoes are tender but not falling apart, about 10 minutes.

Thoroughly rub a shallow baking dish with the garlic. Using a slotted spoon, transfer half of the potatoes to the dish. Sprinkle with half the cream and half the cheese. Sprinkle with salt. Cover with the remaining potatoes, and sprinkle again with the remaining cream and cheese. Sprinkle again with salt. Bake, uncovered, until crisp and golden on top, 45-60 minutes. Serve immediately.