Roasted Smashed Potatoes

This recipe is adapted from this month’s issue of Cooks Illustrated. They call for roasting the potatoes at 500ºF. They must (a.) have a powerful exhaust system and (b.) have a very clean oven. Two things I do not have. Any thing much above 425ºF and I have to take the batteries out of our smoke detector.

When these potatoes are done correctly, the insides taste like creamy mash potatoes and the outside like crispy fries. What’s better than that?

Ingredients
-1 1/2 –2 inch-sized potatoes (medium to low starch). Three potatoes per person should do it, though I could easily eat five.
-Olive oil
-Butter (optional)
-Sea salt and pepper

Method

  • Add well-washed, unpeeled potatoes in a single layer to a pot with a lid. Barely cover them with salted water. The water shouldn’t be higher than largest potato. You want to steam them more than boil them.
  • Bring the water to boil, cover and continue to cook over medium-high to high heat for 10-15 minutes. Check it occasionally to make sure all of the water hasn’t evaporated.
  • Heat oven to 400ºF.
  • Drain and let cool slightly, they smash better when cooled.
  • Transfer potatoes to a baking sheet. Roll potatoes in a couple tablespoons of olive oil to coat.
  • Use a potato masher to squash each potato flat.
  • Drizzle each smashed potato with olive oil then sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  • Bake the potatoes for 25-30 minutes until crisp and golden. During the last ten minutes of cooking, I like to add a little butter to each potato. I use grass-fed butter, which is full of all kinds of good nutrients like omega 3 and CLAs (conjugated linoleic acid), so I don’t feel a smidgen of guilt in doing so!

Serve hot.

Potatoes

My husband and I are not good potato growers. We’ve tried. Last year we only got a handful, many of them micro-sized, which I think will be very trendy someday, mainly because the gum-ball sized tubers are so darn cute.

This year I did a little research and came across a method that insured a bumper crop. It involved building a box of sorts (no top or bottom). You plant the tubers in the ground inside your three-foot tall box and as they grow you cover them with dirt.

The box allows you to build up the dirt giving the potatoes plenty of growing room. I guess this is old news to farmers who have used old car tires to achieve the same thing, but the idea was new to me and I was excited.

We lovingly tended the plants all summer, not even disturbing the soil to grab a few early potatoes. We wanted them fat. We added a mixture of dirt and compost from our backyard compost bin, which we affectionately call our “little black gold maker.” I imagined having to add a storage bin in our basement to accommodate the pounds of potatoes we were sure to harvest. I had the perfect spot all picked out.

In early fall we decided to start digging. My husband loves to harvest potatoes because it is like a subterranean Easter egg hunt– every potato is a big surprise… especially in our case. We ended up with about eight, medium-sized potatoes and a few micro-potatoes, which we split amongst the four people sharing the garden. Dang.

Luckily we have plenty of talented farmers in our area who can easily pick up the slack for us. I’ve added the Farm at Miller’s Crossing in Hudson, NY to my list of favorite farms. They meet my two criteria: They are organic and reasonably priced. Plus they are quite skilled in potato growing. I am particularly enamored with their “majestic purple” potatoes.

James Beard in his Theory and Practice Of Good Cooking categorizes potatoes into two types: mealy and waxy, neither of which sound too appetizing to me. Seems the more modern nomenclature is “baking potato” or “boiling potato.”

“Cooks Illustrated” has an excellent “Potato Primer” on their site. This tells you everything you want to know about potatoes. They add a third category, appropriately named “in-between” potatoes.

Here’s the low down:

Mealy and Baking Potatoes: These potatoes have a high starch content and are good for baking, frying, and mashing. Examples: Idaho or Russet potato.

In-between Potatoes: These potatoes have a medium starch content and are good for steaming, baking, roasting, grilling, and au gratin dishes. Examples: Yukon Gold, Purple Majestic.

Firm, Waxy or Boiling Potatoes: These potatoes have a low starch content and are good for boiling, roasting, grilling, sautés, stews, salads, and au gratin dishes. Examples: Red Bliss, French Fingerling.

Potatoes sort of get a bad health rap, mainly because they are a carbohydrate and have a high glycemic index. If you are watching your sugar, don’t go overboard on them. On the plus side, they are rich in magnesium and copper, high in potassium and vitamin C and a good source of dietary fiber. Go for potatoes with blue or yellow flesh. These contain more phytonutrients than their white-fleshed cousins.

Eating the skin ups their nutritional value but with a caveat. Potatoes contain a glycoalkaloid (solanine), which is a mild toxin and most of this toxin is found in the skin. The amount found in most potatoes is considered harmless, but some nutritional experts still recommend that you peel all potatoes. I love a good crisp potato skin so I usual don’t peel them. Green and sprouting potatoes contain a higher amount of the toxin so I do peel those.

The blog Whole Health Source has an excellent three-part series called “Potatoes and Human Health.”

Potatoes were added to the latest Environmental Working Group dirty dozen list. This is a list of the top 12 of the most pesticide contaminated fruits and vegetables. So I search out organic potatoes.

Potatoes can be stored for up to 6 months. Ask your farmer about which ones are better for storage. They should be stored in a cool, dark, well-ventilated area. Exposure to light will turn them green. Nobody wants green potatoes.

If anyone has extra potatoes to store, we have the perfect place in our basement for them!

Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Barbara Kingsolver
Harper Perennial (April 29, 2008)

I’ve long been a fan of Kingsolver’s fiction and was happy to see this memoir. The author and her family spent a year only eating food that was produced locally. Each family member was allowed one indulgence not found locally, so they did keep a bit of coffee, chocolate, and spices around, but other than that, they strictly adhered to their mission. If they didn’t grow or raise it, or their neighbors didn’t grow or raise it, then they didn’t eat it.

Reading the book, I realized how much I had taken for granted. If I needed a tomato in February, I could choose from fresh or canned at the grocery. Kingsolver denied herself this option. If she wanted tomatoes in February, she needed to can them in the summer herself or hope that a neighbor was industrious with their summer crop.

This book showed me that it is possible to truly live locally and spurred on my desire to grow a garden and learn to preserve produce. While you still might find a banana in my shopping cart, you will also find me canning tomatoes at summer’s end.

Vampires Beware, we’ve been eating garlic!

Vampires cross the street when they walk by our house, especially since our visit to Virginia Ambrose from Scarecrow Farm. We met her at the Hudson Farmers Market last weekend. And we’re glad we did.

If you have a question about garlic, ask Virginia. She knows her garlic. They grow more hardneck varieties than softneck. Apparently hardneck is the garlic connoisseur’s choice. The flavor is said to be more complex. The cloves are larger, but fewer. They are easier to peel but don’t store as well as the softnecks. Softneck garlic is the type you most often see in the supermarket, though I doubt our local supermarkets carry either the Korean Red or Mediterranean Soft neck that Scarecrow Farms grows.

Scarecrow Farm has many types of garlic, each with their own characteristics. Virginia will mark each bulb with the name so you can go home and have your very own garlic tasting, which is exactly what we did.

I methodically set up for the tasting. First I labeled plates with each type of garlic.

The line-up was:
Two porcelain hardnecks: Carpathian and Romanian Red
One purple stripe hardneck: Siberian
One soft neck: Mediterranean.

Then I heated up bread with a little butter and placed the raw, minced garlic on each piece. I’m sure you could also conduct this taste test with cooked garlic, but I felt we would catch more subtleties eating it raw. Plus vampires hate raw garlic.

We sampled each one, noting their bouquet, start and finish. We cleansed our pallet between each sample, which with raw garlic is no small feat.

I had hoped to be able to pick out the nuances of each variety and write something that mimicked a wine review, but my pallet just isn’t trained that way. The only thing I got was hot and hotter. The Carpathian was by far the hottest.

My husband claimed that after our dog got a whiff of his garlic breath, she hopped off the couch, something she usually only does with great reluctance and a dirty look.

I’ve always used a lot of garlic in my cooking— going through at least a head a week, if not more. Conventional wisdom says that I’m doing my body a favor. Garlic is purported to have a host of medicinal properties including anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, antibacterial and antiviral benefits. I do believe it can ward off a cold, which may or may not be the result of its lingering aroma. In my experience, other people are the main cause of colds, so I feel garlic is pretty effective at keeping them at arm’s length. They don’t call it “the stinking rose” for nothing.

All food prices have increased in the last year but the price of garlic has skyrocketed. Last year I found that much of the garlic that you find in the supermarket comes from China. Apparently there has been a bit of speculation in the China garlic market and people have been pouring money into it. I read stories of farmers hoarding their garlic crop and of businessmen investing in fields of garlic rather than real estate. Is there irrational exuberance in the China garlic market?

I don’t know what the price of garlic in China has to do with our local crop, but the prices have risen here also. Last year I paid 50¢ a head, this year it is double that.

But I buy it anyway. Maybe if I hold on to it, I can sell it and double my money next year. Yes, I’m giving out investment advice in a food column!

Roasted Garlic
While I will eat garlic raw, I love the mellow taste of roasted garlic. Roasting garlic caramelized the cloves and creates a delicious, creamy paste. Spread it on bread or toss it into mashed potatoes.

Ingredients
Whole heads of garlic
Olive oil

Method

  • Preheat the oven to 400ºF.
  • Peel away any loose outer skin of the garlic bulb. Using a knife, or kitchen shears, cut off about 1/4 inch of the top of bulb, exposing the individual cloves.
  • Place the garlic in a baking dish, I use a small ramekin for each head, but they can all be in the same dish. Drizzle each with olive oil.
  • Cover with foil and bake at 400 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the cloves feel soft when pressed.
  • Allow the garlic to cool. You can either use a fork to gently pull each clove out or squeeze the garlic clove directly into your mouth, I mean directly on a piece of nice, crusty French bread.

Roasted garlic may be stored in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator for several days.

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Shared on The Nourishing Gourmet.

Paper Bag Microwave Popcorn

The oil/butter in this is optional; it just makes it taste better!

Ingredients
1/4 cup popcorn kernels
2 teaspoons olive oil or butter
1/4 teaspoon sea salt (and other desired seasoning)
Paper lunch bag

Method

  • Place the popcorn with the olive oil, salt and seasoning in the paper bag.
  • Fold the top of the bag over twice.
  • Place the bag in the microwave, fold side down. Microwave on high for about 2 minutes. Stay close and listen. Once the pops slow down to about 5 seconds between pops, it’s done. If left on too long, it will burn.

Popcorn Accidents

Making popcorn is dangerous. My top two kitchen accidents happened while making popcorn. First there was fire. In my early 20s, I invited a date over to watch a movie. I thought homemade popcorn would be a nice touch. I placed oil in a pot, turned it on high, and then retreated to my bedroom to quickly finish getting ready. I returned to near ceiling-high flames. Yes, this is how people burn down kitchens. Luckily, that didn’t happen to me. I managed to turn off the heat and place a lid on the pot. We watched the movie while snacking on saltines.

Lesson learned: Ask the date to bring the popcorn.

Second, there was an explosion. I had recently learned that you could make popcorn in the microwave with a paper bag. Brilliant. It’s a fraction of the cost of store bought microwave popcorn, you know exactly what you are eating and there are no perfluorooctanoic acid lined bags. When I ran out of paper bags, I thought why not try a glass bowl with a lid. I recently told my friend Christine this, and she laughed and said something like “Everyone knows you can’t microwave glass covered dishes.” Almost everybody.

I placed the oil and popcorn in a glass casserole dish and covered it with the lid. Shut the door and turned it on high. The gentle popping sound was followed by a big “BOOM.” Oops. One of my much-used casserole dishes exploded. It didn’t just crack in half; it shattered into tiny little pieces. The microwave nicely contained the disaster, but we kept finding glass bits for weeks.

I was surprised the microwave even worked after that. I still shy away from it. This week I started to use it to store flour (a tip I got from “Cooks Illustrated.”) I keep waiting for my husband to protest. I imagine it is coming.

Lesson learned: Microwaves are great for storage.

I finally mastered cooking popcorn. I make it on the stovetop in about five minutes. This method makes the best tasting popcorn and it is easy and cheap. A big bag of popcorn kernels will last forever. You only need a third of a cup to make a large bowl of the snack.

My new favorite popcorn topping is nutritional yeast. I first bought it for our dogs. My aunt told me that a sprinkle or two on their food is good for them. I then discovered that it is delicious. It has a tasty, cheesy flavor. It also supplies a bit of protein and a good dose of B-complex vitamins. I’ve been adding it to everything, but especially love it on popcorn. You can find nutritional yeast in the bulk section of most health food stores.

Of course, I also always add melted butter. Everything is better with a little melted butter!

Stovetop Popcorn

Ingredients
3 Tablespoons olive or coconut oil (I use a combo. Other types of vegetable oils will work, I just feel these two are the healthier option. )
1/3 cup popcorn kernels

Method

  • Heat the oil in a 3-4 quart saucepan over medium-high heat.
  • Place 3 popcorn kernels into the oil and cover the pan.
  • When the kernels pop, the oil is ready. Add the rest of the popcorn kernels. Cover and gently shake pan to distribute kernels.
  • Once the popping starts, gently shake the pan by moving it back and forth over the burner. Keep the lid slightly ajar to let the steam from the popcorn release (but be careful to keep all popped kernels in the pot).
  • Once the popping slows, remove the pan from the heat. Remove the lid, and dump the popcorn into a wide bowl. While hot, season as desired.

Makes 2 quarts.

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