Harvest

Here they are, the sum total of our potato harvest this year.

Russets, grown from cutting an organic parent potato in four and burying the pieces. The largest of them is perhaps the size of a hen's egg, the smallest remind me of the marbles I used to shoot as a child, only brown and not shiny. I'm looking forward to tasting them; I just can't decide how best to cook them for the greatest appreciation of their flavor.

I found one tiny one had already grown a root. I put him back into the pot and I'm hoping he'll be the father of a future crop. I also replanted the tops of the potato vines I took these from and I hope they'll survive - they had some serious roots, so I have hope.

Anyway, thought you'd like to see what a single eyed potato can turn into. Thrilling.

Harvest Time

Ah, the romance of the Harvest! All the farmer's hard work, finally and amply rewarded with Mother Nature's bounty.

Yeah, right.

So far, here's the single potato, in size halfway between a hen's and a quail's egg, that my four potato plants have produced. I dug it up after a trip to Luther Burbank's garden in Santa Rosa where I noted that their potato plants are no larger than mine but were producing spuds below the ground.

I was greatly heartened, since I have spent the whole summer first rejoicing when my little potato sets sprouted, then whining when they never got very big.

So, I dug one of my four plants up and, lo and behold, it had made a reasonable-size potato! Maybe not a prizewinner at the county fair but, hey, I'm not really a farmer, either. If the other three plants are as productive as this one, My Beloved and I may actually have enough spuds for a meal.

One meal. Oh, well.

Thumbs and Finger(ling)s

Remember those parsley buttered potatoes we got in the school cafeteria? Easily my favorite dish served there, even though they were likely made with margarine back then and sprinkled with minced, dried parsley. They weren't heavenly by any definition but they beat the heck out of pallid gray Salisbury steak and those nightmarish limp fish sticks.

To go with our fricadellen, I decided to upgrade that elementary school favorite simply by making it with fresh ingredients and a twist.

On medium low heat, I gently sautéed fingerling potatoes in butter in a single layer in the pan with the cover on, rolling them around every few minutes, until they were tender and their skins were browned in spots, perhaps 15 minutes. Don't let the butter burn - you want a nice, slow sizzle. When they were done, I dropped them into a bowl, crushed each one briefly with my thumb to make lots of surface area, drizzled a little prepared creamy horseradish sauce (store bought) over the tops and sprinkled on some fresh coarsely chopped parsley.

Nothing this simple and easy should taste this good. The fingerlings are tiny and fresh at this time of year, and loaded with flavor. Parsley is my favorite green this year - bright, clean and tangy. And the horseradish sauce added just a little bite to the combination. Thumbs up for fingerlings and simplicity!

What was your favorite school cafeteria dish? Or perhaps you'd prefer to vent about your least favorite?

Tater Tots

This year, I didn't plant a veggie garden - I was still enjoying the Swiss chard that was booming along in the garden from the previous year and the pot of healthy herbs growing on the front steps, so I figured that was enough - and I was feeling lazy.

I had a pretty good-sized unplanted pot, however, filled with good soil and chicken poop, just begging to be asked to dance. So, when I noticed that one of my organic russet potatoes in the fridge had started to grow eyes, I made a split-second decision to farm after all. I cut the spud in four pieces, each containing an eye, and shoved them down equidistant from each other into the soil about 1" deep.

Nothing happened. I waited and watched and watered, but nothing happened. I finally shrugged and gave up, figuring I should have gotten certified "seed potatoes" as all the online advice suggested. Oh, well, no big loss.

Then, just this past weekend as I strolled by that pot, I stopped to pluck a little weed that had started and just look what I found! Three tiny potato plants poking up through the soil and spreading tight little green leaves to the sun! My sprouts seem to be doing well and I'm already dreaming of the harvest come fall when the green parts die back. I'll have to go back online and find out what else I should be doing to encourage my little tater tots.

The Lowly Potato

This reminds me of Carmen Miranda's hat, only the veggie version. It was a good, if strange, pickup meal to clean the fridge before we left for the East coast.

Baked potato, buttered, and topped with peas, wilted garlic Swiss chard and shreds of the rubbed ham ribs left over from a previous meal. This is how you stretch too few ribs into a meal. Oh, well, it's trendy to use meat more as a flavoring than as a main attraction, so I guess I'm in with the In Crowd this week.

It was surprisingly good.

Ugly But Lovely

This is one of those dishes that look rather like someone threw up on the plate and served it to you. You have to close your eyes to love this one. But, close them, because this is worth a little blind flying with a fork.

Cousin Jan served this right after the killer black bean soup. I had eaten so much soup that I thought to myself, "Man, I'll never get through all this."

Well, I not only ate it all, I wished for seconds! Try it - I guarantee you'll enjoy it. It's pretty ugly but it's truly lovely.

Chard and Red Potato Lasagna

6 medium red potatoes (about 2-1/2 lbs)

1 garlic clove, peeled and bruised (for rubbing the pan).

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
6-1/2 Tablespoons butter
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
19 baby chard leaves or 9 large leaves (about 2 bunches of large chard), coarsely chopped, with thick mid-ribs removed
Chopped oyster mushrooms (optional)
8-10 ounces grated Swiss or Monterey Jack cheese
4 Tablespoons cream

Slice the potatoes as thinly as you can and set aside.

Rub a large baking pan with the garlic and 1/2 Tablespoon of the butter. Place a layer of potatoes in the pan, sprinkle with half of the salt and pepper, garlic, a third of the butter, and half of the chard leaves. Although the chard may seem very bulky, it will wilt down during the cooking. Sprinkle half the cheese over the chard. Repeat, making another layer, ending with the cheese. (You can also use a loaf pan and divide everything into thirds, so you have three layers instead of two).

Dot with remaining butter and pour cream over the top. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour, until the potatoes are thoroughly done and soft. May not take the full hour.

The dish I tasted did have the mushrooms in it and they were good. I could imagine this would be delicious with other cheeses, too. It's similar to scalloped potatoes - you can add whatever you like and it's delicious!

Spud City

Back at Thanksgiving, pal Jack offered to make his famous mashed potatoes, so I went out and bought a boatload of russets, enough to feed a small army of hearty eaters. Ooops, Jack only uses Yukon Golds and he brought his own; we now have a near-lifetime supply of russets languishing in the vegetable drawer.

Every now and then, My Beloved will consent to a dinner that does not include meat. Not often, mind you, but occasionally. So, I baked us each a spud, blanched some broccoli and melted raclette cheese over the spuds (that's why they appear so yellow) before sprinkling them with a single rasher of chopped leftover bacon and topping them with the bright green broccoli. It takes a while to bake the spuds but, other than that, this meal is dead easy, 'way tasty and I used up two pretty sizable potatoes from our overflowing hoard.

Jack's Spuds

Thanksgiving is all about gratitude, gratitude for the good things in life such as good health, firm friends, happy families, nature's bounty, natural beauty.

And mashed potatoes.

When we invited friends Janie, Jodie and Jack for Thanksgiving, Jack insisted on making his world-famous mashed potatoes (Jack is not given to modesty), and I readily assented - I have eaten his spuds before and they are memorable.

He starts with Yukon gold potatoes; they live up to their name. Waxy and softly yellow, they don't even need peeling and they cook quickly. Jack came armed with his own special masher (don't tell him, but it's just like any other) and, once the potatoes were tender, he poured off most of the water, set the pot back onto the warm burner (with the heat turned off) and went to work.

I can't tell you the exact recipe - I'm not even sure there is one - but copious lashings of real butter, half and half, salt, pepper, fresh minced parsley, dried basil and drama went in as he stirred and mashed, mashed and stirred. I don't want to say he made a big production of it but, well, he made a big production of it - lots of theater and body English went into these spuds.

The finished dish was pure potato heaven - spooned into a warmed serving dish, they were rich and bumpy with skins and lumps, buttery and savory and ohmyheavenstobetsy the temptation to take 'way too large a serving was downright irresistible.

This year, I have much to be grateful for and Jack's mashed potatoes are pretty high up on the list.

Brownie Barbecuing

When I was a Brownie in second and third grade, we actually wore the whole little brown outfit, complete with beanie and sash. My mother had to sew patches on the sash for each activity I mastered; she didn't have to do much sewing. I learned to make seed jewelry and s'mores but my favorite of all activities was making Hobo Packets.

Hobo Packets are vegetables such as carrot, potato and onion chunks wrapped in foil and buried in the coals of a campfire until they are cooked. We Brownies would assemble these packets ourselves from ingredients somebody's mother had kindly prepped ahead of time and the troop leader would put them in the fire and take them out as we anxiously watched our own particular packet. The vegetables were always very plain but the thrill of having made the packets ourselves enhanced the flavors.

Don't know why I thought of Hobo Packets again fifty-some-odd years later but the idea seemed like a fun one to try again. My tastes have changed a bit since Brownie days, however, so I decided to make a fancypants version to accompany our grilled grass-raised beef tenderloin. To a handful of fingerling potatoes, I added whole garlic cloves, thickly sliced onion and thinly sliced kohlrabi, a blob of my frozen duxelles, salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil. I arranged the veggies all in a single layer and, because I didn't have the heavy-duty kind of foil, I made four layers of the thin foil to protect the veggies from the heat. Even so, there were charred spots - another time, I'd use the heavy-duty foil.

Using very long tongs, I tucked them right next to the coals in my Weber grill and turned them a quarter turn every 12-15 minutes for about 45 minutes; I think two turns really would have been enough as the fire was pretty hot. What emerged was all golden and gorgeous with tips of black in some places. The onions completely dissolved as did the duxelles, and the garlic went all soft and squishy, mingling their heady flavors around the potatoes and kohlrabi slices. It was the perfect accompaniment to the slightly smoky beef, which was grilled on the grate above the same fire, and some fresh asparagus.

In honor of my Brownie days, I should have made s'mores for dessert. Maybe next time.

Variety Is The Spring Of Life

The raclette we ate a couple of weeks ago was so easy and so scrumptious that I couldn't wait until a decent amount of time had passed so I could try it again.

I had found some green garlic at the farmer's market but I didn't have any more back bacon, so I decided to use some of the corned beef left over from St. Patrick's Day.

Raclette is so very simple, that it's easy to tweak with just a change or two. This time, I sauteed the chopped white and light green parts of a green garlic shaft in a little butter before adding lardons of the corned beef to the pan to heat briefly. I layered the garlic and corned beef into a small casserole dish, topping them with boiled red potato chunks and slabs of raclette cheese before running the dish under the broiler just long enough to bubble and lightly gild the cheese before serving.

The green garlic gave little pockets of intensely sweet spring flavor to the slightly salty beef and savory cheese. What might otherwise have been the perfect winter dish was brightened by the presence of spring in the form of green garlic freshly sprouted in the warming sunshine.

Roasty Toasty

You may have heard that here in northern California we are short on water. There have been dire warnings of water rationing each evening on the news and we fear the fires that come in the summer after too-dry years. We watch anxiously the measuring of the Sierra snowpack and wonder if we'll be collecting shower water again for our gardens this summer. Conversations with neighbors tend to drift to the amount of water each flush or car wash uses and how to reduce it.

Well, you could have fooled me!

After weeks of unrelenting heavy rain when nary a shadow could be seen on the ground through the heavy cloud cover, and the dog and I both have muddy paws when we come in, it would seem that our water situation must have at least been slightly improved. The Powers That Be have not relented in their harangue about water levels, however, so I decided it was time to declare officially in my kitchen that water rationing is in effect.

This batch of roasted vegetables is my first offering to the rain gods. It's all warming and tasty and toasty, good for what ails you, especially on a rainy day. All you do is cut up winter-type veggies in roughly same-size pieces, toss them in some good olive oil, drizzle them to taste with balsamic vinegar and sprinkle them with Garam masala before roasting them in a 350-400 degree oven until they are tender, roughly 40 minutes. I used unpeeled kabocha squash, red yam and russet potato, all cut in slivers. To those, I added a white onion, sliced lengthwise through the root end to keep the spears together and a full head of garlic, sliced across the top to expose the cloves. The roasting softens the skins to delicious edibility and the flavors mingle nicely in the oven.

Best of all, it uses not a drop of precious water to deliver its roasty toasty flavors.

Dirty Word

In my mother's food lexicon, there was one dirty word.

Frying.

She never fried anything that I can recall, not even an egg. She might saute' something in butter, but fry in hot oil? No, indeed! She saw frying as the royal road to a fat family, an idea that horrified her. As a result, we never had potato chips or fried chicken or any of those fatty foods while she was the cook.

So, when I decided to exercise my new crinkle cutter, a garage sale bargain given scouted out by cousin J-Yah, I did so with a certain amount of trepidation and guilt. Trepidation because this is a skill I didn't learn at my mother's elbow and guilt because, you know, she's watching from heaven.

Turns out, it's pretty easy. I used a heavy iron skillet and about half an inch of canola oil, set it over a medium-high burner and, when it was hot enough to make a scrap of potato sizzle, I put in my crinkle-cut red potato pieces and let 'er rip.

I was hoping to approximate the fries we so enjoyed in Belgium so I fried them twice, once to soften the potatoes and, after cooling them, once again to crisp the outside. As they came out of the second frying, I salted them lightly and served them with - what else? - burgers. They weren't Belgian but they were darn good, nicely crispy and browned.

Frying may be a naughty word but, damn, it's good!

Painted Soup

My choice for the second course at FarrahOlivia was their Painted Soup, a savory-sweet mixture of two kinds of soup decorated with a green swizzle of herbal oil. The pale yellow side was yukon potato with gruyere cheese and leek cream; the orange swirl tasted of gingered carrot. Each taste was as distinct as its color and yet they complemented each other wonderfully. One of those dishes where you hate to dip a spoon in and spoil the perfection but the scents wafting up from the bowl are irresistible temptation. The whole meal was pure self indulgence so what the heck!

Monster Mash

I'm calling this ugly stuff "Monster Mash."

I had the idea to make mashed potatoes from spuds I had roasted alongside our turkey breast, which I smeared with a little bacon fat before baking. I also roasted some of those purple and white carrots and onion slivers; in a coup of genius, decided to mash them all up together.

It looks really gnarly with the purple carrots, dark red skin of the potatoes and nearly black edges of the thoroughly caramelized onions but the flavor was divine and we ate it all up!

Better than the turkey. Better than the accompanying greenie beanies. Almost better than sex.