Potatoes for the win!

I was looking for something to make for Christmas brunch, something tasty and different yet sufficiently familiar that they'd be eaten.  And I found this.  I made it theoretically as written, but I used the eyeball method for measuring most ingredients.  It's very pepper-y, as expected, and I liked that more than I'd expected...and more than scalloped potatoes.


Cacio e Pepe Hash Brown Casserole

For the béchamel

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup heavy cream, room temperature
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1 1/2 tablespoon freshly cracked black pepper
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

For the casserole

32 ounces frozen shredded hash browns, defrosted
1/2 cup melted butter
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup onion, shredded
3 cups grated gruyere cheese, divided
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper, for garnish
Freshly grated parmesan, for garnish

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray a large baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.

2. Make béchamel: Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in flour and cook until it turns into a paste and bubbles a bit, about 2 to 3 minutes.

3. Slowly whisk in the half-and-half and chicken stock. Bring to a low boil and continue to cook, stirring often, until the sauce is thickened and coats the back of a spoon, about 3 to 4 minutes.

4. Remove from heat and stir in parmesan, pepper and salt. Set aside.

5. Make casserole: In a large bowl, mix together thawed hash browns, 1/2 cup melted butter, sour cream, shredded onions, 2 cups gruyere cheese, salt and the béchamel.

6. Transfer to a prepared baking dish and top with remaining gruyere cheese.

7. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until all is completely warm and the cheese is melted and golden brown on top.

A very happy mishap

I like shepards pie. It's easy to like with all those lovely mashed potatoes, ground beef, and corn. I have a bunch of freshly dug potatoes as our potatoes grew very well this year so shepards pie seemed to be a perfect Sunday dinner of comfort food with friends.

Alas, I had no ground beef, just ground turkey which, let's be honest, doesn't have a lot of flavor. And I had a few leeks from the garden that were getting a little old and it's not acceptable to waste leeks! So I did what I often do, I improvised. This creation turned into a dinner that was addictive, none of us could stop eating. So while it was bad for the waistline, it was terrific for the tastebuds.

Luckily, or unluckily, it made a huge batch and I froze some for a future dinner.


Potato Leek Shepards Pie

Amounts are approximate

1 lb ground turkey
1 large diced onion
2 cloves of garlic, minced
Seasoned salt to taste

3 leeks, cleaned and sliced thin
4 tbl butter

About 2 oz cream cheese

Milk

About 2 lbs potatoes, peeled, cooked, and mashed

salt and pepper to taste

Frozen corn

Grated cheddar cheese

Brown the meat with the onions and garlic and season it to taste. Sautee the leeks in the butter until soft and sweet. Use an imersion blender to mix the leeks, butter, some milk and the cream cheese. Stir the leek mixture into the mashed potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste. Put the meat mixture into a casserole dish, layer corn on that, then top with mashed potatoes, and grated cheese. Bake at 400 until the cheese is melted and the dish is hot, about 30 minutes.

Try not to eat too much.

Potato Celeriac Soup

In our share this week we got a bulb of celeriac about 4" in diameter. Our newsletter gave us a good hint for peeling it -- it holds a lot of dirt so it's sort of a pain. They suggested slicing it across into rings and then peeling each ring so you can cut out all the dirt. Worked like a charm!

I started with a stock I made of one chicken carcass, some soggy celery, two onions, water, and a few pepper corns. Simmered it for about an hour and a half.

Potato Celeriac Soup

1-4" bulb celeriac, diced into 1/2" squares
5 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
Stock as described above - makes about 4 cups
3 T sunflower oil
Salt to taste

Saute the celeriac pieces in oil until soft and just beginning to brown in places. Add stock and potatoes. Simmer until tender. For smooth soup, blend with immersion blender, blender, or food processor. Add salt and water to get to desired texture and flavor.

All three of us liked this soup!

Kielbasa Corn Chowder

This week's share contained: Head of Lettuce; 2 lbs Mixed Potatoes; 1.5 lb Mixed Tomatoes; 1 European Cucumber or 2 nice Slicing Cucumbers; 1 lb Mixed Zucchini, Patty Pan and Summer Squash; 1 lb Mixed Pac Choi; 1 lb Walla Walla Onions; 1 lb Romanesca or Mixed Cauliflower; 1 Cayenne or Jalapeno Pepper; Sweet Corn (6 ears); Elmore Mountain Country French; BreadVT Soy Maple Ginger Fried! Tofu; Les Aliments Massawippi Tamari

No picture this time! I'm finding I don't have the time lately.

But I did make a soup using some of the ingredients that was just wonderful. I don't remember ever cutting the corn off the cob and using it in soups and such -- it's such a treat that we always just ate it in corn on the cob format. But we've had it fairly often lately so I decided to try something a little different with this simple soup.

Kielbasa Corn Chowder

1/2 lb kielbasa cut into very small pieces
oil
2 medium onions, diced
corn cut from 5-6 ears
3-4 medium potatoes, diced about 1/2" cubes
bok choi or other greens, cut into very small pieces
6 c or so of stock (I used turkey because that's what I had)

Brown kielbasa, add onions and remaining ingredients. Cook until potatoes are tender and flavors are blended.

Shareday

Mesclun greens, lettuce, Nicola potatoes, basil, sweet salad turnips, beet greens, sorrel, wild arugula, Easter egg radishes, pac choi, cilantro, red giant mustard, Vermont Cranberry Company balsamic vinegar, Vermont Butter and Cheese fresh goat cheese, and Elmore Mountain Bread pizza dough.

Lots and lots of greens today! Too much for the refrigerator so I blanched, chopped, and froze five bags of assorted greens for future use. Two bags of beet greens, three bags of a mix of turnip, radish, mustard, and arugula. We like greens just fine in soups and such but we don't really appreciate the plain old cooked greens.

I struggle with the pac choi as well. We've gotten in in the last three shares and I've ended up composting most of it.

I made potato and sorrel soup with a recipe from the share newsletter and it's pretty good although a tad thick. I used sour cream in place of the cream because that's what I had. Very rich and tangy soup.


Sorrel & Potato Soup

The recipe below is adapted from a classic French sorrel soup recipe. It is also good cold, particularly with some plain yogurt swirled in. Serves 3 or 4.

1 bunch fresh sorrel
4 cups water
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2/3 pound potatoes, cubed
1 large egg
1/4 cup crème fraiche or heavy cream (or more to taste)

Wash the sorrel and de-rib the leaves if necessary. Put it in a saucepan over low heat. Cook, stirring, until the sorrel has melted into a purée and nearly all of its liquid has evaporated. Add the water and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil. Add the potatoes and cook over low heat until the potatoes are cooked through — about fifteen minutes. If you prefer a creamy rather than a chunky soup, put the soup into a blender or food processor and then return to the saucepan. Combine the eggs and crème fraiche in a warmed serving bowl. Mix until well blended. Add a ladle of the potato and sorrel mixture and blend well. Pour in remaining potato and sorrel mixture and serve immediately.

Bubble and Squeak

This was in our newsletter for this week's share and it sounded interesting...or it at least sounded like something I could do with cabbage that was a little different than usual. I followed the recipe as written.

Bubble and Squeak

This dish is said to be named after the sound that the vegetable mixture makes as it fries. (But really, it didn't squeak.) Adapted from Epicurious.com.

Serves 4

1 lb yellow potatoes, peeled (optionally) and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces

3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter

1 lb red cabbage, cored and thinly sliced

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Cover potatoes with cold salted water by 1 inch and bring to a boil, then boil, uncovered, until tender when pierced with a sharp knife, about 18 minutes. Drain in a colander.

Heat butter in a 10-inch heavy nonstick skillet over moderately high heat until foam subsides, then sauté cabbage with salt and pepper, stirring frequently, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add potatoes, mashing and stirring them into cabbage while leaving some lumps and pressing to form a cake. Cook, without stirring, until underside is crusty and golden, about 10 minutes. Serve immediately.

Ben and I gave it two thumbs up and Sam said "It tastes like potatoes" which is high praise for something with cabbage.

Garlic Potato Salad

Another simple summer recipe.


Garlic Potato Salad

2 lb potatoes, boiled, diced
1 head garlic, roasted*
1/2 c mayonaise (more or less to taste)
4 boiled eggs, diced
Salt to taste
Lemon juice to taste

Mix all ingredients.

*to roast the garlic, cut the top off the head exposing the interior of all the cloves. Drizzle with olive oil, wrap in foil, bake at 400F until soft. Press browned garlic from the cloves.

Potato Fennel Pizza

Our newsletter had this series of recipes so I decided to give them a try.

Deborah’s Fried Potatoes and Fennel

2# Potatoes
2 bulbs fennel (I had only one bulb of fennel)
2-3 Tbsp oil
2 garlic scapes (I subbed a clove of garlic)
salt & pepper

Slice potatoes into thin rounds. Trim the ends and the stems from fennel; cut the bulb into thin julienne. Heat oil in a large skillet and sauté the potatoes with fennel, garlic, salt & pepper until golden brown.

I grated the potatoes to make them thinner and then stuck them in the colander to get some of the excess moisture out of there so they'd cook up a bit more crispy.


Quick Pizza Dough

1 tbsp yeast
1 C warm water
3 C flour (I used 2 c bread flour, 1 c whole wheat pastry flour)
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp salt

Blend four, yeast and salt in a mixing bowl or food processor. Mix in water and oil to make kneadable dough. Use a bit more water or flour to get the right consistency. Knead 10 minutes by mixer or hand, one minute by processor. Set aside to rise one hour.

8/20/08 Update. I made this with all white flour and used 1 1/2 tsp of salt. I also made it in the morning and let it rise, punched it down and tossed it into the refrigerator. MUCH IMPROVED!


Potato and Arugula Pizza

1 recipe of pizza dough
1 recipe fried potatoes and fennel
¼ cup arugula pesto
1 tomato, cut into thin wedges or small chunks
grated cheese of your choice

Divide the dough into 2 portions and form into pizzas. Par-bake briefly to set, then spread with arugula pesto. Top with potatoes, fennel, tomatoes and grated cheese. Grill or bake until toasty, bubbly and melted.


This is pizza so of course I changed it. The tomato didn't sound good on there so I made a salad and put the tomato in the salad instead. I used a mix of mozz, parm, and sharp cheddar and of course I used a lot of it. I added some fresh basil from the garden right over the pesto layer. I formed the dough on parchment for easy handling and I baked the pizzas a 500 degree oven on a baking stone. I par-baked the crusts for five minute and the pizzas took an additional 7 minutes.


Verdict:

Generally positive all the way around although we all agreed a basil pesto would have given it a nicer flavor.

The potato/fennel mix was excellent!

The crust was ok but seemed like a quick crust, not a lot of chew to it.

Simple grilled potatoes

Perfect summer weather equals grilling. I marinated a moose steak in a mix of water, garlic, salt, ginger, and sugar but of course the sides are from the share. I wanted to use the potatoes before they started to sprout and I had no idea what to do with the four tiny kohlrabi so I made this:

Simple grilled potatoes in foil

4 russet potatoes
1 small onion
4 small kohlrabi
salt
pepper
sunflower oil

Makes two packets of potatoes.

Dice all the veggies into 1/4 inch cubes. Tear off sheets of foil large enough so the veggies are no more than about 3/4" thick when the packets are sealed. Place the veggies on the foil, sprinkle packets with salt, pepper, and oil. Seal the packet. It workes best to add another layer of foil with the big seam on the opposite side to minimize leaks. Place foil packets on the grill grate. Cook until soft, about 30 minutes depending on the heat of the grill.

Tasty Glop

I just don't know what to call this recipe and it looks like glop -- a pile of relatively unappetizing stuff but still quite tasty. There must be a trick to recipe naming that I don't know.

My inspiration was the result have having lots of rutabagas in our last share. Oodles of them. Now, I could probably just have cooked them and mashed them with butter to make a side dish I could freeze for those nights I'm short a veggie but I wasn't in the mood to peel and cook them all. Instead I thought I'd try out my mandolin and do a small dice for the rutabagas and potatoes. It worked great for the rutabagas because they're hard but not as well for the potatoes.


Hamburger Rutabaga Potato Lentil Spinach Glop

1 lb hamburger
1 onion, diced
2 large rutabaga diced into 3/16" pieces
4 small potatoes diced into 3/16" pieces
1 c lentils
1 package dried french onion soup mix
1 package frozen spinach
1/4 tsp white pepper
1 tsp salt
Water as needed

Brown hamburger, add the onion and cook until soft. Add the remaining ingredients with enough water to nearly cover. Cook until the veggies are soft, approximately 30 minutes in the oven at 350, probably less if on the stove top.

Verdict:

Anne: Very tasty. This would probably make a good meat pie or dumpling filling but I'm too lazy to do that although I could do that with the leftovers I froze.

Sam: I want it for lunch tomorrow.

Spicy Cabbage and Potatoes in Tomato Sauce

We're always looking for new ways to use cabbage. This recipe came in our farm share newsletter this week and since I had all the ingredients, it became dinner.


Spicy Cabbage and Potatoes in Tomato Sauce

Using Indian spices and tomato sauce with green cabbage makes this familiar vegetable into something entirely new. Serves 4-6.

2 TB vegetable oil or ghee
1 medium onion sliced thin
1/2 head thinly sliced cabbage
4 medium potatoes, chopped in a 1/2" dice
2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp garam masala (or, 1/2 tsp ground coriander, 1/2 tsp ground cumin, 1/4 tsp turmeric, 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper)
pepper to taste
8 oz tomato sauce (see Veggie Storage and Use tips, above, to use your frozen tomatoes)
3 TB plain yogurt

Heat oil over medium-high heat. Saute onion for about 5 minutes, until starting to turn golden on the edges. Add cabbage and potatoes and sprinkle with salt. Continue to cook, tossing occasionally, for another 5 minutes until cabbage begins to wilt. Add garam masala (or spice mixture) and pepper. Toss to coat. Stir in tomato sauce. Bring to simmer, cover and reduce heat to medium. Simmer 10 minutes, until potatoes are soft, but not mushy. Remove from heat. Stir in yogurt. Serve with cooked rice or wheat berries.

I didn't really measure anything and added at least twice as much yogurt as the recipe calls for but didn't make other changes.

I served it with rice that I spiced up with some cumin seed. Just heat a little oil, then toss in some cumin seed for a couple of minutes then make the rice as usual with the cumin seed. It's lovely that way.

Verdict: Sam liked the potatoes and the rice but wasn't thrilled with the meal overall but I think that it was likely due to the fact that dessert was sitting right there and he couldn't see past it. Dinner always gets neglected when he knows there is dessert nearby.

Ben thought it would be better with some shrimp or chicken but agreed that it was good.

I liked that I couldn't really tell it was cabbage and it was flavorful without being hot. Good enough that I'm bringing some for lunch tomorrow.

Share and share again

Sweet storage carrots, Adirondack red and blue potatoes mixed with yellow, Daikon radish, shallots, radish sprouts, popcorn, frozen tomatoes, Butterworks Farm yogurt, cheese curds, Patchwork Farm Organic Rye Speckle Bread, and oyster and shiitake mushrooms.

Look at the size of that Daikon radish! It's nearly a foot long and as Ben said, it looks like a sex toy.

I tried the cheese curds immediately of course but they weren't squeaky fresh and didn't live up to my beloved fresh WI cheese curds. I can't seem to get them here despite the large number of cheese makers in the area. If they're not fresh they're just plain cheese which isn't bad, it just isn't curd.

I made an excellent local dinner tonight. Omlettes with last week's eggs, mushrooms, last week's local mozzarella, and shallots with a side of shredded fried potatoes (I tried my new mandolin and it rocked!) It's not such a unique dinner but it was one that everyone loved and I need to remember to do it more often.

I also made some carrot soup for tomorrow night, some coleslaw to use some of last week's cabbage (I've still got two small heads of cabbage left...I think the stuff is endless), and soaked the monster Daikon radish in salt water to pull a little of the sting out of it for a radish salad either tomorrow or Friday.

Oh, and some cranberry orange muffins to use the last of the frozen cranberries. Of course I modified it to include more local ingredients. I subbed half the flour for whole wheat pastry flour, added about 1/2 c of oatmeal, subbed 1/4 c honey for 1/4 sugar, and added some pumpkin I had in the freezer. Sam liked them a lot (I can't taste anything much because of my cold) and I froze them for his lunches.

Potato, Roasted Garlic and Broccoli Soup

I have too many potatoes! Potato soup seemed like a natural. I love potato leek soup but I don't have any leeks. I do, however, had garlic and broccoli.

I like to add broccoli to potato soup because I like the nice green color it adds as well as the nutrients. It turns it into a meal in a bowl.

However, when the potatoes are red heirloom potatoes which means they're red all the way through, the final product looks very unappealing. Let's just say it looks like something that comes out instead of goes in.

But the flavor, oh the flavor! It's wonderful. My recommendation is to serve by candlelight. Or use white potatoes, that's probably the best solution.


Potato, Roasted Garlic and Broccoli Soup

Roasted garlic: Cut the tops off two heads (yes heads,not cloves) of garlic to expose the tops of the cloves, pour a bit of olive oil on them and wrap completely in foil. Roast until soft at 350 (or whatever temp you've got the oven for something else, just watch them closely). Use less if you don't love things very garlicy. Remove from oven, allow to cool, then squish the cloves of garlic out of the skins to use.


About 2 1/2 lbs of potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
Water or chicken broth*
One bunch broccoli, big stems removed
Milk
Salt
Pepper

When the potatoes are tender, add the broccoli and the roasted garlic and cook until the broccoli is tender.

Puree the mixture in a food processor (if I wasn't still waiting for the backordered bowl to show up) or blender adding more stock or milk if necessary.

Add pureed mixture back to the pan, add stock or milk until you get the texture you want. Add salt and pepper to taste.

*I prefer chicken broth but didn't have any so I used water and then added some drippings I had left from cooking a chicken. I froze the the drippings when I was too lazy to bother making gravy. The drippings added terrific flavor and I didn't need any additional salt.

Rating: Excellent but ugly when made with red potatoes. I won't make you suffer a picture. I didn't wait for dinner, I had it for lunch and we'll still have it for dinner.

Bacon Corn Chowder

I've got potatoes coming out of my ears. I never realized how few potatoes we normally eat around here until we began getting a regular influx of 'taters from the share. Now we've got a nice variety of potatoes beginning to go to sprout before we use them.

I also have bacon hanging around because there is a local smoker (I doubt the pigs are local though) and they had a very good deal on ends and pieces and heck, we don't care if they're full slices so I bought four pounds of the things. Four pounds of bacon is a lot of bacon even if two pounds is nicely frozen for future use. We'll suffer through it.

Bacon is apparently a very important food to many people. While searching for Harrington's website I came across this one. I think I might skip the bacon pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Anyone brave enough to give that one a try? I do have to admit that I spent some time reading as I don't seem to be able to resist bacon in written format either.

I glanced at a couple of recipes and in the spirit of making things difficult, followed none of them. Doesn't everyone cook to taste?


Bacon Corn Chowder

8 sticks of bacon, chopped into small pieces
1/2 onion, chopped
4 small white potatoes diced into 1/2" pieces
2 lbs frozen corn
a few shakes of pepper sauce
salt
pepper


Cook the bacon in the pot you'll be using for your soup. Toss in the onions, cook until soft. Throw in the potatoes and enough milk to cover it all. Heat.

Toss a couple of cups of corn in a blender, add enough milk that you can blend until it's pretty much just mush.

Toss that and the rest of the rest of the corn into the pot. Add remaining ingredients and heat to simmer.

Cook until the potatoes are tender. Now, I noticed on the comments for one or two of the recipes I looked at that they said the stuff is better on day two so I turned it off, left it on the stove and heated it up a couple more times through the day. Hey, we've got snow and freezing rain here today and when you add in a kid with a fresh new cold going out seems highly unlikely.

Rating: Excellent


I also made a loaf of Lisa's bread but spiked it with the remaining tofu so I wouldn't end up throwing it away. The addition of the tofu didn't enhance the bread in any way. It made it kind of heavy and somewhat less appealing. I don't recommend it.

Moose stew

This is done somewhat in the method of an ordinary beef stew but I used all sorts of veggies that I had and wanted to use up so it's not quite a traditional stew. I also brined the moose beforehand because game has a tendency to have a fairly strong flavor I like to drown out a bit. That doesn't really speak well for game, does it?


Moose Stew


Brine about 2 lbs of moose in brine made from water, salt, brown sugar, thyme, crushed garlic, bayleaf

Drain and rinse the meat before use


Brined Moose
bacon fat (I had some but any oil will do)
onion diced
Worchestershire sauce
water

In dutch oven, brown the moose in the bacon fat in parts. Add back all the moose and add the onion, cook for a bit. Add a nice slug of worchestershire sauce and some water to cover the meat. Cover and put in the oven at 275 for about 2 hours until the meat is nice and tender.

Add veggies of your choice, diced. I had:

1 beet (just to make it nice and red I guess)
1 large parsnip
5 carrots
2 ribs celery
1 valentine radish
4 potatoes

Toss the veggies in with the meat and cook for another 1 1/2 hour or so until everything is tender. Season as desired.

Rating: Whooops! I made it way too salty. Ben loved it but on the second bowl even he admitted that it was a bit much and I don't think I've ever heard him admit that before. I thought it was so so but I'm not much of a fan of beef stew or pot roast or other things in the mushy root vegetables with meat category.

Roasted Potatoes

Might I just say mmmmm right now?


Finger potatoes sliced to about 1/8"
Olive oil
Seasoned salt

Coat the potatoes with the olive oil and salt, roast at 475 stirring frequently until at least some of them are nice and crispy, usually about 15 minutes.

Rating: Mmmm excellent