potatoes – Flash In a Pan

An Unorthodox Christmas Eve: Split Pea & Sweet Potato Soup

January 3, 2013January 3, 2013Leave a comment

My sister has never been one to follow any directions closely. Including Bisquik pancakes and Betty Crocker brownies, she estimates accurately following recipes perhaps a dozen times . . . in her entire life.

Despite all that, she fearlessly took charge of Christmas Eve Dinner. And in so doing, she illustrated what I love most about my family: unconventional, unpretentious, and bucking any but the bits of tradition that truly hold value.

Her inspiration was this recipe, given to her by a coworker (a dietitian). The original garnishes the soup with pumpkin seeds, but true to form, she took a vegan recipe and topped it with ham. The seeds would have added texture and crunch, but the spicy sausage was undeniably awesome.

The original recipe says to saute the onion in water. Heresy!

Split Pea & Sweet Potato Soup

4 1/2 cups water
4 cups chicken broth
1 large onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
2 cups dried split peas
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 lb spicy sausage
salt & pepper, to taste

Bring 1/2 cup chicken broth to a simmer in a large saucepot over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook about 5 minutes or until translucent, adding more broth, butter, or olive oil as needed to keep from sticking to the pan. Stir in ginger and cook 1 minute, stirring. Add remaining broth and water, peas and sweet potato cubes, and additional seasonings. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

Uncover and purée soup with a hand held immersion blender or in batches in a food processor until smooth. Taste for sea and garnish with pan-fried sausage cubes.

Garlic Butter

3 cloves garlic, or to taste (oh, go ahead and do the entire head, you will find a use for the extra)
1/2 stick butter, warmed to room temperature

Wrap cloves of garlic in aluminum foil and roast at ~350° for ~20 minutes. Unwrap, peal, and mash garlic cloves. Mix with softened butter.

Cold-Weather Northeastern American Comfort Food

November 15, 2012November 17, 2012Leave a comment

Thanks to Tim Sturges, guest chef
and author of this post!

Collard Garbanzo Sausage Stew

½ lb. (med-large) yellow onion
¾ – 1 lb. crimini mushrooms (select mushrooms with white undersides that haven’t separated from the stem)
¾ – 1 lb. pork sausage (links or ground)
½ lb. fennel bulb
1 lb. celery
1 lb. carrots
1 ½ lb. sweet potato
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 ½ lb. (large) bunch collard greens
3 cloves garlic
1 cup dried garbanzo beans
1 cup uncooked wild rice
parmesan cheese
fresh parsley
fresh basil
bay leaf
rosemary
dried chili
salt
fresh ground black pepper
Aleppo pepper

Since the weather is cooling down, I have become fixated on cold-weather northeastern American comfort food. Nothing beats the cold like a voluminous, and piping-hot serving of stew.

I thought first of a more conventional stew, like sausage white bean and kale, but I wanted to experiment a bit, so I added and replaced some ingredients. Garbanzos seemed like a logical alternative to the white beans, and I am partial to collard greens. They are handily on par with kale, in terms of nutrient density and texture, but I too often see them prepared severely overcooked, their texture subdued, and their flavor obliterated by ham (although that can be a beautiful thing in its own regard).

I also wanted to start from scratch as much as possible, so this recipe forgoes the less labor-intensive option of using a store-bought stock for the base, and begins with the preparation of a vegetable stock by first roasting vegetables in the oven. Also, I used dried garbanzos, which required me to soak them overnight, although there is a method for speed-soaking them, or you may choose to use canned.

Start by chopping the celery and carrots, sweet potato, and fennel bulb into approx ¼” long pieces, halve the cherry tomatoes, and place these ingredients in a roasting pan. Be sure to remove any green stalk and frond from the fennel bulb, and retain for Jessica to play and stage shots with. Also, remove the leaves from the stems from the collards, chop the stems into ¼” pieces, and add them as well.

Thankfully, Jessica pointed out to me at this point that I was overfilling my roasting pan, and it is desirable for the vegetables to roast, rather than steam. Had she not been there, I would totally have crammed them all into my 3-quart pan. If you find you are overfilling your pan, use a second one, or a larger one, or remove a portion of the vegetables and freeze for later use. You do not want more than two layers of vegetables on top of each other.

Add three garlic cloves to the roasting pan, then coat, but do not drown, the vegetables in olive oil, toss, and season with salt, fresh ground black pepper, rosemary, and Aleppo pepper (red pepper flakes will do if you do not have Aleppo pepper on hand). Insert baking pan into an oven, preheated to 450 degrees F (230 C). Remove the vegetables every 15 min and stir them, making sure to scrape the sides of the baking pan as you do. That brown crunchy stuff on the sides pays big dividends!

After you put the vegetables in to roast, wash the wild rice with cold water, then add to six cups boiling water. Reduce to low boil after 2 min and leave for approx 45 min. Kernels will be tender and split when done. Drain in a colander if necessary, and set aside.

While the vegetables are roasting, and the rice is cooking, dice the onion, and begin caramelizing in a frying pan over medium heat. I prefer cast iron in general, but especially for this purpose. Do not stir the onions. Do not raise the temperature. You will be tempted to stir them and raise the temperature. Don’t do either. If you stir them they will cook down to an uninspiring floppy translucence. If you raise the temperature you will burn them. In fact, as I was caramelizing them myself, I got impatient and raised the temperature. As the pan started to smoke, Jessica said to me “I want to get a shot of the onions perfectly caramelized,” which was no longer possible. Although I burned the onions, we did discover that this recipe is pretty forgiving, so don’t sweat it if you do burn them, but if you can, it’s better to exercise patience; nicely caramelized onions are worth it!

Slice (or separate) the sausage into ½” chunks, and add to frying pan. You can squeeze it out of the casing if you like, but I prefer to keep it in. We used Piccinini Bros Hot Italian Pork Sausage, although I was tempted to use a lamb merguez. Slice the mushrooms, and add once the sausage is nearly cooked. Cook mushrooms down, being sure to do lots of scraping and stirring. There is nothing disposable in that pan. Be sure to test your poison-test your mushroom, sausage and onion combo, for safety, and not because it’s amazing and you could totally stop right here and eat the contents of that frying pan, over some toasted bread or something. Remind yourself that you are making stew, and losses due to too much poison-testing will adversely impact the stew’s spirit-healing magick.

Add garbanzos to bottom of stock pot (I used a lobster pot), cover with water to approx twice the height the garbanzos, and bring to a boil, and reduce to a simmer after 2 minutes. Add the roasted vegetables, the sausage, onion and mushroom combo, chopped parsley and basil, bay leaf, and 2 dried chili peppers. Simmer for 1 hour. You will need enough water for the garbanzos to soak up, but if you find you want to thicken the stew, simmer uncovered for a bit. Stir in coarse chopped collard leaves only soon enough to wilt before serving, approximately 2 to 5 minutes. Put some wild rice in a bowl, cover with stew, garnish with coarse slices of parmesan, and serve.

This recipe serves approximately four people. Also, we noticed when we finished that this recipe is gluten-free!

Anticipating Thanksgiving

November 9, 20122 Comments

It’s a remarkable thing to cook an animal the size of a housepet in it’s entirety. But man, talk about a commitment. Limited to a mere once a year investment, my satisfaction and patience are seriously tested by this situation.

Behold, a solution for those with a level of patience comparable to mine:

A bacon-wrapped, intensely flavorful mini-Thanksgiving feast

Bacon Wrapped Roasted Turkey Breast with Veggies

turkey breast, approx. 2-1/2 lbs.
1 package bacon
4 to 6 fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
2 tbsp. fresh thyme leaves
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 shallots, finely chopped
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
Cheese cloth and butchers twine
Assortment of root vegetables (I used small yukon gold potatoes, purple onion, and carrots- enough to lay in a single layer around the meat in the pan)
Olive oil

Butterfly turkey breast. Combine sage, thyme, garlic, shallots, red pepper, salt, and pepper in small bowl. Rub mixture evenly over turkey breasts. Lay out cheese cloth, a bit larger than the size of the breast, and place bacon, slightly overlapping edges, in a column down the center of the cloth. Roll turkey breast into a tight roll and place in the center of the bacon. Braid bacon back and forth over the top of rolled turkey breast. Wrap turkey breast with cheese cloth and tie with twine at ends and in middle. Toss veggies, chopped where appropriate, in olive oil, salt and pepper, and put in the pan. Roast at 375 degrees till the meat is cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees (approx. 90 min). Remove from oven and let rest for 15 min. Unwrap and slice to serve.

Sunday Brunch

May 21, 2011May 21, 2011Leave a comment

This weekend I had the privilege of being served undoubtedly the best breakfast potatoes I’ve tasted; crispy on the outside, supremely garlic-y with bits of grated Parmesan fried to crunchy perfection– simply delicious. Served with eggs scrambled with hunks of steak and homemade orange juice, they were barely the star of this amazing meal.

Matt, the gracious host and kitchen gadget affectionado, kindly offered these tips for achieving hash brown perfection:

The key to good home fries, and most things that are sautéed, is consistency in size. Potatoes take a while to cook, and the different sized chunks will cook at different speeds. I like to cut mine into small (1-2 cm) cubes to help them cook fast and thoroughly.I used to hand chop, now I rough cut them and use a chopper ( a la Slap Chop ) to streamline the process. I first bought a table top chopper about 6 years ago ( I think it was a Cuisinart ) and honestly didn’t use it much. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of dicing and when I stumbled across a Farberware chopper still in the box at a secondhand store I spent the 4 bucks and took it home. The choppers make short work of dicing most anything to a uniform size in seconds flat.

Putting my chopped potato cubes, diced onion and garlic ( again, all in the chopper ) into a very hot pan with 2 tablespoons of hot olive oil swirled around to coat the pan. I cook on high heat to get a good brown and stir or shake the pan to get a good even crust. Add seasoning to taste ( I like paprika, chili powder, black and white pepper from the grinder and a bit of cayenne to taste.) After the outside has a bit of color, I turn down the heat to about halfway add a tablespoon of butter and let the potatoes sit and cook through for about 8-10 more minutes, getting a nice crust in the process. about a minute before the potatoes are done, I sprinkle in a healthy dose of fresh grated Parmesan cheese to stick it all together.

These work well for me, but different pans and ovens may give different results (another key to good cooking – good pans) the best advice I can give you is: experiment, and write down what works for you. Bon appetit!