Two-potato hash with ham: Fall comfort food

I try to plan meals. I really do. But I end up improvising dinner far more often than I'd like to admit. And some nights, I have a plan to try something new and perhaps a little healthier, but find myself craving something comforting. Especially on a cold night like tonight.

Hash is the perfect food for cold nights. It's the food equivalent of your oldest, most comfortable sweats; a soft blanket; and a good book. And I've almost always got something I can use to improvise a decent hash.

The key to a good hash is balance. It should have a bit of this and a bit of that. A little bitter or mild to play against something sweet. Some salt from bacon or ham. The vegetables should be cut pretty small, but not so small that they lose their individual characteristics altogether. And of course, a good hash is incomplete without a fried egg or two with runny yolks to break and bring all those nicely roasted vegetables together into the perfect bite. I've just had a bowl and am still craving more, but I have to leave some for my sweetheart (oh the agony!).

This particular version of hash includes sweet and regular potatoes and ham. However, hash can have lots of different things, and it's a great way to clean out any root vegetables that are slightly past their prime (at the end of the post, I have some suggestions for variations).

I like to start the hash off on the stove top while I dice the vegetables and then finish it in the oven, and my beloved cast iron skillet lets me do that. Make sure that whatever pan you use is safe to use in the oven.

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsps vegetable oil (whatever your preference, lately I've taken to using avocado oil)
• 1 onion, diced finely
• 2-3 medium potatoes (my preference is yellow, but any potato on hand will work fine), cut into 1/2 inch dice (peeled or not, your call)
• 1-2 small, medium sweet potato, cut into 1/2 inch dice (peeled, generally, sweet potato skins are very thick)
• 1/2 lb ham steak, cut into 1/2 inch dice
• smoked paprika
• thyme
• salt and pepper 

Instructions

The nice thing about making hash is that you can cut vegetables as you go, and that's usually what I do. (In other words, you don't need to dice everything before you get started.)

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees (F).
2. Heat the oil in the skillet over medium low heat. 
3. Chop the onions and add them to the pan. Stir a few times and let them cook slowly until they are slightly shiny, about 5-10 minutes. 
4. Meanwhile, cube the ham and add it to the skillet. 
5. Next, cube the potatoes and sweet potatoes and add them to the skillet. Start with the potatoes because they need just a little longer to cook. 
6. Let everything get a little brown around the edges, about 5 minutes. Then season with smoked paprika (about 1/2 tsp or to taste), a generous sprinkling of thyme, and some pepper.
7. Slide the pan in the oven and let the vegetables roast for 30-40 minutes. Stir at least once about halfway through the cook time. 
8. When the vegetables are cooked through and a little brown and crispy around the edges, the hash is ready. Season with salt and more pepper and serve with a sunny-side up egg (or two).

Variations

I almost always include a few potatoes, but feel free to switch up the rest of the vegetables (or add more). The quantities are whatever fits somewhat comfortably in the pan. I like having a distinctly sweet vegetable matched with a more bitter one, here are some examples:

• sweet potatoes
• golden beets (red ones will work, but they will make a red mess of your hash)
• brussels sprouts
• kale, chopped (add at the last minute before sliding into the oven)
• turnips
• carrots
• parsnips.

You can also mix up the protein. I love bacon in hash and let the fat melt into the onions before I add any vegetables. Other options are to add some leftover turkey (Thanksgiving is coming up soon) or chicken.

The quantities don't matter, and the hash isn't always perfect, but it's almost always deeply satisfying. I love the improvisational character of it, the add a bit of this, and some of that, and see how it turns out.   

Fall market soup with bacon, beans, sweet potatoes, and kale

Some of the best soups are happy accidents. This is especially true when you get most of your produce and meats from farmers markets: Ingredients available one week may be gone the next, and the chances of that perfect convergence of vegetables and fruits ever happening again are slim. That's the case with this soup, which is a rich, warm, filling, and nutritious concoction that is just what you want on a chilly fall evening (in fact, I'll be going back for seconds soon), but it may be a long time before I can replicate it precisely because I probably won't have all these ingredients again at the same time.

But that's OK. Making this soup was an act of discovery, an exploration of flavors and textures. It was also an act of building something, adding component to component until it all came together with a toss of chopped kale at the end. Kind of fun to make, really. Furthermore, I experienced that moment when I had added just enough salt and pepper, the vegetables had mellowed and released their sweetness and savor to the stock, and the test spoonful exploded into my mouth, forcing me to do a happy dance and to shamelessly proclaim how good I am. It was a great soup.

I make a lot of these soups, the ones where I add this and that until it's done, but they don't always succeed. In fact, I've made some real disasters (beets and pumpkin do not, I repeat, do NOT go together). But most of them are pretty good, some are outstanding. There are a few lessons I've learned from building soups like this:

• Always use a good stock, preferably homemade.
• Give the onions that you will start almost every soup with plenty of time to mellow, at least 10 minutes. Don't rush soup.
• The stock should slightly cover the vegetables, not drown them. If you have too much stock, your soup will be watery. If don't have enough stock, the soup could be mushy, more like a vegetable stew or porridge. 
• Aim for balance of flavors: sweet vegetables combined with bitter ones. (Like sweet potato with parsnips.) 
• If you include a lot of root vegetables, like sweet potatoes, potatoes, parsnips, and so forth, try dicing an apple and adding it to the soup. You'll be surprised. In a good way. 
• If you have some greens on hand, try chopping them up and adding them in the last few minutes of cook time. 
• Add salt and pepper at the end of the cook time to avoid oversalting. (The stock will cook down a little, which will concentrate the salt if you add it too early.)
• Above all: Have fun, be inspired, see what you find at the farmers market, and taste, taste, taste. 

Now, even though the ingredients for this particular soup may not be easy to come by, here's the recipe anyway because you can use it as a starting point and replace or drop ingredients as you like. If you don't have fresh Dragon Tongue beans, which you probably don't (beautiful things, I wish I had thought to photograph them), you can replace them with cooked pinto beans. (If you use cooked pinto beans, drop the overall cook time by 20 minutes.) If you don't eat bacon or meat, you can use olive oil to soften the onions and replace the chicken stock with vegetable stock. Try different kinds of greens. And if you don't have butternut squash puree just hanging around the refrigerator (which I did), you can either eliminate it or use some plain pumpkin puree from a can (just go for the good quality stuff though).

Ingredients

• 6 slices bacon, chopped finely
• 1 onion, chopped finely
• 2 cups fresh (shelled) Dragon Tongue beans
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 2 small potatoes (yellow or white), peeled and diced
• 1 medium-large sweet potato, peeled and diced
• 1 apple, cored, peeled, and diced
• 1 cup butternut squash puree
• 2-3 cups chopped kale
• salt (to taste)
• white pepper (to taste)
• 1 tsp thyme

Directions

1. Cook the bacon in a large soup pot over medium heat until crispy. Remove the bacon from the pot and let it drain on paper towels.
2. Lower the heat to medium-low and add the onions. Let them cook slowly until they are soft and shiny. Give the onions a good 10 minutes to mellow. 
3. Add the beans, the stock, and the thyme to the pot. Bring the stock to a boil, and then lower the temperature to a simmer. Let the beans and stock simmer for 20 minutes (if you are using cooked beans, skip to the next step).  
4. Add the potatoes and the apples to the stock. Let them cook for 10 minutes. 
5. Add the sweet potatoes to the stock (sweet potatoes cook faster than regular potatoes). Let them cook for another 10-15 minutes (check that they are soft). 
6. Add the chopped kale and the bacon. Taste the soup, add salt and pepper to taste.