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.          

Potato salad with Stilton and bacon for a Labor Day Cookout and #SundaySupper

Labor Day weekend. The last big hurrah of summer. Parties, trips to the beach, barbecues, a whole host of last-minute summer fun jam-packed into a few short days before school starts and work settles in for the long haul of fall.

For me this year, it's a final wild sprint at the end of a somewhat exhausting summer. This is the first time I've been home with my son all day since he was a newborn, while at the same time maintaining a pretty full schedule as a freelance editor and writer on weekends and evenings. I am a little worn out.

If I think about it, the end of summer is always a little tough for me. I key in to the waning of the light, my energy drags, my tolerance for the heat reaches its end, and the fun parts of summer just don't seem that fun anymore.

But in a few weeks, I will start to perk up again. The temperature will slowly come down. The angle and quality of the light will change, mellowing, growing richer, gilding nature while the leaves turn color. And I will crank up the tunes while I fly down highways, exulting in the light and adventure that fall always seems to promise. And there will be fall food: rich stews, apples, hot cider, warm soup, pumpkin caramels, cookies.

For now, though, there's Labor Day, and it is still hot here in Northern Virginia and is likely to be for several more weeks. Which is why a nice cool potato salad seems a great choice to bring to a cookout, like the one that #SundaySupper is having this week. This potato salad is salty with crunchy bacon and smooth Stilton (by far my favorite blue cheese), acidic with the tang of apple cider vinegar, and mellow with the earthiness of potatoes. I like to use a mix of small potatoes, blues, reds, yellows, but you can use any type you've got. Just make sure to cut up the potatoes into nice bite size pieces. This recipe was inspired by a recipe I read in Bon Appetit magazine about 12 years ago, which I have simplified a little. Both versions taste fantastic and really turn a simple potato salad into something special.

Ingredients

• 3 lbs of potatoes (mixed colors if possible), cut into bite-size pieces
• 6 Tbsps olive oil
• 4 Tbsps apple cider vinegar
• 1 shallot, minced
• 1 Tbsp grainy Dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 small bunch of chives, chopped finely
• 1 cup Stilton, crumbled (you can use another blue cheese if you prefer, but make sure it's a very good quality cheese)
• 6 slices bacon, cooked until crispy, crumbled

Directions

1. Whisk olive oil, apple cider vinegar, minced shallots, mustard, salt, white pepper, and chives in a large bowl. 
2. Cook bacon until it's crispy, drain it on paper towels, and crumble it. 
3. Boil potatoes for 10-15 minutes until they are tender when you poke them with a fork, but still hold their shape.
4. Drain the potatoes. While they are still hot, add them to the vinaigrette and combine thoroughly. Allow the potatoes to cool to room temperature. 
5. Just before serving the potato salad, add the bacon and the Stilton to the potatoes and combine thoroughly.

To find out what the rest of the #SundaySupper group is bringing to the Labor Day Cookout, check out all these great recipes, which we will be sharing all day long on Twitter. Also, don't forget to join the #SundaySupper live chat at7 pm ET and tweet your own cookout recipes.

Starters and Snacks

• Lobster Salad with Avocado, Corn, and Tomatoes by The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen
• Grilled Vegetable Spread by Magnolia Days
• Toast Topper #8: Tomato Confit for #SundaySupper by Yummy Smells
• Honey BBQ Wings and Cool Ranch by Big Bears Wife
• Finger Lickin’ Chicken Drumettes by Noshing with the Nolands 

Main Dishes

• Baked Shrimp and Pasta Caprese by Mama’s Blissful Bites
• Korean chili by Crispy Bits & Burnt Ends
• Newfangled Cowtown White Chicken Chili by Shockingly Delicious
• Strawberry BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches by The Weekend Gourmet
• Spicy Seoulful Pulled Pork Sandwiches by Kimchi Mom
• Soy Glazed Chicken Thighs by The Messy Baker Blog
• Stuffed Green Chili con Queso Cheeseburger Sliders by Damn Delicious
• Adana kebab by Small Wallet, Big Appetite
• Portabello Paninis by The Hand That Rocks the Ladle
• Bloody Mary Skirt Steak by From Fast Food to Fresh Food
• Tuna and Roasted Pepper Packets by Cindy’s Recipes & Writings
• Mint Marinated Beef Kabobs with Garlic Sauce by Sustainable Dad
• Creamy Latin Style Pasta by Bobbi’s Kozy Kitchen
• Spicy Portuguese Style Sliders by Daily Dish Recipes
• Aromatic Glazed Salmon by Happy Baking Days
• Pork sliders by Basic ‘N Delicious
• Foil Packet Chicken by In the Kitchen with Audrey

Salads and Sides

• Mom’s Savory Pork’n’Beans by Webicurean
• Ranch Potato Salad by My Catholic Kitchen
• Gluten Free Penne hot salad with basil, asparagus, cherry tomatoes fresh mozzarella and chicken with a mustard vineagarete for #SundaySupper by Cooking Underwriter
• Southern Surprise Potato Salad by Granny’s Down Home Southern Cooking
• #SundaySupper Marinated Ginger Chicken & Spinach Salad by Kwistin’s Favorites
• Roasted Potato & Corn Salad w/ Bacon by GirliChef
• Vegan Caprese Salad by Galactosemia in PDX
• Picnic Friendly Grilled Vegetable Salad by Mama Mommy Mom
• Smokin Hot Caribbean Spiced Corn-On-The-Cob by Sue’s Nutrition Buzz
• Tomato Feta Orzo Salad by Family Foodie 

Drinks

• Frozen Sangria by Supper For a Steal
• Persian mint & cucumber cooler (sekanjabeen) by Family Spice

Desserts

• Lightened lemon pound cake by The Meltaways
• Root Beer Float Cupcakes by Chocolate Moosey
• Strawberry Cream Squares by Dinners, Dishes and Desserts
• Fresh Mango Pie by La Cocina De Leslie
• Brown Butter M&M Cookies by That Skinny Chick Can Bake
• Gluten Free Lemon Blondies by No One Likes Crumbley Cookies
• Blueberry Lemon Cream Cheese Coffee Cake by Baker Street
• Strawberry Pie + White Sangria by Vintage Kitchen Notes
• Grilled Banana Splits by Diabetic Foodie
• Easy Desserts: Frozen Chocolate Bananas by Home Cooking Memories 
• Ice Cream Sandwich Cake by Comfy Cuisine
• Blueberry Lemon Whoopie Pies for a Holiday Cookout #SundaySupper by In the Kitchen with KP

Wine Pairings

• Labor Day Cookout Food And Wine Pairings by ENOFYLZ

Corn chowder: A little crunchy, a little salty, a little sweet, a lot of warm in a bowl

What a week! Multiple deadlines; complicated and unrelated topics (I am just glad I didn't mix up marine engineering with physician documentation, or at least I hope I didn't); nonstop push, push, push to get the work out the door. I still have a deadline pending (but it's a few days away, so I am taking tonight for me--sort of, I am still waiting for an email, but we are going to pretend tonight is all for me).

But I've been a lousy mom, letting my boy run wild in the house, scatter Legos all over the place, build some enormous structure. I don't want this kind of week to be the norm; I want to do better for and with my boy this summer. I suppose this is the last summer I will be "stuck" at home with him. Next year, he'll be old enough to start attending camps, and about a minute later he'll be off to college and starting his own family.

No, I know. There's plenty of time left. It just may not always feel that way. Sometimes the weeks get away from you so much faster than you ever imagined they could.

I did get a homecooked meal on the table every night this week. (Leftovers are always a such a gift.) We still eat out way more than I would like, and that's not good for many reasons, including expense, calories, and unknown ingredients and sources. Furthermore, I just feel guilty about how inconsistent eating out a lot is with the way I want to live (no matter how much I try to eat from restaurants that use sustainable and/or local ingredients).

But it was hard this week. Partly because I was so rushed and exhausted with projects all week, and partly because our stock of chicken, pork, and bacon from Haskins Family Farm was down to nothing but some bacon ends. But I got plenty of vegetables from the farmers' market last Saturday (perhaps too many), including some corn and potatoes, which to me says corn chowder. I love corn chowder, but I only make it during the summer. That's the only time the corn in the soup retains it sweetness and crunch. And with a tiny bit of bacon to start it off, well, that only makes it a little smokier, a little saltier, a little more complex.

This soup can be made with a combination of potatoes. In fact, if you were to switch out a few of the potatoes for sweet potatoes, that wouldn't hurt at all. Nope, not at all. Also, if you like a little more heat (I do have to keep in mind the fact that my son is five), I would highly recommend chopping up a chipotle canned in adobo sauce and add some of that to the soup.

Sadly, I didn't get a picture of the soup. I was too rushed, trying to get food on the table. Next time I make it, I'll try to get one to spruce up this post a little more. In the meantime, here's the recipe.

Ingredients

• 6 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces (about an inch wide)
• 1 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 1 jalapeno, seeded, membrane removed, cut into small pieces (the membrane is where most of the heat of a jalapeno resides)
• 6 fist-sized potatoes (a mix is always fun, but use anything you have on hand), cut into about 1/2 inch dice
• kernels from 6 ears of corn (to slice it off the cob, cut off a small end piece so that you can stand it upright, then cut down the edge of the corn with your knife; the kernels will peel right off)
• 6-7 cups chicken stock 
• 1-2 cups of heavy cream (or half and half, if that's what you have and are inclined to use)
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. In your stock or soup pot, cook the bacon slowly, allowing as much fat to render out as possible and letting the meat get nice and brown and crispy. (Can you smell that?)
2. With a slotted spoon, pick up the nicely browned bacon bits out of the pot and set them aside in a bowl lined with paper towels for the time being. 
3. Add the onions to the bacon grease in the pan. Over medium-low heat, let the onions sweat for about 10 minutes. They should be nice and soft and "translucent," but not really brown. And they should smell amazing. 
4. Bring up the heat to about medium and add the potatoes to the pot. Let them cook for 5-10 minutes and let them get a little brown around the edges.  
5. Add the jalapenos and the stock to the pot. Add salt, pepper, and cumin to the stock. Bring the stock up to a boil and then lower the heat to a simmer. Let the potatoes cook about 10-15 minutes. 
6. Add the corn to the soup and let it cook another 10 minutes. 
7. Add the heavy cream or half and half and the reserved bacon and let the soup warm up again (about 5 minutes over medium-low heat; you never want to boil cream). Taste the soup to find out if you need any more salt or pepper and adjust accordingly. (It's not easy to correct an oversalted dish, but you may be able to add some more cream or some water if the seasoning isn't wildly off.)
8. Eat. Enjoy. Be happy. Have a nice evening with your family.   

Skagen-inspired shrimp toasts: A special treat for Swedish Midsummer

In Sweden, Midsummer is celebrated on the Friday and Saturday right after (or during) the summer solstice. It's one of the most important holidays in the Swedish calendar, comparable to Christmas and New Year. It's basically an old heathen tradition that celebrates sun and fertility at a time when the sun doesn't really set and the beauty of a Swedish summer has finally come to full flower after a long, cold winter. It's party time. People head out to parks and raise a Midsummer pole that they've decorated with flowers and dance around it to traditional music. They wear crowns of flowers in their hair. And of course, they eat. (What celebration doesn't include food, right?)

A friend let me share her picture of a typical Midsummer celebration. 

Traditionally, Swedish Midsummer meals consist of pickled herring (I must confess that this is not one of my favorites), new potatoes served with dill and butter or sour cream (yum), strawberries with cream (or better yet, the beautiful little wild strawberries called smultron). And with that of course, you are supposed to drink shots of snaps, while singing drinking songs. (I settled for some really good hard cider instead.) 

For our Midsummer celebration and the last Swedish meal for Sweden week, I modified the traditional meal a bit. For one thing, I have never been able to eat pickled herring with joy and pleasure. I have choked down a piece or two from time to time to be polite, but that's the best I can do. I was able to get some lovely new potatoes from the farmer's market, along with some fragrant dill. Strawberries are over for the season here, but we do have raspberries and blueberries (the queen's berries) at the market, which had to suffice. And grilling a nice piece of meat is always popular for a summer meal. 

But, I did want my family to try something I have loved since I first had it that says "party" to any person who has ever lived in Sweden: Toast Skagen. However, because I didn't have the right kind of roe for the dish (I was able to find some herring roe at IKEA and the right kind of shrimp*), I am hesitant to call this dish Toast Skagen (especially because that is such a fine and elegant dish and my toasts were more "rustic," but not necessarily in the gorgeous way). Instead, I choose to call them simply Skagen-inspired shrimp toasts. They are so easy to make, it's ridiculous. The only work involved is cleaning the shrimp. But they are so delicious, even my five-year old son loved them and ate every last bit. 

Ingredients

• 1 500-gram bag of frozen northern shrimp, defrosted, peeled, and cleaned 
• 4 teaspoons herring roe (or any other flavorful, light-colored roe you can find; don't use a black caviar, it will stain and taste too strong)
• 4 slices light bread, toasted
• 3-4 tablespoons mayonnaise
• four thin slices of lemon
• juice from half a lemon
• sprigs of dill for garnish

Instructions

1. Spread mayonnaise on the slices of toast. 
2. Sprinkle some lemon juice on the mayonnaise. 
3. Evenly divide the peeled and cleaned shrimp among the toasts. 
4. Cut each lemon slice through one side of the rind and all way through to the other side without cutting it completely in half. Twist each half of the lemon slice in opposite directions and garnish the shrimp. 
5. Spoon some herring roe onto the toasts. 
6. Add a sprig of dill on each toast.
7. Enjoy!

* A word about shrimp: I don't like most shrimp. I do, however, like the little pink shrimp that you typically get in Scandinavia known as northern shrimp or prawns (their Latin name is Pandalus borealis, which I just had to share after spending quite some time trying to look them up). Compared with most shrimp that I've found here in the United States, they live up to their shrimply name, so cleaning them takes a long time and is fiddly. I still prefer to get them shell and head on, because their texture is weird when they come pre-cleaned. I've only been able to find them frozen at IKEA, which totally ruins any attempts at eating locally, but this is one of those cases where I definitely prefer an imported product over what I can find here.       

Papa rellena: Peruvian stuffed potatoes

The potato. Such a humble root, with such vast potential both in cooking and in feeding the planet (see what Charles C. Mann, author of 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created has to say about it in this Smithsonian Magazine article). The summary? The potato fed a lot of people and may have driven some of the world's population explosions and subsequent political restructurings. Ah, the historicopolitical impact of food. 

The potato might be my favorite vegetable (or starch, however you want to view it). I like them mashed, baked, boiled, fried, gussied up, or plain as day. (Always cooked though, of course; raw potatoes contain toxins that can make you sick.) 

I am not alone in loving potatoes. When I was growing up in Sweden, we got lots of potatoes with just about every dish, and, though others were more excited about rice, I was always happy to see those friendly yellow spuds on the dinner table. I once spent an hour with a friend from Ireland, raving about the delights of the potato. (I know, I am a weird geek with weird geek friends.)

In Peru, love of the potato is fundamental. Thousands of potato varieties exist, each one adapted to different microclimates and different storage and nutritional requirements. Some potatoes must be eaten with a specific type of clay to not be poisonous. Some are meant to be frozen and mashed. The variety is so great that Peruvian people who eat only potatoes still get all the nutrients they require. This kind of variety is very different from what we are used to seeing in American markets, even at farmers markets, which are far more likely to showcase oddball varietals of fruits and vegetables (one of the many reasons I love shopping at farmers markets).  

As part of Peru week (read more about the Grand Tour here), I knew dinner was going to feature a lot of potatoes, and the Peruvian dish I decided to try this time was papa relleno. It is a mashed potato ball (more like a football, actually) stuffed with a tasty ground meat filling and deep fried. They are fun to make and, as my son said, "Yummy!" My husband described it as being a little like a mini deep-fried shepherd's pie. 

The ground meat filling I made is somewhat unusual for me. For instance, I used raisins, which I would normally never do because I dislike raisins. But I decided to give it a try and was very pleased with the result. The flavor of raisin didn't come across, only a bit of sweetness that balanced the salt and sour of the other ingredients. So if you don't like raisins and don't like much fruit in savory food, I recommend giving it a try anyway. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised. Other additions I saw in various fillings were chopped hardboiled eggs and chopped black olives. Feel free to mix it up. 

The only trouble I had with this dish was the deep frying, which is a technique I have yet to fully master. I recommend checking out this article to get some tips on deep frying (such as don't skimp on the oil, let the oil get very hot, don't crowd the pan, and cook your food in batches).

Ingredients

• 3 lbs yellow potatoes, peeled
• 1 egg
• 1 onion, chopped finely
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 lb ground beef (or ground pork would also be good)
• 1/4 cup raisins, chopped
• 1 16-oz can crushed tomatoes
• 1-2 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro (or you can replace with parsley)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• salt and pepper
• all-purpose flour
• vegetable oil (both for making the meat filling and for deep frying, so you will need a lot)

Instructions

1. Boil the potatoes in salted water until you can easily poke them with a fork. 
2. Drain the water and mash the potatoes in a bowl with salt and pepper to taste. (A ricer is a piece of kitchen equipment that you should really invest in if you make a lot of mashed potatoes. Totally worth the cost and space.) Set aside the potatoes until they are really cold. (Overnight would be fine, just cover them with plastic so they don't dry out.)
3. In a frying pan, heat about 2 Tbsp oil until it shimmers. Add onions and garlic and cook until shiny and a little brown. (Smells good, huh? Frying onions is one of my favorite smells.)
4. Add the ground meat to the pan and cook until the meat is browned and cooked through. 
5. Add raisins, crushed tomatoes, cilantro or parsley, cumin, salt, and pepper, and about a cup of water to the pan. Let the mix cook until most of the liquid evaporates and you have a loose mass in the pan. (Don't forget to taste it for salt and pepper, but don't add too much salt early because evaporation will concentrate the salt.) Let the mixture cool. (Once again, you can do this a day ahead.)
6. When you are ready to start shaping the papa rellena, add 1 egg to the mashed potatoes and mix until completely incorporated and smooth. Put a couple of handfuls of all-purpose flour on a plate for rolling. 
7. To shape the papa rellena, pick up about 1/4 cup of the mashed potatoes and create a dent in the middle. Place about 1 Tbsp meat filling in the dent and mold the mashed potatoes around the filling. Patch any holes with additional mashed potatoes. Form the mass into a potato shape (the first few won't look great, but you will get the hang of it very quickly.)
8. Roll the "potato" in flour and set it aside while you shape the rest. You should get about 12-14 papas.
9. When you have finished rolling them all, deep fry the papas in batches. They will be done when they are golden brown and crispy. Keep them warm in a 200-degree oven until you have finished the remaining batches. 
10. Eat! Enjoy.

Lomo saltado: First leg on the Grand Tour

So, my son's last day of school for the summer was Friday. Months of summer stretch out before us.

Sounds great, doesn't it? It sounds great... No, not so much really. To be truthful, I doubt my parenting skills (every day). I really doubt my patience. How do I keep this five-and-a-half year old from getting bored (and worse, getting into trouble)? How do I keep from tearing my hair out? How do we keep the boy from losing all the progress he made in his Montessori school this spring? And how do I keep him from watching TV and playing video games all summer while I try to work? 

Then I got the idea. I was inspired by this Washington Post story about the Spanish-themed buffet at the Garden Cafe of the National Gallery of Art and the Joan Miro exhibit. I liked the idea of the food connecting with the exhibit. That could be cool. Each week, we have a different country as the theme: We try the food. We go to relevant exhibits. We learn about the country: the history, the geography. We use all that as a basis for regular lessons in writing, reading, math, and science. We make art in the style of the country. We listen to the music! Hey, this could be kind of fun! 

So I let my son pick the first country on our "Grand Tour." He picked Peru (where one of his teachers, Miss Rosy, is from). Eek, I thought, I know next to nothing about Peru. But now I am so incredibly happy and grateful he picked Peru. I've learned so much! What a fascinating country! When can we go? Incas, Nazca lines, a coastal desert, the root of all potatodom and all tomatodom, Machu Picchu, Andes, and the Amazonian rain forest. 

It turns out Peruvian food is at least as diverse as its landscape. Thousands of varieties of potatoes, tomato species that exist nowhere else, fish, fruit, not to mention the variety of ethnic influences on the cuisine from all over the globe. What do I pick to make and eat?

Ceviche, which may be the dish most associated with Peru, is intriguing but not necessarily a dish you want to introduce to a five-year old. Furthermore, because it requires such extreme freshness of seafood and such a deft hand with acid and spices, it didn't seem like a good place to start as a beginner. I wanted something traditional, somewhat easy, definitely Peruvian, but not so far out there I wouldn't be able to get my son to try it. A friend suggested lomo saltado, a beef stir-fry dish with fried potatoes. So I started looking into what makes the dish. From a few different sources,* I gathered these basic features of the dish:

• It's a stirfry, reflecting the fact that Peru boasts one of the larger ethnic Chinese communities outside China in the world. 
• It includes potatoes and is typically served with rice. So yes, that's two, let me say it again, two starches in one dish. 
• The main ingredients are almost always beef strips, onion, tomatoes, fried potatoes, soy sauce, and vinegar. Often included are either parsley or cilantro. Sometimes cumin is included, sometimes not.  
• Aji amarillo, a yellow Peruvian pepper is often included, but sadly I couldn't find one. 

So based on these general ideas about the dish, here's how I made it, and I must say it was pretty delicious:

Ingredients

• 1/2 bag of frozen French fries (I know, I totally cheated on this, but at least they were organic and included very few ingredients)
• 3 Tbsps vegetable oil  
• 1 lb of grass-fed stir-fry beef in thin strips
• 1 red onion, sliced thinly
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 3 tomatoes, seeded and cut into bite-size pieces
• 2-3 Tbsps soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp chopped parsley
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• salt and pepper

Instructions:

Before we get into the specifics, here's a general tip about any stirfry: Always make sure that all your ingredients are prepared and ready to go. Stirfrys are one kind of dish where mise en place is critical. So, assuming your ingredients are all chopped and measured and peeled and sliced and ready, here are the instructions:

1. Cook the French fries according to package instructions. 
2. Heat the oil in a wok or another thick-bottomed pot on high heat. The oil should be very hot. 
3. Add the meat to the oil (be careful about getting splattered!). Stirring quickly, let it cook for 1 minute. 
4. Add the onions to the pan. Let it cook for 2 minutes. 
5. Add the tomatoes, garlic, cumin, garlic, soy sauce, vinegar, and parsley to the wok, stir quickly and let it all cook for about 2 minutes. 
6. Taste the sauce, add more soy sauce, salt, and pepper to taste.
7. Serve the stirfried meat over the French fries with white rice on the side. Sprinkle a little fresh parsley over the top. 

Is it completely authentic? Probably not. Is it good? Oh yes. I think I just added a new dish to the dinner repertoire. (And it would probably be good with pork too.) 

* Some sources to learn more about Peruvian food are My Life in Peru, Peru Food, www.southamerica.cl, and About.com's list of traditional Peruvian dishes. 

Root vegetable chowder with bacon

I don't even remember the last time I posted, but then again most of the last week and a half are lost in a haze. I've been sick with a virus that went into the lungs and became bronchitis. For seven days, my temperature would cycle up to 103.5 degrees and then back down to a "normal" of around 101. I alternately froze and shivered like a naked person in Siberia or poured out sweat like Niagara. It wasn't fun. But it's starting to clear up now, and for that I am grateful.

The last thing I cooked before I went down for the count about a little over a week ago was a root vegetable chowder with bacon. It surprised me how delicious it was because it started with the inauspicious need to clean out the larder a bit. We just had too many wrinkly roots lying around, and something needed to be done with them before they went bad. I ended up using a combination of potatoes, sweet potatoes, parsnips, and small white turnips.

It all ended up being a rich, warm, deeply satisfying soup that's thickened by the starch in the potatoes. Good enough that two grown men (Mike and Uncle Dave) stood around the nearly empty pot after dinner scraping with their spoons to get every last bit. That's a real compliment to a cook.

I suspect you can use any combination of root vegetables you have available as long you think about balancing sweet and mild with bitter. And hell, throw in some thinly sliced greens at the end of the cooking if you have them. 

Make sure your root vegetables are all cut to even sizes. This is a good way to practice your knife skills!

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp butter
• 5 slices thick-cut bacon, sliced thinly
• 1 and 1/2 medium yellow onions (or 1 large), diced finely 
• 3 yellow potatoes, peeled, 1/4 inch dice
• 2 small-medium sweet potatoes, peeled, 1/4 inch dice
• 1 parsnip, peeled, 1/4 inch dice
• 4 small white turnips, peeled, 1/4 inch dice
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 4 cups chicken stock (homemade preferable, but a good organic broth will do just fine)
• 1 cup half and half
• salt and white pepper

What to do

1. Melt butter in a large stock pot. Fry the pieces of bacon in the butter until the bacon is brown and crispy. Take the bacon out of the pot, set it aside to drain on paper towels for the time being. 
2. Lower the heat to medium-low and add the onions to the pot. Let them sweat for about 10 minutes, stirring from time to time. Don't let them get crispy. They should be soft and translucent. (They will probably pick up some brown from the bacon fat, but don't worry about that.)
3. Raise the temperature to medium. Add the vegetables to the pot. Stirring from time to time, let them soften and brown a bit, about 10 minutes.
4. Add the stock and the crushed garlic to the pot. Bring the liquid up to a boil and then lower the temperature to a simmer. Let it cook for 20-30 minutes, until the vegetables soften and some of them start to fall apart a bit. If the stock isn't a bit thick at this point, let the vegetable cook for another 5-10 minutes to get more starch into the water.  
5. Add half and half and salt and pepper to taste. Bring the temperature up but don't let the soup boil again (if you do, the half and half can curdle, which won't kill you but definitely ruins the texture of the soup). Add the reserved bacon back into the soup and serve. 

 

Friday link roundup and a recipe for a savory version of French toast

A fair amount of cooking went on this week even though it didn't seem as though it was going to work out that way. You see, I neglected to go to the farmer's market last Saturday. I was too lazy to go. My son had his little Happy Feet Soccer class in the morning, and I didn't want to miss it again. As a result, I didn't have a whole lot of fresh ingredients to work with. But somehow I managed to pull out a great meat sauce on Monday, come up with a savory version of French toast and serve it with caramelized onions and bacon, and make red beans and rice last night. Tonight's Friday treat? This fondue minus the brandy. With some ice cream for dessert.

I'd love to share the red beans and rice recipe, but it's not there yet. I added too much tomato to the mix, making it too acidic. It was definitely edible, but it just wasn't up to the level of wow-I've-died-and-gone-to-food-heaven I was aiming for. Especially given the amount of time that went into it. And the fact that I used up all the rest of the delicious pickled pork Mike made a few weeks ago. Oh well.

Another disappointment this week was the photos of the savory French toast. Not pretty. Not appetizing. It's getting darker in the evening, so the natural light that makes photos gorgeous is fading, and I don't yet know how to compensate (if anyone has some tips, please share). So I deleted all my toast photos. Here are some photos of a stunning sunset we had a few days ago instead. Some of these look unreal.

Although things didn't work out perfectly on the cooking front this week, I am proud to say we didn't have to resort to picking up dinner from Chipotle (our go-to fast food restaurant because of their efforts to use ingredients that are as sustainable and local as possible). Don't get me wrong, I love their bowls, but it feels good to be the one who creates the food that goes on the table, you know?

I also came across several good articles to share:

• I read this article about boiled cider from The Washington Post a couple of weeks ago and tried the accompanying recipe. It took all day to reduce the cider, but it was so worth it. I have this delicious syrup that I have been using to sweeten our morning oatmeal, and I also added some to the red beans and rice. It's so sweet and intense; it's like a sunrise explosion of sweet apple in your mouth. I am almost out and plan to make more this weekend. Another plus is that making it gives the house that fall smell of warm cider.
• Here's a story about a family from Arizona that pledged to buy 100 percent local for an entire year. I come across stories like this from time to time where someone forgoes something entirely for a year or however long, and I have to admit I couldn't do that. I don't want to. I prefer to take a more evolutionary approach path to locavorism and sustainability by replacing, eliminating, or changing one thing at a time. It's what I can do. Still, these stories provide inspiration as well as ideas for what I could do better. 
• Came across this story about a man who created his own bread starter, from which all his loaves of bread derive. I have tried making sourdough once--it was not a success--but I look forward to trying again some day.
• On the farming and sustainability front, the Agronomy Journal published results from the first long-term, large-scale study of the economic feasibility of organic farming versus industrial farming. As it happens, organic farming is profitable in the long term. These kinds of results are really starting to break down old arguments that industrial methods are the only economically viable methods. Think about these results in combination with the United Nations' study's findings Civil Eats reports that indicate organic farming is a viable method for feeding everyone on the planet, and toxic status-quo industrial methods start to look increasingly out of touch.
• Having grown up in Sweden where the potato is nearly as fundamental to the diet as rice is in China, this report from Marcus Samuelsson's website that the USDA plans to take potatoes off the menu just  pissed me off. Writer Dylan Rodgers was none too pleased either and explains the importance of the potato throughout history. 
• In contrast, this story about the pawpaw from NPR made me very happy. The pawpaw is a native fruit. Mike and I hunted for them last year to try them, but we were too late. We found a location with a whole bunch of pawpaw trees, but most were down by the time we saw them. I am just excited that someone is paying attention to a homegrown fruit. Wonder if a wander in the woods is in the cards for me? 

So that's the article round-up for this week. And here's that recipe for a savory version of French toast I promised:

• 8 slices bread
• 1 cup half and half or cream 
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup grated cheese (Cheddar or Parmigiano Reggiano)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp ground pepper
• 1/4 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• butter (for the skillet)

1. Place bread slices in a glass baking pan
2. Whisk together half and half, eggs, cheese, salt, pepper, paprika, and thyme. Pour the mixture over the bread in the pan. Let it sit for at least 10 minutes, but you can also start it the night before. (Flip the bread slices at least once to make sure both sides get a good soaking.) 
3. When ready to cook, take the bread slices out of the baking pan and let them dry off for a few minutes on a baking rack while you melt some butter in a skillet over medium heat. 
4. When the butter starts to sizzle and brown a little, place two slices in the pan. Let each side cook until golden brown (about 2-3 minutes) and remove from the heat (keep them warm in an oven heated to 275 degrees Fahrenheit while you do the next batches). Start each batch with a new pat of butter or else they will stick to the pan a lot. 
5. Serve with caramelized onions and bacon (if you like). You can also add a tiny drizzle of the apple syrup I talked about up above. It's mighty good and makes a nice, simple breakfast for dinner.   

 

Warm, wonderful salmon "shepherd's" pie

At the fish counter this morning, I was thoroughly seduced by the wild-caught sockeye salmon from Alaska. I know, I know, Alaska is in no way, shape, or form local, so I failed on that front. But at least it’s in season. And honestly, how could anyone resist this color? Just look at that gleaming, opalescent orangey-red. It begs to be savored.

As a painter, I am a sucker for color. Here’s a case in point:

So I sprang for the salmon. Then I had to think of something to do with it. You can’t leave something that beautiful hanging around. I considered grilling, roasting in the oven, a quick sear—no, no, no. Nothing I could think of seemed able to fill the cravings I had. I wanted potatoes, but I didn’t just want to serve potatoes with my salmon. Something pie-like started creeping into my imagination. I scouted around on the web looking for fish pie recipes and found this one from Jamie Oliver, and, using it as a stepping-off point, I came up with this salmon shepherd’s pie (which makes no sense really, no sheep in the sea, but there you go). 

First step was to create some mashed potatoes to top this lovely thing. I had some beautiful red-skinned potatoes purchased from the farmer's market a couple of weeks ago (although Yukon Golds would do nicely as well). I decided to leave the skins on and make the mash nice and chunky to give the pie a rustic feel and some texture. 

I scrubbed and cut up the potatoes into chunks and boiled them for about 30 minutes, until they were fork tender. Then I strained them into a bowl:

Added a generous sprinkling of salt:

And some cream (about a half cup) and a tablespoon of butter:

Then smashed the lot with the back of a spoon:

Until I got a nice creamy, lumpy mess that tasted oh so good (if you need to, add more salt):

While the potatoes cooled a bit, I started on the rest of the dish. First I grated three carrots coarsely on a box grater:

Sprinkled them on the bottom of a buttered glass baking dish:

Then grated some sharp cheddar cheese and added that to the dish with the carrots:

Next, I turned my attention to the salmon, removing the skin and cutting it into bite-size pieces:

I added the fish to the dish with the carrots and the cheese, sprinkled salt and white pepper, and squeezed half a lemon over it all:

Next, I spread the smashed potatoes over everything and grated some more sharp cheddar over the top :

Finally, I popped the whole thing into a 400-degree oven for 40 minutes, turning the oven to broil for the last few minutes to get the top nice and brown:

And finally sprinkled some parsley on top (dry is what I had, but fresh would be lovely) and served it with a nice Swedish cucumber salad:

My husband and I had seconds. I was even tempted to have thirds, but resisted. My four-year-old ate everything on his plate, not with great praise, but he ate it (and that means a lot). Me, I can't wait to have the leftovers for lunch tomorrow. I haven't decided whether to share them with Mike or not...  

Scraping the bottom of the barrel

As I've mentioned before, I am pretty much done with winter food. I can't wait for spring. Visions of glowing strawberries and roasted asparagus with a touch of lemon and some goat cheese tempt my palate. But I must be patient. There's no local food right now. And I've got leftover root vegetables and squashes hanging around in my veggie basket and frozen fruits (mostly peach slices) from last summer at the back of the freezer. It's time to clean all of that out and make way for the fresh food that's soon to come.

Today's task was to get rid of the three celebration squash that I bought oh so many months ago from the good people at Glascock's Produce, back when I thought I should store away as much produce as I could and was feeling adventurous about trying unfamiliar squash varieties. (I love winter squash, but a long winter makes root vegetables and squashes boring, although I have no doubt I will be excited about them again come fall.) The celebration squash were pretty beasties back when I bought them: variegated orange and yellow, smooth skin. Now out of the basket, they seemed a little dusty and felt as though they had lost a lot of weight. (I guess the moisture was pulled out of them.) So I cut them open to see how they looked, and they seemed fine. No black spots, no sliminess, no bad odors. Probably OK to eat. There wasn't a lot of meat on them anymore, but I decided they would make  good cups for a stuffed squash dish. So I cleaned the seeds out of the six halves, sliced a small bit off the bottom so they wouldn't roll around in the pan, and placed them in a baking dish I had rubbed with some olive oil. Finally, I drizzled a little maple syrup into the cups because maple syrup works magic on squash.

Then, I had to decide what I could stuff them with. I happened to have some ground chicken. Maybe I could make a chicken-apple sausage to stuff the squash? No, no, no, these squashes didn't have enough meat to make a meal. We need some carbohydrates. So I looked in the veggie basket and found a decent-looking sweet potato, a bruised apple, and some slightly wrinkly red-skinned potatoes. Got it: Hash!

Now, before I go on, let me say that I am not a fan of bad food, or, to be honest, even particularly tolerant of it. I've known people to dump the contents of their crispers into a pot with some water or a couple of cans of commercial broth and call it soup. This is appalling to me. And, as a lover of soups, it's offensive. Would you also call the contents of your garbage disposal soup? Well, I suppose that's one thing you could call it. What I wanted to do was to transform ingredients that were past their prime into something yummy.

So I'd decided to make a hash. I finely diced a yellow-skinned onion about the size of my fist (this turned out to be a good dish for practicing your knife skills) and added it to about two tablespoons of hot olive oil bathing in my wonderful iron skillet. (Anyone who has ever gotten a good season on an iron skillet must love their skillets the way that I do. Or perhaps not. OK, I'll be over here.)

I slow-cooked the onions until they caramelized into golden-brown bits that crusted the pan, which gave me time to dice the sweet potato, two potatoes, and the apple into about a quarter-inch dice. When I was done, the ground chicken went into the pan until it was slightly browned and mostly cooked through. Next the diced potatoes and apple went into the pan, just long enough to brown a little. I added about a tablespoon of salt, a tablespoon of dried sage, and a generous pinch of white pepper. Then I threw in a handful of chopped almonds to get a little crunch.

The next steps were to fill the squash cups with the hash, top them with some fresh bread crumbs and a dab of butter, and pop them into a 375-degree oven for an hour. Because I had lots of hash left in the skillet, I popped it into the oven with the squash cups for about 20 minutes to finish cooking the potatoes and have some leftovers ready for tomorrow's lunch. (Just heat it up and fry an egg sunny side up to put on top. Yum. I love a good runny yolk on hash.)

I need to work on my food-styling skills.

This was my experiment. The verdict? The flavor was great. The sweetness of the apple and the sweet potato mellowed with the onions, the squash, and the chicken into a warm and savory mixture. However, the crumbs were a bit burnt, the squash a bit stringy, and the chicken a bit on the dry side. These flaws were not enough to kill the dish, but flaws they were. And yet, it tasted great, and I had managed to use several old vegetables and fruits that have been languishing for a while. A few more meals like this, and all the vegetables and fruits from last season will be gone, and there will be plenty of space for the fresh fruits and vegetables we will soon see in the markets. (And I don't have to feel guilty about wasting good food.)

If you want to try this "recipe," the steps are described above. Here are the general quantities used:

• 1 lb of ground chicken (ground beef or pork with a slightly higher fat content would be a bit less dry; however, make it's not too fatty or the stuffing could get greasy)
• 3 celebration squash, halved, seeded (if you use acorn squash instead, you may want to pre-bake it for at least 40 minutes before stuffing it because it's such a meaty, slow-cooking squash)
• 1 large onion, diced finely
• 1 sweet potato, diced (about a quarter inch)
• 2 medium potatoes, diced (about a quarter inch)
• 1 apple, cored, peeled, and diced (about a quarter inch)
• about half a cup of chopped nuts (I used almonds because that's what I had, but most nuts would taste good here)
• about half a cup of fresh breadcrumbs
• some dabs of butter 
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sage
• a generous pinch of white pepper