Mashed Potatoes (with Peel)

I threw in a mention of mashed potatoes last week, almost as an afterthought - but I realize I'm probably not the only person to have reached the Age of Consent (or, at any rate, Householding) without having a clue how to mash a potato.

When I was a kid, my family never ate mashed potatoes. There were two basic reasons for this.

First, we really didn't eat potatoes in any form, or pasta, or bread, very much at all. First there was the concept that starch was just what you filled up on to stretch the meat... and we were lucky enough to be able to afford as much meat as we wanted. And starch was all just Empty Calories (which wasn't so far off if you were just talking about instant mashed potatoes, or what my mom called Marshmallow Bread...)  Then the first iterations of Low Carb came around, and a series of doctors put Mom on a series of severely low carb diets. (None of which had any long term effect, but that didn't seem to bother anyone but her.) So, we thought,  potatoes=starch=filler=bad for you...

Secondly, my dad specifically disliked mashed potatoes. When we did eat carbs, we ate rice or noodles, occasionally baked potatoes. He married late in life, and before then ate in a series of boarding houses, faculty clubs, and restaurants - and he traveled a great deal for work, so still ate in restaurants all too often. Mom's theory was that he'd just eaten too much gluey mashed potato...

Flash forward a few years. I'd dipped my toe in vegetarianism, which changed my relationship to brown rice and whole wheat bread - and potatoes *with* the skins. And my then husband was going along with the idea... Now, I wasn't against *ever* eating meat - I just wanted to limit it - so every so often I'd try to serve him a meal that was a bit more typical of what he'd eaten growing up. Pot roast, meat loaf... and mashed potatoes. Sometimes, I admit it, I used potato flakes - but the first time I mashed a potato, I was astonished by both how easy it really is (especially if you *don't* peel it)  and how much better it tasted.

So - I don't peel potatoes. Most of the vitamins are in, or directly under, the peel, and peeling wastes them. Almost all the fiber is in the peel, and peeling wastes it. So - I should take an extra step, and do extra work and fuss more, to throw away almost all the nutrition? I don't think so... On the other hand, a big clump of coarse peel can be unappealing (pun, not intentional) especially if you're serving it to people not on board with all this nutrition stuff. (People often known as Family...)

The two techniques to allow you to do this are choosing the right potato in the first place, and cutting the pieces small.  (Well - you can also work the Trendy bit... I'm seeing restaurants serve them, calling them Smashed Potatoes... You, too, can Smash your fashionable potato!)

Big Idaho bakers? Save them for baking... You want the thin skinned ones. (Idahoes mash beautifully - but the skin stays pretty obvious... I'm OK with it, but other people might not be.) I usually, for just us, just use generic Potatoes sold in the bag or at the farmer's market - but to serve, say, Rich's parents, I used Yukon Gold. They mash nicely, and the skin is reliably thin.

Then, cut them fairly small before cooking. It takes a minute of cutting, but much less time than peeling, and lets the potato cook very quickly. Again, for us, I usually just cut them in eighths - or even quarters, if they're not big - but I cut them smaller for someone else. Little squares of thin skin just melt in - Rich's mother couldn't find them at all, and asked me about it!

After cutting, put them in a pot with water, cover and bring it to a boil, then simmer. Cut small like that, the potatoes cook in 10 minutes or less... It can vary, though, with both size and the particular potato, so I check every few minutes, by poking them with a knife. I want it completely tender, but not yet falling apart. I then turn it off (and leave it in the hot water, covered, until I am ready for it, as long as it is within ten minutes.)

When I'm ready to mash - usually just before serving dinner - I drain them. Then, I used a classic old fashioned potato masher... there are both this kind, and one with a squiggly sort of metal piece at the business end. If you don't have one, or are just mashing one potato, you can use a fork, but it will be a bit of a nuisance. If you're doing a lot, and have a stand mixer, I've been told that can be helpful - I think the manual has directions (though of course it assumes you've peeled the potatoes...) but I've never done that. If you do use a mixer, don't overmix - I understand that's the culprit behind the gluey potatoes in many a diner. That's not really an issue with a manual masher.


It's really pretty easy. You have at it with the masher, until the potato is all crumbly. Then you add something wet... Milk is traditional. I happen to like yogurt, and that's what I used here- we like the tang - but that's a very personal taste. If you're being luxurious, and have it on hand, a bit of half and half, or cream, or sour cream is really rich... Don't use plain water if you can help it, though - it leaves it, well, watery...  Most non-dairy milks should work well, too - I've used soy and it's fine. Rice milk might be a bit sweet... but that's a matter of taste. I haven't used almond milk, but I bet it would be good. The key is - a liquid with a bit of flavor.

Again, the amount will vary... I start with about a spoonful of whatever per potato. Start mashing again - and suddenly all the crumbles melt into this wonderful soft fluffy stuff, that just keeps getting fluffier as you mash. If it doesn't look quite right, add just a little more liquid - keep going until you have the texture you want, but stop before it gets runny. If you're going to put gravy on it, you probably want to keep it pretty firm - if you're just serving it by itself or maybe with a bit of butter, you may want it moister. I like having that control...

I don't seem to have gotten a picture of it all getting fluffy - I need another hand, sometimes...

But, anyhow - really easy, much better tasting, I think, than packaged flakes, and certainly more nutrition...  not Just Starch, or a filler.

Ratatouille - or... Using Up Vegetables

I had eggplant. Oh, boy, I had eggplant..

So - ratatouille. It's a classic French dish from Provence, a stew of summer vegetables. Roughly equal amounts of eggplant, zucchini, and tomato, with onion, garlic and basil. Unlike most vegetables dishes, it's cooked until the vegetables are soft, and freezes (and reheats) beautifully.

And, well - we've been getting eggplant every week, and it's getting ahead of me.

I also had a couple of zucchini - bigger than I usually like, though still pretty tender. (I don't know how our farmer does it - we get big squash that haven't gone to seed... Choice of cultivar, I assume, but I'm not used to seeing it elsewhere.) And I had some tomatoes, though not really quite enough for the traditional proportions.  (Yes - I know the home gardener usually has Too Much Zucchini. Our farmer is careful not to overwhelm us with it... and I can use a lot of it anyway, as it cooks so easily. The same concepts apply, though.)

First, let me address the tomatoes. I had several choices of how I wanted to deal with that. I could, of course, just make something else. I could make a small amount of ratatouille, using the tomatoes I had, but less of the eggplant and squash than I wanted to. I could go out and buy more tomatoes, or use a can of diced tomatoes.  I could go ahead and make it with the "wrong" proportions, and either eat it or freeze it as such.

My choice was going to be dictated by my goal. If I were, for example, cooking it for a dinner party and trying to impress someone with my cooking, I'd definitely either change what I planned, or go buy tomatoes. In this case, though, the goal was to do something with all those eggplant, and maybe work down the squash, too, because this is the time of year when the CSA gets ahead of me, and I may get more vegetables than I can use that week. I like, though, to have some prepared vegetables in the freezer, for winter, or just for busy days.

I decided, therefore, to just go ahead and cook it as it was, freeze it all,  and add a note that I might want to add tomatoes...  which, then, I may or may not do. I can get good quality diced canned tomatoes, so that's an easy option, down the road - and, in fact, this saves me freezer space.

First, I chopped a large onion, and a big clove of garlic, and sauteed them in olive oil. I was a bit more generous with the oil than usual, as that's a traditional ingredient of ratatouille and adds richness, and I was going to want enough for the rest of the vegetables, too. I cooked them until they were just starting to soften.

Meanwhile, I cut the eggplant into big chunks. I added them to the pot, and tossed them with the onions and oil. Did the same with the zucchini. Then I chopped the tomatoes and added them. I didn't bother peeling them - we don't mind a little tomato skin in our food.

You sometimes also see directions to press out all the liquid and seeds. There are a couple of problems with that... First, the gel around the seeds has a lot of the flavor, so you'd be losing that. And, in this case, I want to have some liquid to start this - as the other vegetables cook, they will release plenty of moisture, but I want a bit of liquid in the bottom of the pan to start it. (And - well - I tend to leave out the fussier steps - but that's a  matter of individual taste. They're not worth it to me - they might be to you.)

A glance at the picture will tell you that I had less than half as much tomato as I did eggplant. But that's OK... While I was working on this post, I was talking to a friend about the ratatouille she was making - she didn't know I was working on this, but we all have eggplant, it's that time of year - and she was talking about red and green peppers. Peppers? I've eaten it with peppers, but also without, and I'm not sure I ever cooked it with peppers...
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I hauled out the Larousse Gastronomique I recently inherited - the arbiter of French Cooking...  Yes, peppers... (though it doesn't specify red or green.) But I've certainly eaten it, prepared by others, without peppers... and I've always... wait... I've always cooked it without peppers, but I've made this since I was in my late teens or early 20s, and was still at my parents' house much of the time. And my mother was allergic to bell peppers, which means that I have absolutely no idea whether or not the first recipe I followed included peppers - I would have left them out reflexively.
                                                                     
A key to this sort of adaptation is understanding the major flavors of the dish. The keynote, as it were, of ratatouille is eggplant, with zucchini and tomatoes as the secondary layers. (I've always heard it described as an eggplant recipe, with Summer Vegetables coming second - never as just a zucchini recipe...) Onions, bell pepper, garlic, herbs are all grace notes. They add to the flavor, but they are not central. So I could make a delicious stew with zucchini, tomatoes, and peppers - but it would not be a ratatouille. This is - but just barely... it really should have a little more tomato to *properly* be that classic dish.  So, I may serve it as is, or I may add a can of diced tomatoes - it will depend on how and when I use it.

Anyhow, I tossed all the vegetables in the pot, to coat them with the oil, and mix them thoroughly. Then I put a lid on, set the heat very low, and let it all simmer about 15 minutes. When I came back, the vegetables had started to shrink, and liquid was cooking out of them. I stirred them some more, and continued to simmer them, over low heat, without the cover. Oh, and I added about 2 teaspoons of crushed dried basil.

 Normally, I prefer zucchini just lightly cooked, still firm, not mushy. Eggplant, though, needs to be cooked soft... and this medley works best if the texture is all the same. So, I continued simmering it until all the vegetables were soft, and the flavor had melded - and most the liquid had cooked off. If I were serving it immediately, I might have left it moister, but I didn't want to give freezer space to water, and, if I add tomatoes later, I'll be adding their liquid... I cooked it about half an hour, all together.

I let it cool, then, and packed it simply in take out containers. I'm not actually going to keep this long - I'll make another batch and freeze it in freezer containers, which let in less air and take less space in the freezer. This will just be prepared food for times I can't cook.

Ratatouille

One large onion, chopped
1 large clove of garlic, minced
2 T olive oil
3 medium eggplant (or one large one)
2 medium zucchini
4 (or more) tomatoes (Ideally, classically, the eggplant, zucchini, and tomatoes should be roughly equal by weight.)
2 t dried basil

Saute onion and garlic in oil until starting to soften.

Chop eggplant and zucchini into bite sized pieces. Add to the pan, and stir to coat with oil.

Chop tomatoes, add, with liquid, to pan. Stir and cover. Let simmer, covered, 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove cover. Add basil. There will probably be a good bit of liquid in the pan. Let simmer without the cover until it has cooked off a little, and vegetables are done to your taste - probably another 5-10 minutes.

Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage

Autumn is here!

Well - the Autumnal Equinox is actually tomorrow... but close enough. The season has changed... The weather started fluctuating between cool and hot a few weeks ago, but, this week, the warm spell following the cool weather was in the seventies, not the nineties. We called this weather cool a month ago - now, we think of it as warm. It's Fall...

Fall in New York City is wonderful. The air is crisp and clear, the sky turns a remarkably deep blue, with little wispy clouds drifting (or racing, often) through the air. The sun is warm and the air is cool, and it's perfect walking weather.

And it is the height of the harvest season. I'm still inundated with eggplant and tomatoes - but the winter squash is starting to come in, and cabbage, broccoli, and glorious crisp apples... And we start to be in the mood for a less summery meal.

The other day, I cooked a sweet and sour red cabbage, and added shredded pork. Served it with mashed potatoes, and it was just right for a cool evening! And it is another variation of the basic Sauteed Vegetables.

Since I was using pork anyhow, I decided to use bacon to saute the onion. I don't eat it alone very much, but I do like to use a little in cooking, sometimes - it can add a lot to a simple meal. I am able to buy "bacon ends" which is fine for me, as I'm not looking for the strips anyway. I loosen them up, and freeze the whole package - then cut off just what I need. I can easily cut it with a sharp, fairly heavy knife. Then I dice it small, and put the dice in a heavy pan over low heat so the fat will render out, and I get crisp bacon bits. (This means... the fat gradually melts, so you have liquid fat, and crisp bits. Use a low heat so it doesn't burn.) You can drain off some of the fat, if there is too much - I just use a small amount to begin with, and keep it, since I'm after the flavor. If you would rather not use bacon, just heat some olive oil.

Then I chopped a red onion, and added it to the bacon and grease. I used red largely because I had it... but also because it's a bit sweeter, and I was going for the sweet and sour taste. And, of course, the red onion is pretty with the red cabbage. I stirred it around every so often, as the onion started to soften.

I don't seem to have taken a picture of chopping the cabbage... this cooking and picture taking at the same time means I sometimes get distracted... A whole cabbage is almost always much more than I want to cook at once, for two people - so I cut off a big chunk from one end, and work with that. The rest goes back in the crisper - when I next want it, I cut a paper thin layer off the cut edge, discard it, and the rest is good to go. Meanwhile, I place my chunk on the cutting board, and slice it, so the cabbage falls in shreds. If I get to the core, I cut it out, and discard it. I may then cut the shreds in half, to make them easier to eat.

I put the cabbage shreds in the pan, with the bacon and onion, and stirred it around a lot to distribute the bacon grease over as much of the cabbage as possible. I let it wilt a few minutes, then added just a splash of apple cider vinegar, for the Sour. Then I cored and chopped one of the lovely new apples (I left the skin on, but discarded core and seeds) and added it, for the Sweet. (Rich wandered into the kitchen, and said "You know, an apple would be really good in...  oh ... that's an apple core, isn't it?" Two great minds in the same rut, as my father used to say...)

I covered the pan, to hold in the steam and speed up the initial cooking, then checked it after about 5 minutes.

Usually I would just cook and serve this as is, as an accompaniment to pork chops or something. In this case, I had some pork left from a pork shoulder I'd cooked. I decided that, instead of just heating and serving it plain, or trying to figure out some way to season it, I'd just throw it in the cabbage mixture. This is, of course, purely optional - but it made this meal simpler. I just put the frozen block down in the fridge a few hours earlier, and then dropped it into the cabbage. I covered the pan again, briefly, until the meat thawed (I wouldn't have, if it hadn't been still partially frozen) and stirred it in. I then let it cook until cooked to our taste.

I served it with mashed potatoes - which I'll talk about another time - but plain boiled ones would have been great. If I'd felt really energetic, potato pancakes would have been delicious - I might do that for guests, or a special occasion meal. Pork roast, probably, in that case, the cabbage, and potato pancakes... very fancy in a Good Home Cooking way...

Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage

1 strip bacon, diced small (or substitute olive oil)
1 red onion, chopped
2 cups shredded red cabbage
1 oz cider vinegar
1 apple, cored and chopped

1/2 pound shredded cooked pork, opt.

Put finely diced bacon in a heavy pan over low heat, and cook until the fat renders out and the bacon starts to crisp. (Or, if you aren't using bacon, just heat some olive oil in the pan.) Add the onion, stir, and let cook until onion starts to soften.

Add the cabbage. Stir it around thoroughly, to coat it with the fat, and let it start to wilt slightly. Add the vinegar and the apple, stir, and cover. Remove the lid after about five minutes, then stir and cook until done to your taste.

If you wish to add the meat, do so after removing the lid. Stir in, and heat through.