The New Christmas Potatoes

The thing about holiday meals, it seems to me, is that it is so easy to fall into a food rut. In the name of tradition, we decide not to venture from the dishes we're used to making for any given holiday. Case in point: my first Thanksgiving as cook. Everyone has come to expect certain foods when eating Thanksgiving dinner at my house, regardless of who's (wo)manning the kitchen. Thus I felt I could make no substitutions to previous years' menus. Additions, yes, but serious revisions, no. Does that happen to you?


The same thing seems to happen with Christmas. (Though I must admit that I can easily fit into the character of enabler of food tradition/repetition. I never make potatoes savoyard, for example, so I look forward to eating them every Christmas Eve at my aunt and uncle's house.) We usually have Christmas Day at my house. We usually have a ham. We usually have the candied sweet potatoes that my grandma likes; the seemingly holiday-ubiquitous mashed potatoes; the 7-Up Jell-O salad my mom remembers from nearly every Christmas in her life; some steamed vegetable, with or without lemon butter or Hollandaise; and the egg bread that essentially serves as my cousin's entire Christmas meal, as well as his stocking stuffer the night before.

Well, most of that happened this year. When I got home following fall semester finals, my mom was planning her Christmas Day buffet, a task that should be easy when the entire menu is essentially set. But then she started thinking about the potatoes: we'd just had a ton of regular mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving, let's not be too repetitive; we couldn't make potatoes savoyard because we always have them Christmas Eve; we needed to be careful not to repeat the potatoes my mom's sister would serve at her dinner on Christmas Eve; so what to do? I consulted Nigella, of course.


The end result, I must say, was fantastic. Not too much of a change from mashed potatoes to wreak holiday havoc, but different enough in execution, taste, and texture to keep things interesting. I wholeheartedly encourage little holiday tradition rebellions like this one. Although, if they all turn out as tasty as these potatoes did, you might be marking the end of one tradition with the beginning of another.

Smashed Potato Gratin
from Feast by Nigella Lawson

5 lb all-purpose potatoes, + 1 potato for insurance
6 c whole milk
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 stick celery
8 scallions
pepper
2 sticks butter
4 tbsp semolina

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter two shallow roasting pans (we used a 9"x13" and a smaller casserole).
Peel and chop the potatoes and cut them into approximately 1/2"x1 1/4" chunks. Put them into a saucepan with the milk, salt, celery, whole scallions, pepper, and 1 1/2 sticks butter. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes.
Fish out the celery and scallions. If you cooked your potatoes in a large pot, it's easiest to lightly mash them in the pot before pouring them into the perpared roasting pans. Otherwise transfer the potatoes to the pans than then mash. You can leave the pans made up to this point to sit for a while.
When you are ready to put the potatoes into the oven, sprinkle over the semolina and dot with the remainging butter. Cook the smashed potato gratin for 30 minutes or until hot through and beginning to catch and scorch in parts on the top.
Serves at least 12.

Summer's End

How does the end of summer always manage to sneak up on people? Tomorrow I move back down to school for what promises to be something of a culinary semester, at least if we're judging by the pile of cooking utensils waiting to be loaded into my car. It's been an eventful summer, full of swimming in lakes and a wedding. All kinds of good stuff. Nothing, however, compares to the family reunion of last weekend.

It's the Hungarian side of my family, and because neither you nor I have the time for me to recount all the craziness that has taken place at these reunions over the years, I'll give you two examples for your own consideration:
1) Every year at our stuffed-cabbage-featuring picnic, "the elders" (my grandmother and her brother) announce the winner of the Fetla Award. It goes to the person in the family who has done the stupidest or funniest thing in the course of the long weekend. The competition is fierce.
2) At our 2002 reunion in Indianapolis, the women all went to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding. We laughed doubly hard because, with a simple substitution of stuffed cabbage for stuffed grape leaves, that's our family.

I kid you not.

Look at the lovely colors of the Hungarian flag, all in a tasty summer salad!

Over the years we've all attributed the zaniness to our common ancestry for no better reason than we tend to end up surrounded by the colors of the Hungarian flag (also, most of the people who married into the family are normal). What better way to feature the red, white, and green than by commandeering the Italian Caprese salad? That's what I did, and let me tell you, it was a hit at the first (and last) annual birthday gala.

Magyar Salad
(formerly Caprese Salad)

fresh ripe red tomatoes
fresh mozzarella
fresh basil leaves
herb-infused olive oil

Slice the tomatoes and mozzarella in even-sized slices. To assemble the salad, repeat a pattern of sliced tomato, sliced mozzarella, and basil leaf until you run out of an ingredient. Drizzle the assembled salad with the olive oil and serve.
Note: Depending on your preferences, you can drizzle the salad with plain olive oil, olive oil and vinegar, Italian dressing, plain balsamic vinegar... please, just don't make it too complicated.

Asiago Potatoes - The Easy Tasty "Fancy" Potato Side Dish

While I've always enjoyed sharing and swapping recipes with people, I didn't make the jump to sharing my favorites with a wider public until last fall. I'd been a writer and editor for my college newspaper for two semesters when I decided to add a food column to my list of writing commitments. The original intent of the column was to provide recipes students could make using only ingredients from the convenience store on campus. Choice was limited, however, and so I decided to leave that idea behind and instead just focus on the "ease factor," always so important for college students. One of my later columns included these potatoes (with the student-friendly name "Easy Cheesy Potatoes"), a personal and family favorite.

Shaking a bag full of potatoes and seasonings is almost as fun as crushing ice in a bag with a mallet.

We've been eating these potatoes at my house for about as long as I can remember, although until recently my mom only made them for special occasions. Last year, though, as I shadowed the cooking process, I saw just how easy they are to make. The most labor-intensive task is cubing the potatoes, everything else is either shaking or flipping. Now this dish has become almost a weekly staple side starch at my house. They're that easy, and they're that good.

Make sure to turn the potatoes twice while cooking to allow them to cook evenly.

I've heard some people say that no matter how large a closet they have, they will always fill it with clothes; content somehow manages to always meet capacity. In my family, these potatoes follow the same line of logic: no matter how much we make, we'll eat the entire dish. The formula has held up over time as we've served the potatoes to all manner of guests, family members and camp friends alike. Everyone finds them yummy.

The finished product should have golden, crispy edges.

They look quite tasty and impressive when you set them out on the dinner table in a nice casserole dish, and my mom says that makes them an ideal first dinner party potato.

Ease, taste, and a pretty finish. What more can you ask of a side dish?

Asiago Potatoes

6 potatoes peeled and cubed
1/4 cup flour
1/3 cup grated Asiago cheese
3/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp butter

Preheat the oven to 375° F. Combine the flour, cheese, salt and pepper in a plastic bag. Shake the cubed potatoes in the bagged mixture. In an oven-safe casserole dish, melt the oil and butter, then pour the seasoned potatoes into the dish. Bake for 60 minutes, turning the potatoes every 20 minutes for even cooking. Makes 4 large servings.
Notes: Depending on how thin-skinned your potatoes are, you may not want to peel them. It all depends on the consistency and fiber-content you're looking for. Also, you can substitute pretty much any cheese you like, although harder cheeses like Asiago and Parmigiano-Reggiano work best. If you really want to give your taste buds a treat, mix a few together.