Tag Archives: Side Dishes

Crispy Baked Potato Fans

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Currently cooking from The Complete Cook’s Country TV Show Cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen.

I have a favorite way to bake potatoes (it’s actually smashed red potatoes that you brush with olive oil and then bake until the edges get crispy), but I was drawn to the picture of these potatoes in the book. Mine didn’t turn out nearly as pretty, but they tasted really good. I don’t know that I’ll give up my smashed potatoes in favor of this one, but it is nice to have a more elegant way to bake potatoes.

You start out by making a topping of bread crumbs, butter, Monterey Jack cheese, Parmesan cheese, paprika and garlic powder by melting the butter and mixing everything together. I made a few changes, mostly to save myself a shopping trip. First, I didn’t have bread, so instead of bread crumbs, I used panko. And I had just bought a chunk of cheddar cheese, so I used that instead of Monterey Jack cheese. The topping turned out fine, even with my changes.

On to the actual potatoes. You take four russets, slice them every quarter of an inch almost all the way through, then carefully wash them out, making sure to wash out the slices. This helps keep the potatoes from sticking together. Then, you precook the potatoes in the microwave; this way, they don’t spend two hours in the oven. Once the potatoes have softened in the microwave, you brush them with oil and bake them in a very hot oven (450 degrees) until they are completely tender and the skin has crisped up. Finally, you press on the topping and broil the potatoes until the topping is crisp.

These were very tasty, and I loved the topping. My only problem was that it was very hard to get the topping to stay on the potatoes. I had to really press the topping down and kind of squish it into the cuts, resulting in a few minor burns.

Of course I ate mine with sour cream, because everything is better with sour cream.

If you are bored with baked potatoes, this is an easy way to spice them up for not too much more work. They are also elegant enough to serve to company, say with a side of roast beef . . .

Garlic Mashed Potatoes

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Currently cooking from The Complete Cook’s Country TV Show Cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen.

I made these mashed potatoes to go along with our Salisbury steak. They were perfect with the gravy.

You start off by sauteing minced garlic (12 cloves!) and a bit of sugar in butter just until the garlic starts to turn golden. Then you stir in cubed potatoes, half and half and water. You boil the potatoes until the liquid has been absorbed and the potatoes are tender. Finally, once the potatoes are tender, you add in more butter, more half and half and mash everything together.

These are not diet potatoes by any means, but they are garlicky and good. They are a nice change of pace from regular mashed potatoes, and they are good enough to eat on their own without gravy.

Syracuse Salt Potatoes

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Currently cooking from The Complete Cook’s Country TV Show Cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen.

What’s this? Why yes, it is ANOTHER cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen. Really, these guys should put me on their payroll. When I came home with this cookbook, Bryan asked me if it was any different that their other ones. It isn’t, really, except maybe it focuses more on regional specialties and “down-home cooking,” whatever that is.

Every Saturday morning, Bryan and I have a ritual. We go to the gym, get coffee and doughnuts on the way home and then spend the next hour (or two) watching the America’s Test Kitchen shows on PBS, including Cook’s Country. There’ve been enough mouth-watering recipes on that show, that while I don’t want to subscribe to their magazine (I already get the Cook’s Illustrated magazine), I did want to make some of the recipes I saw. And this book, just to look at, is delightful. There’s a picture with every recipe, and most of the recipes have little extra tidbits, such as step-by-step pictures or a history of the dish.

The first one I turned to, that I remember very clearly from the TV show, was these potatoes. They are a simple side dish, but with new potatoes, this is sublime. In a nutshell, you take small red or white potatoes, scrub them clean, boil them in very salty water until they are tender and serve them with a melted butter/chive/black pepper dipping sauce. The salty water perfectly seasons the potatoes (no extra salt needed) and keeps the insides creamy and tender. That’s it. Perfectly tender, perfectly seasoned potatoes. And if you don’t want to make the melted butter dipping sauce, sour cream works just as well.

Note: One thing that I’ve come to realize is that taking pictures is my least favorite part of blogging. Even though the blog has been sitting quietly, I haven’t stopped cooking. I just was too lazy to pull out the camera, and I’ve always thought that you really needed pictures of the dishes you are blogging about. And I get even lazier when I’m cooking for our dinner. When the food is done, I want to eat it, not take pictures of it. Usually I end up taking pictures of leftovers, but even then, it is something that I have to force myself to do. I have lots of excuses (it is getting dark earlier and the light is bad and I don’t have a good place to take pictures, etc.).

So what are your thoughts?  Leave me a message and let me know what you think.

Buttery Whole Wheat Paratha

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Currently cooking from Cook This Now by Melissa Clark

I’d never heard of a flatbread called paratha, but I love breads, flat or not, and I knew the rest of our meal would need something (we were having the braised lentils, also from this book; watch for that review soon).  In the story that goes with this recipe, Clarks says she based her recipe on one from Madhur Jaffrey, the queen of Indian cooking. Now, I don’t own any of Jaffrey’s cookbooks, but I’ve heard of her from lots of  people I trust, so I figured these flatbreads were probably going to be pretty good. They certainly looked easy enough.

A simple dough is made from whole wheat flour, melted butter, salt and water. The dough is divided into sixths and each part rolled into a circle. The circles are brushed with more melted butter, sprinkled with nigella seeds (I can’t find nigella seeds around here, so I used sesame seeds. Clark says you could also use poppyseeds), folded into a semicircle, brushed with more melted butter and sprinkled with seeds and folded in half again. The triangle of dough is then rolled out, brushed with melted butter, sprinkled with salt and cooked in a skillet until browned on each side. Did you notice that there is a little bit of butter going on here?

What you end up with is a buttery, flaky disk of crispy bread. I guess, anyway. I ended up with a buttery, gummy disk of bland wheatyness that kept getting stuck in my throat. The problems were probably more my fault than Clark’s. I should have used more salt on them, and I should have rolled them out thinner at the end. If you google “paratha,” you’ll find lots of pictures. I didn’t take any, because I was too busy trying to swallow.

Note: Except for the one I ate, Bryan ate the rest of the paratha. He liked them. I don’t know why.

Roasted Eggplant

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Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

This is new territory for me. I’ve never cooked an eggplant, and I’ve only ever tasted it in that dip, Baba Ganoush. But hey, anything is good if it is roasted. My supermarket had exactly three eggplants sitting on the shelf. I went with the nicest looking, smallest one (about a pound), because I’ve read that large eggplants can be bitter. My eggplant felt kind of like a soft balloon.

To prepare the eggplant, you cut it up into 1-inch cubes, drizzle the cubes with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast them at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes. Pretty standard instructions for roasting vegetables.

In the oven, the eggplant cubes pretty much collapsed (after soaking up all the olive oil) and stuck to my pan. Visually, they were unappetizing, and I found the flavor of them to be bland with a very soft texture. Except for the skin. The skin was kind of tough. Clark’s instructions don’t say anything about peeling the eggplant, so I didn’t. At the table, I wondered out loud if I should have taken the skin off. Bryan, who was poking at his eggplant suspiciously, immediately had to go to the internet to find out if I had poisoned him.

In the end, we both decided that we didn’t like the eggplant. Bryan thought it was bland and had no flavor, and I didn’t like the too soft texture. The only saving grace was the green goddess dressing (review coming up next) that we drizzled over the roasted eggplant.

Barley with Carrots, Scallions and Maybe Parmesan

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Currently cooking from Cook This Now by Melissa Clark

I was looking for something to serve underneath those lemony, garlicky chicken drumsticks, and I thought this might work well. I was hoping for an alternative that could stand in for brown rice (my go-to grain), but I ended up not liking this very much.

You start off by simmering barley until it is almost tender, then adding grated carrots. Once everything is tender, you drain any remaining water and stir in olive oil, chopped scallions, Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper.

I thought the dish was very, very bland, even with the scallions and the cheese. I ended up adding lemon juice to perk up the flavor, and I could have added more cheese (but I had already washed the grater, and I was feeling too lazy to wash it again).

Garlicky Sesame-Cured Broccoli Salad

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Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

We are broccoli eaters around here, so I was intrigued by this recipe when I saw it. You cut up a couple heads of broccoli into bite-sized pieces, then toss them with salt and red wine vinegar. While the broccoli marinates, you heat olive oil with garlic and cumin seed, stir in sesame oil and a pinch of red pepper flakes and pour the whole thing over the broccoli and vinegar and let it sit for an hour to so at room temperature. The hot oil softens the florets just enough that they aren’t raw crunchy, and the vinegar adds a welcome acidity, cutting the richness of the oil. Although the broccoli will continue to soften as it sits, it will remain perfectly toothsome for several days in the refrigerator.

This is a nice change from my usual roasting or steaming method. I did have to add about twice as much vinegar as the recipe called for as there wasn’t enough to coat my broccoli, but I found that I liked having a stronger vinegar flavor. I’ve made this twice, and found that the smaller I cut the broccoli, the softer it gets. The second time I made this, I cut down a bit on the amount of cumin called for and still thought there was too much. Don’t leave out the red pepper flakes. They add just a touch of heat that contrasts nicely with the cold broccoli.

Easy Stovetop Macaroni, Peas, Bacon and Cheese a la Jamie Oliver

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Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with mac and cheese. I love it because it is cheesy pasta. I hate it because I usually eat too much of it. Unfortunately, this recipe isn’t going to help me resolve my dilemma. This was so very, very good and so very, very easy to make. It is “drier” than most mac and cheeses I’ve made, and the only cheese in it is about a half of a cup of Parmesan. Yet, the combination of bacon, parmesan, peas and lemon juice is delightful.

This dish comes together fast. In fact, I had to take the sauce off the heat because the pasta wasn’t quite done. You start out by sauteing a couple of chopped up slices of bacon until they are crispy. Next you stir in frozen peas and cook for a minute to defrost them. Then you add a bit of creme fraiche or heavy cream (I went with the heavy cream), lemon juice and the cooked pasta. After stirring everything together until the pasta is coated, you add the Parmesan and salt and pepper. More stirring until the cheese is melted, and then lots of eating.

Seems almost too easy to be good, but it was. I did have to add more heavy cream because my pasta seemed too dry, and when I reheated it the next day, I added a bit more. We liked the dish so much, that I made it again, a few days later, and added some leftover flank steak instead of the bacon (and left out the peas because Bryan decided that peas didn’t belong in mac and cheese).

This will definitely become my go-to macaroni and cheese recipe. Forget the blue box.

Coconut Rice and Peas

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Currently cooking from Cook This Now by Melissa Clark

This was one of the first dishes I marked out of this book. Sometimes you want rice to take a more starring role in your meal, and I thought this recipe might do that. I’ve had coconut rice before, and I’ve always really liked it, especially the versions I’ve had in the Caribbean (although their “peas” usually mean our beans).

Unfortunately, I had problems with this recipe, and those problems were probably just as much my fault as the recipe’s fault, although I do wish Clark had been a little more explicit in some places. I ended up with gummy, clumpy rice that didn’t taste coconutty at all.

This is a pretty straightforward recipe. You cook brown rice in coconut milk and water until tender. During the last few minutes of cooking, you stir in frozen peas. Easy, no? Well, here’s where I ran into problems.

1. Clark calls for brown rice. She doesn’t specify long grain, short grain or medium grain. I went with my favorite short grain brown rice. She also tells you to rinse the rice first, which I forgot to do. That one is my fault and probably contributed to the gumminess.

2. Clark calls for coconut milk, but doesn’t specify regular or lite. I went with lite. I don’t know if that made a difference or not. Clark says to pour the coconut milk into a measuring glass and then add enough water to make two cups. I ended up adding less than 1/4 of a cup of water to equal two cups, and my liquid was quite thick and “saucy.” I ended up adding another 1/4 cup of water because my rice was starting to stick in the pan, but it was still somewhat chewy. I think this was the major culprit in my gumminess; perhaps the type of rice I used needed more than the two cups of liquid. Maybe I should have used less coconut milk and more water.

3. As for the lack of coconut flavor, well, I don’t know. Maybe I should try adding some dried coconut to the rice. Maybe using a blander white rice will let the coconut flavor come through better.

What’s cooking in my kitchen

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Here’s what I’ve been cooking and we’ve been eating over the past few weeks.

Key Lime Pears from Michael Recchiuti’s cookbook Chocolate Obsession. I’ve been making these for Christmas for the past few years, and it’s my go-to recipe when I have an excess of pears. My friend Missy gifted me with a box (a BIG box) of the fruit last week, and I’ve been struggling to use them all before they go bad. I’ve lost count of how many batches of these key lime pears I’ve made, but we keep eating them faster than I can make them. You take green, very firm pears and slice them thinly, then soak the pear slices in a key lime sugar syrup. The pear slices are then baked (I use a rack set over a cookie sheet, but Recchiuti just lays them on a silpat-covered cookie sheet) until crisp. Recchiuti dips them in chocolate, but I prefer them plain. I think the chocolate overwhelms the pear/key lime flavor.

Pear Bread from Bake or Break. When the pears got too ripe for key lime pears, I decided to give pear bread a try. This is like zucchini bread, except with pears. There are lots of pear bread recipes floating around, and the only reason I picked this one was because I had all the ingredients on hand. I made a few changes. First I substituted brown sugar for half of the sugar, and I added about 1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground nutmeg. Finally, I left out the nuts because I didn’t have any. I ended up with two loaves of fragrant, sweet, dense quick bread. I didn’t really taste pears, unfortunately. I’m going to keep playing with this recipe, especially as my pears continue to ripen.

Corn with Tons of Herbs from Dana Treat. One night I was looking for a side dish to serve with dinner, and I remembered reading about this dish. Corn sauteed with butter, shallots and a ton of herbs, basil and cilantro in my case. Use the best corn you can and fresh herbs only, please. I liked the basil here, but not the cilantro. Thyme would be lovely as would dill.

Cherry Tomato Orzo Salad from Simply Recipes. We’ve been living off of this salad for the past few months, and every time I make it, I make it a little bit different. I’ve moved away from orzo and now use macaroni pasta; its a little more substantial. I also like this with parmesan instead of feta, and I don’t limit myself to just cucumbers and green onions. Any veggies I have languishing in the fridge tend to make their way into this salad. I especially like bell peppers, frozen peas and avocados.