Potatoes that mash themselves

This is one of those 'secrets' that should have made it to more cooks than it has. I got it from the book Serious Pig by John and Matt Thorne. He describes the technique in his chapter on chowders. I haven't gotten around to trying one of the chowders yet, but the cutting method works great with potato soup.

Thick-Thin Style Potatoes

If you're making a potato soup or a chowder you want it to be thick. Relative to a soup, of course, but if you cook your potatoes long enough they break down and give the body of your soup weight. The problem is that you want some chunks too, something to chew on that's pure potato. Cutting them thick-thin style solves both problems.

Thorne's instructions on thick-thin style are pretty slim:

Calculate one medium or large all-purpose potato per eater, with one or two more for the pot. Peel the potatoes, take a paring knife, and - this being an essential but too little known trick- slice them into bite size pieces with the shape of an ax head. As Dorothy Bangs puts it:

Now about the potatoes. I cut mine "thick-thin". I learned to do it this way from a very dear lady, the postmistress of Cuttyhunk Island. With potatoes cut thick-thin, one cuts small slices around the outside of the potato so that each slice has a thin side and a thick side - like little wedges.

Cut "thick-thin", bits of the edge break away to meld into the liquid as the potatoes simmer in the pot, creating a uniquely creamy body. That - and the crumbled ship's biscuits mentioned above - are the only thickeners a chowder ever needs.

(italics his)

As big a deal as Thorne makes out of cutting the potatoes this way, I expected a little more in the way of instruction. But this is it. I suppose anyone could come up with the answer on their own, given the name and a pressing need to thicken chowder, but I figured I'd talk about my workings of the method.

I cut the potato in half lengthwise first. Then, with the flat side of the potato on the board, cut the half in half lengthwise again, leaving me with quarters that each have two flat sides.

The quarters get cut thick-thin. I start with one flat side of the potato down on the board, with the other flat side facing away from me. I angle the knife to the left first, creating a wedge that gets thinner as it goes away from my body and the handle of the knife. Once the first one is cut you simply have to straighten the knife out and cut the next one, which already has it's angle from the last cut.

You repeat this pattern until you get to the end of the potato quarter and start again. You have to cut the potatoes up anyway, considering it's no extra effort it really makes sense. Thick-thin cuts and leftover mashed potatoes make the perfect base for potato soup. All you need now is a little bacon.

Is there such a thing as too many mashed potatoes?

I've loved mashed potatoes for as long as I can remember. My grandpa Carl planted a garden every year and potatoes were always part of the plot. We'd dig up small white ones for grandma to boil and mash with butter in an electric mixer. No matter how full the mixing bowl was, there was never enough mashed potatoes. The bowl would go around the table a couple of times, then criss-cross between those who could handle a third serving. By the time the plates were being cleared I'd just grab the bowl and go at it with a spoon. Leftovers were unheard of.

Potato Soup

Nowadays I'm usually cooking for 2-4 people, but I can't keep myself from recreating that mountain of mashed potatoes. Even when I force seconds and thirds on people I end up with a cold lump of exhausted mush that has given up it's ambition to be anything but dead weight in a garbage bag.

I got this recipe from an old friend who's family eating traditions I was never able to get a bead on (chipped beef on toast, anyone?). I've also never been able to make this dish as well as her, but practice makes perfect. This soup is the best thing that ever happened to leftover mashed potatoes, and the leftovers give back by being far and away the best thickener this soup could ask for.

Ingredients:

7 big 'all-purpose' potatoes
2 quarts (64 oz) chicken or veggie stock
1 quart milk, half-and-half or light cream
1 onion
2 celery stalks
1 clove garlic
1 tbl butter or margarine
Leftover mashed potatoes
Salt and pepper to taste

Possible toppings include:

Crumbled bacon
Sour cream
Diced scallions
Shredded cheese

Start by melting the butter in your large cooking pot over medium-high heat. Dice the onion and throw it in the melted butter first, stirring occasionally until it cooks down, about five minutes. Dice the garlic and throw it in, stirring for a minute. Chop up the celery stalks and toss them in after the garlic has heated up, stirring for a couple of minutes and making sure everything is coated in the butter.

When the vegetables are starting to smell great it's time to pour in the stock. If I don't have stock on hand I buy two of the 32 oz BOXED things at the store. The boxed ones don't have the varied flavor of a homemade stock, but they're a lot better tasting than the canned versions. Either way, pour the stock in the pot, turn the heat to medium and let it come to a boil.

While the stock heats you have time to cut up your potatoes. Wash them first and peel them if you so desire. I cut the potatoes 'thick-thin' style, taken from the book Serious Pig by John Thorne. I'll do a whole posting on 'thick-thin' style soon, but for now it goes like this:

Cut the potatoes in half lengthwise, so you have a flat side to lay them down. Cut them in half lengthwise again so you have quarters with two flat sides. Now, with a flat side down, cut the quarters into wedges, rotating your knife blade right and left between cuts. The wedge shape allows the thin edges to break down while the soup cooks and helps thicken the soup. But it also leaves a nice piece of potato for every chunk so you have something to chew on.

Once the stock is at a rolling boil throw your cut potatoes in and let them cook until they're done. When the potatoes are soft turn the heat to low and stir it for a few minutes to release some heat. You're adding milk as the next step, and you want it to heat slowly.

Whether you choose milk, half-and-half or cream is up to your taste. It's a question of how rich you take it, just like coffee. I'm not particular to one or the other, but I usually get half-and-half if I know I'm making this soup. Whichever you prefer, add it slowly until the soup is more 'whitish than stockish', as my recipe has it. I never end up adding the whole quart, but the amount varies depending on how many potatoes there are in the stock. You'll figure it out.

When the dairy has been added and stirred in, start working in the leftover potatoes. If you don't have leftover mashed potatoes you can use powdered mashed potatoes, but it's easy enough to get your hands on the real thing, so you might as well. Add them a bit at a time, mashing and stirring them in with a fork as you go.

When all the potatoes are in the pot you can start adding salt and pepper and tasting the batch until it's right. You want to heat it back to steaming while stirring to keep the mashed potatoes circulating. Don't let it boil or the milk has the potential of going sour on you. Serve it hot in a deep bowl.

You can add any number of things to it, but I usually just stick to a little bread for dipping.

This version is prettied up for the picture with a little bacon and scallion on top:

I put too much butter in the pot to begin with this time, too busy talking on the phone to pay attention to what I was doing. The result is a yellow oil slick floating on the edges of everybody's serving. It didn't look too sexy but didn't have much effect on the taste.

I served the leftover mashed potato soup with the leftover chicken-bacon nuggets we had the mashed potatoes with originally. Not exactly inventive but good anyway.

American-ized with bacon

My Mom gets a ton of monthly and quarterly cooking magazines that are filled with simple recipes using ingredients available in any supermarket in the country. The dishes that qualify as ethnic in these magazines are mostly comprised of a basic meat, a staple grain and a somewhat funky sauce. They never stray into regional oddities like couscous or plantains, but occasionally one of them was good enough to be repeated again and again.

Chicken-Bacon Nuggets

I don't know where this meal came from, but it was a hit on the first try. My Mom made it all the time when I was in my teens and it seemed like I had a bottomless appetite for them. Something about being a growing teenager with a constant case of the munchies that made a lot of room for little bits of chicken and bacon covered in a sweet ginger sauce. The sauce made it Asian-ish at best, but the bacon made sure we didn't have to leave American soil.

Ingredients:

2 whole chicken breasts
1/4 cup honey
2 tbs soy sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp garlic powder
2 scallions
8 oz package of bacon
Toothpicks

Remove skin, bones and fat from the chicken breasts. Cut them up into chunks, a couple good bites each.

In a medium bowl combine the honey, soy sauce, salt, ginger and garlic powder. I usually throw this mix in the microwave for long enough to loosen the honey up and then stir everything.

Put the chicken in the sauce and mix it up to cover each piece. Set this aside.

Cut the bacon into quarters. Put the pieces in a skillet over medium heat and cook until they're translucent. While the bacon cooks you can wash and cut the scallions into one-inch pieces, including the green tops that aren't damaged or wilted.

Pull the bacon off when it's partially cooked and drain on paper towels. It should still be nice and soft.

Now pull the chicken chunks out of the sauce, stack a piece of onion and a piece of bacon on each one and stab it with a toothpick. Repeat until there's no chicken left, setting them on a broiler pan as you go. When all the nuggets have been constructed dump the rest of the sauce over them and put them under the broiler.

Mom's version calls for five minutes under the broiler, but my broiler's apparently a piece of shit. I let them go for ten minutes, flip them over and put them back in for 5-10 more. Adjust the cooking time to your broiler, but remember to turn them over half-way through and make sure you test one from the edge of the pan to see that the chicken is cooked all the way through.

Seems like checking the chicken for pink spots would be the kind of obvious thing you wouldn't need to mention in a recipe, but it can't be drummed into a person too many times.

Last time I made chicken-bacon nuggets I served them with mashed potatoes and peas:

The bacon I get is from a butcher shop so it's cut thicker than any bacon I've ever seen. Mom wraps a half-slice of bacon around each piece of chicken, but I get the same amount with a quarter-slice. Adjust as you see fit.

It's also not a bad idea to mix up a small batch of the sauce to serve on the side. You can reserve some of the sauce you mixed up earlier, but separate it before you put any raw chicken in. Don't dip cooked chicken in the marinating sauce or you'll...die, I don't know, but something bad. No such thing as chicken sushi.

You have to eat the rest of your life, might as well know how

Robert Rodriguez is badass. He started his career with a $7,000 movie that made it to theaters and HBO, helping to usher in the 90's independent film era. He built his own studio in Austin, Tx and has gone on to make a handful of completely original films outside of the studio system. One of my favorites is Once Upon A Time In Mexico, starring Johnny Depp as a CIA agent who travels across Mexico hunting gangsters and eating puerco pibil. One of the special features on the DVD is a short piece showing Rodriguez making the dish and I knew I had to try it.

Puerco Pibil

My grandpa always used to tell people they didn't know how to eat. There were echoes of that in the comment I stole from the DVD for the title of this posting. I don't know whether or not Art would have liked puerco pibil, but I do. And if you don't, that proves one thing: you don't know how to eat.

Ingredients:

5 lbs pork butt
5 tbs annatto
2 tsp cumin seeds
8 allspice, whole
6 cloves, whole
1 tbs black pepper, whole
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup white vinegar
2 habanero peppers
2 tbs salt
8 cloves garlic
5 lemons
Tequila
Banana leaves (if you can find them)

The list seems a little intimidating at first, but it's not a big deal. You're really just mixing it all up in a bag, not too complicated.

Start by cutting the pork into chunks about 2 inches square. Throw the pork in a 1 gallon bag or large bowl with a lid.

Now you're ready for the spices. Annatto is made from the pulp that surrounds seeds in the fruit of the achiote tree. By the time it makes it's way to a grocery store shelf from South America it's been dried into a tiny, rock hard little nugget of flavor. Start off by throwing the annatto, cumin, allspice, cloves and black pepper into either a coffee grinder or a blender. Grind it all until it's powder. I don't have a coffee grinder, but the blender set to liquefy works fine, and you're going to need it for the next step anyway.

Chop the tops off of your habaneros and take out the seeds and veins. You can leave them in if you want, all depends on how hot you like it. I usually get rid of the big clump in the middle and leave everything else, including whatever stray seeds manage to stick to the inside. The dish cooks slow, so it has time to absorb the bite.

Throw the peppers, orange juice and vinegar into the blender with the spice powder. Apparently the earliest known form of this dish is made in the Yucatan using bitter oranges, but good luck finding them in America. The OJ and vinegar performs the same task.

Toss in the salt and garlic and blend until it's an even consistency. Squeeze in the juice from the lemons and pour in a splash of tequila. I use at least 3 shots of tequila, quite a splash, but 1 just never seems like enough.

Grab your bag o' pork and pour the mix over it. Mix it up and toss it in the fridge to marinate for at least an hour. I've left it in overnight with no problem, so adjust to your dinner schedule.

When you're ready to cook, heat the oven to 325. If you can find banana leaves, line a baking pan with them. I can't ever find them in a convenient location, so I've never used them. His dish in the video is a little more green than mine has ever turned out, which I figure has to be the leaves. I don't know if they effect the taste or not but they do look cool if you can dig them up.

Pour the meat into the pan and cover it with two layers of foil. Wrap the foil tight around the pan so it will trap the steam from the meat and the leaves, helping cook the batch. Toss the pan into the oven and walk away for four hours.

Well, 3 and a half, to be exact. You should make some rice to serve it with. I made an attempt at homemade corn tortillas the last time I made pibil, but they were a complete failure. I think I know what I did wrong, they should work out next time.

Also, cut some limes into slices to serve with the rest of your tequila. Tequila is to pibil what wine is to good Italian. More than a compliment, somehow it makes the meal.

Okay, when your rice is done, it's been about four hours and you can take the pibil out of the oven. Take off the foil and serve the meat on a bed of rice with corn tortillas, fresh jalapenos slices and the liquor, salt and lime.

Porkalicious!

Post-Script: Trying my first restaurant pibil

The one cuisine New York has never been known for is Mexican. Growing up in Kansas we ate a lot of Mexican and Mexican-inspired meals, from tacos at roadside stands to local fast food joints to Mom's version of the steaming plate fajitas. As New York got more Mexican people over the last 15 years, we also started to get more Mexican restaurants. Even in the six years I've been here I can name a bunch of places that have popped up in the 40's and 50's on the West side.

Naturally, this trend suits me just fine. I stopped at a restaurant I'd never been to recently, a place called Taco Taco with a menu that was much more dignified than it's name. At the bottom of the specialties of the house list was Cochinita Pibil, the original title for the dish. Cochinita means 'little pig', so the name was changed when people started buying butt at the market instead of wrapping the whole bugger in banana leaves and dropping him in a hot hole.

The dish was served on a piece of banana leaf but didn't have the distinctive color of Rodriguez's pibil. I suspect they cook it in a pan like I do, saving the leaf to look cute on the plate. The pork was as tender and juicy as any competently roasted meat and the pickled onions were a nice cold side to go with it.

But pibil is all about the spice and tequila mixture, and this one wasn't nearly as distinctive and bright as the recipe above. It wasn't that anything was missing or different, it just wasn't as good. There was definitely less habanero and it's likely that they aren't grinding their own spices every morning, this being a business.

Don't get me wrong, I ate well and left happy. But it was a reminder of why shortcuts rarely turn out 'just as good'.

Chocolate

I made cupcakes for a friend's half-birthday this weekend - he has one of those summer birthdays that stink all the way through school because none of your friend are around. Good thing this is our last year. He requested chocolate-chocolate chip, which turned out to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. I don't love chocolate, and I've never made chocolate frosting. I started out by making 25 star-shaped cupcakes (using the tiny disposable foil pans they sell at the grocery store now). I like box mix cake, so I almost always just use a box mix for the cake and then make my own frosting. I did add huge chocolate chips to the batter before baking.

While the cupcakes cooled, I set to work on the frosting. I sorted through the recipes for chocolate frosting on AllRecipes.com and settled on one with great reviews and simple ingredients - I don't like shortening or corn syrup or things like that in my frosting. I was a little suspicious of this recipe after I realized how very small two ounces of chocolate really is - especially compared to the three cups of powdered sugar the recipe required. Things seemed awry from the beginning - there wasn't nearly enough softened butter to absorb all of that powdered sugar, and adding the milk and measly two ounces of chocolate just turned it into a very pale buttercream - sort of tan-colored - with no chocolate flavor whatsoever. I added another four ounces of chocolate, but you still couldn't taste it. At that point I gave up, threw that batch out, and turned to a box of Hershey's cocoa I had on hand. The chocolate frosting recipe on the box worked out much better, although next time I think I'll use less cocoa. Here it is:

Melt 1 stick of butter. Stir in 2/3 cup of cocoa (I'll probably start with a 1/2 cup next time).

Add 2 cups of powdered sugar and 1/3 cup of milk. Beat until well mixed.

Alternate adding more powdered sugar and more milk until the frosting is the consistency you want.

The cocoa was very strong and I ended up adding quite a bit more powdered sugar, and some vanilla, to cut the taste. Overall, I'm happy with my first attempt at chocolate frosting. The texture is nice and the chocolate flavor is very good, at least according to this non-chocolate expert. I should really work on my lettering, though :D