Root Vegetable Au Gratin

In my family, Potato Au Gratin is a holiday tradition. I peel the potatoes and my mom throws together this cheesy, creamy, delicious side. Everyone loves it so much, that she usually makes two, one for dinner and one for leftovers.

In the last few weeks, I'd seen a couple of recipes for Root Vegetable Au Gratin and thought, I wonder how my mom's recipe would fair with turnips and rutabagas instead of potatoes. Let me tell you, nothing compares to the original, but this is a close second. If you try this at home, make sure you layer a few sweet potatoes near the top. With the cheese and the bread crumbs, they are simply heaven. This side dish also doubles as a super great vegetarian meal.

Root Vegetable Au Gratin (inspired by Joy of Cooking Creamed Potato Casserole)

Serves 4-6

• 1 large potato
• 1 large sweet potato
• 1 large carrot
• 1 large parsnip
• 1 medium turnip
• 1 medium rutabaga
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 4 1/2 Tablespoons butter
• 4 1/2 Tablespoons flour
• 1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 Tablespoons panko bread crumbs

Directions

Peel vegetables and trim the ends off of the carrot and parsnip. 

Place vegetables in the boiling water and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. Remove vegetables from heat and drain. Place vegetables in the fridge for 5 minutes to cool. 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. While the vegetables are cooling, melt butter in a small pot over low heat. Add flour and stir until thick and creamy. Add milk and continue stirring until the roux starts to thicken.

Remove vegetables from fridge and slice into small pieces. Layer half of the vegetables alternatively in a 1 1/2 quart baking dish. Pour half of the sauce over the vegetables and top with 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese. Repeat layering until dish is full. Top with bread crumbs.

Cover and place in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove cover and bake for another 20 minutes or until vegetables are fork tender and cheese is bubbly and starting to brown.

Remove from oven, let cool for 5 minutes and serve!

an exciting disaster

Oh readers, let me tell you a tale of two thirds fail. My second Boston Organics delivery was chock full of vegetables I'd never really cooked with before, and I was ready for the challenge. But some challenges remind you that life is full of setbacks, and the important thing is to keep on going.

So everything started okay. I had some potatoes from a shopping trip that needed to get used up, so I threw them on the boil. I mean the basics of mashed potatoes are pretty easy, right? Boil the potatoes until they're soft, with or without skin, then mash into a bowl with milk/cream, cheese maybe and salt & pepper.

From the Boston Organics order, I had a bunch of spinach, which I chopped and simmered in olive oil with an orange pepper and some onions. Then I sort of saw the eggplant of the corner of my eye and decided to throw that in. I skinned it, sort of squared it (cut the sides off some it was moderately rectangular), and then cubed it. I had done this for a nut loaf before, and liked the way it looked. But that wasn't where the fail came in -- because I hate dry/rubbery eggplant, I decided I should add some veggie stock to make it juicy. It did that, I guess. But mostly, it just made it taste like soup. The most boring soup you've ever had.

You may have noticed that I shied away from explaining further about the mashed potato, well, no, that was not the 1/3 win. I also had a beet handy. I've posted my beet salad before -- oh wait! i haven't! i must do that! -- but I wasn't ready for anything quite so sweet. So, yeah, I boiled up a beet and threw it in the mash, which made it this ludicrous pink. It didn't mash as well as the potato, probably need another twenty minutes longer if it would ever get that way. And THEN I ADDED HAZELNUTS. Le sigh. Awful idea. Great with potato salad, but there is nothing great about hard nuts in your mashed potato, because even though you know what's in there, every time you bite down on the nut you just get this idea that the potatoes didn't cook enough. Awful.

However, the meal was saved by the asparagus. It was beautiful, a great mix between thin and thick, and I copied a recipe Nicole told me over drinks -- brush them with olive oil, salt & pepper, then broil in the oven for 15 mins. I also took the liberty of adding some secret seasoning. I'm not gonna lie, they were AMAZING. Anyone baking asparagus instead of broiling or grilling is a fool. There, I said it.

Anyway, I look forward to righting the wrongs I inflicted on these innocent vegetables in the future. Thanks for listening.

The Butter Apologist

Hallo friends. Jade Sylvan here. I'm taking a break from my usual bloggy endeavors at The Broken Watch and The Boston Healing Blog to bring you the tale of an epic meal.

I love my family to the point of obsession. However, like many ambitious clans these days, we are spread out all over the country, and don't get to see each other too often.

This spring, we all got together for a joint birthday party for my dad, my brother, and my sister-in-law.

My sis-in-law Val and I decided to show off our gender-normative proclivities by cooking a flashy dinner for everyone.

The menu:

• salmon with butter shallot sauce
• buttered poppy seed smashed potatoes and parsnips
• swiss chard, garlic, and shallot sauteed in butter (are we sensing a theme here?)
• tossed salad of butter lettuce (just to keep things in the family), spinach, mung bean sprouts, slivered almonds, olives, and artichoke hearts with balsamic vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil

Tangentially, I recently had a debate with some of my friends about which was more essential, butter or cheese. I think I was the only one who said butter, and the cheese-supporters were disturbingly truculent while defending their dairy product of choice.

It's not that I have anything against cheese. I just feel that it's overused in American cuisine, oftentimes to mask the fact that a dish doesn't actually taste very good. Butter, on the other hand, enhances flavor with the smooth subtlety of a jazz accompanist. Allow me to offer this meal as my argument.

First of all, before we could do anything, we obviously needed cute aprons...

... and champagne.

That's Dad's job. Isn't he cute?

Aprons and champ donned, we were ready to do some cooking.

We had all the raw ingredients.

Salmon:

Potatoes and parsnips:

A bunch of veggies and a crap load of butter. [not pictured]

I'm not so great at giving recipes or cooking instructions, since my general cooking motto is "Throw a bunch of stuff together until it tastes awesome." Fortunately, my brother John, optical-physicist-cum-photographer, was there to take photos. Since a picture's worth a thousand words, I hope you can get the general gist of things by browsing through the ensuing FOOD PORN.

Just look at them glisten.

The potatoes are easy. You boil a bunch of potatoes (I used my two favorite, red and yukon gold) with a bunch of parsnips (I peel the parsnips, but not the potatoes), then when they're soft you SMASH them with a crap load of butter, cream, salt, pepper and poppy seeds.

My grandma said they were the best potatoes she's ever had in her life. She's 83. Just sayin, she's had a lot of potatoes.

Jade SMASH!

This look of utter glee only graces my visage when I'm smashing something.

Then I chopped the garlic for the chard. I do this thing where I (you guessed it) SMASH the garlic clove before I peel it, which makes the whole peel come right off.

Jade SMASH!

While I was doing that, Val was starting on the butter shallot sauce, which is exactly what it sounds like.

And just look at the chard.

Totally helps that my mom's cookware is gorgeous.

Oh, and somewhere in there salmon was made...

... and a salad was made...

... with Butter looking nobly on.

There was nothing left to do but dish it up...

... and serve.

No cheese necessary.

1976 Leek Soup

My grandmother used to make this amazing potato leek soup. No one could perfect it quite like she could, so imaging my surprise when as an adult I learned that its a recipe cribbed from a thirty year old issue of Bon Appetit (Oct. 1976 to be exact). That explains all the butter and heavy cream in it. I once tried to make it a little healthier, using vegetable broth and 1% milk, and it just didn't work. This is a soup that needs to have no conscience.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cups minced leeks (include green stems)
• 1/2 cup minced onion
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 4 tbsp butter
• 1 qt "rich" chicken broth
• 1 1/2 cups diced potatoes
• 1 cup heavy cream (if you're feeling really guilty, you could get by with whole milk. A hint at the end of the recipe suggests substituting a large can of evaporated milk, so that could work too)
• salt and white pepper

Saute leeks, onions, and garlic in butter until transparent. Add chicken broth and potatoes and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer until potatoes are tender (about 15 minutes).

Puree in blender or food processor. (An immersion blender would be super helpful here, as this fills up my entire blender and inevitably makes a mess. The recipe also suggests using a "food mill", which apparently is something that existed in the 70s.) Add cream and salt & pepper to taste. If it's too thick, add more broth or cream (because, of course, you have a lot lying around in your fridge.)

Garnish with chopped green onion and serve with toast (rye is good with this). Serve during a snowstorm, or anytime you need some excellent comfort food.

Stuffed Chicken Hotpot

This is so simple and quick on a cold night after work!

Ingredients:

• Chicken Breasts
• Tomatoes
• Mozzerella
  
• Baby Spinach
• Potatoes
• Salt, Pepper and Rosemary
• Olive Oil

1. Peel some potatoes and chop them in half.
2. Cut the Chicken breasts in half, and stuff with sliced mozzerella, slices of tomato and pieces of spinach.
3. Coat an oven dish in soe olive oil, and place the stuffed chicken breasts in a row. Place the potatoes in the dish around the chicken.
4. Pour a little more oil over the potatoes and season the dish with salt, pepper and rosemary.
5. Bake in the oven at 180 degrees for 45 mins.

Celeriac-Apple-Potato Puree

Ever since cookbooks became bedside reading material for me, I've been reading about how hand blenders and electric beaters and food processors are anathema to mashed potatoes. Evidently, by whizzing them up with such a device, the glucose or something is released, and it results in heavy, sticky, "gluey" potatoes. At my first restaurant job, which was when I first came across this law of potatoes (because I swear, every cookbook published after 1999 makes reference to it; if you don't own a food mill, there is something wrong with you), I asked the sous chef what a potato ricer [which is basically the same thing as a food mill but handheld] was; the next day he brought me one. I've never been one to break rules, so the potato ricer has since been the device of choice when I mash any vegetable at my own home, but I've always wondered what said sticky potatoes taste like.

Well, I have tried this recipe two ways now, one with the food processor and one with the food mill, and finally, I know what these cookbook authors are talking about. The food processor potatoes were sticky and viscous, and the food mill ones had a lighter mouthfeel and were more delicate and precious in a way that Alice Waters might approve of. Though I will serve the food mill ones to people I want to impress, I secretly liked the gluey stuff. That version was more like dessert--apple-potato-celeriac dulce de leche or something.

(Apologies for the quarter-chicken sitting next to the mash.)

Celeriac-Apple-Potato puree

4 T butter, separated
1 head of celeriac (celery root), 1/2-inch dice (peeled!)
1 granny smith apple, 1/2 inch dice (peeled!)
2 medium Yukon gold potatoes, 1/2-inch dice (peeled!)
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1/2 cup water
1/4 c heavy cream
1/4 c milk
squeeze of lemon

In medium skillet melt 2 tablespoons of the butter, and then add the celeriac, apples, potatoes, salt and pepper. Cook for 5 minutes or so, until it just begins to soften. Add the water (you could also use wine, or cider), cover, and cook for 25-40 minutes, stirring often, until everything is very soft. Add more liquid if it begins to burn. Transfer the mixture to a food processor or put it through a food mill and puree. Heat the cream, milk, and rest of the butter in a small saucepan. Return the potato-apple mixture to the original pan. When the cream/milk mixture is hot, stir it into the puree. Add lemon, taste for seasoning, serve hot.