potatoes

New potatoes with butter and soy sauce (Shinjaga shouyu bataa)

maki — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:34:37 +0200

We live in a semi-rural area (well, most areas outside of the cities are semi-rural in Switzerland) and one of the things grown here locally are potatoes. While most farmers like to grow those potatoes until they are quite huge, around this time we can get tiny new potatoes. I love new potatoes - they have a fresh, very slightly minarally flavor to them which is quite different from mature potatoes.

If you’re not familiar with new potatoes, try to get organically grown ones. This way you can eat them skin and all - peeling those really tiny potatoes can be a bit of a pain. The skins of fresh new potatoes should pale and very thin.

The easiest thing to do to new potatoes is to simply boil them and eat them with salt, pepper and a little butter or crème fraîche. This Japanese-flavor recipe is almost as easy though. Soy sauce and butter go marvelously well together, and enhance the new potatoes in a very satisfying way. In Japan the new potatoes would be deep-fried to get them crispy, but I’ve oven-baked them instead to cut down somewhat on the fat. (New potatoes in Japanese are called shinjaga （新じゃが）).

Recipe: New potatoes with butter and soy sauce (Shinjaga shouyu bataa)

About 500g / 1 lb tiny organic new potatoes, washed and unpeeled
Salt
2 Tbs. butter (You can use olive oil instead. But, you know, sometimes it just has to be butter.)
1 Tbs. soy sauce
Sansho （山椒）or black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 400°F.

Put the potatoes in a pan with water to cover; add salt (the water should taste almost as salty as sea water). Bring to a boil and cook for about 5 minutes. (Do this while the oven is heating up.)

Drain the potatoes. Melt the butter in the same pan and add the soy sauce. Mix the potatoes and butter-soy sauce well, and put onto a baking sheet.

Roast for 25 to 30 minutes unti the potatoes are browned and cooked through. Serve warm or at room temperature sprinkled with a little sansho/sanshou pepper (available at Japanese grocery stores) or black pepper.

A vegan version of nikujaga (Japanese meat and potatoes), plus how to remake Japanese recipes to make them vegan

maki — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:06:17 +0200

Nikujaga, stewed potatoes with meat, is a staple of Japanese home cooking. It’s filling and comforting, and appears quite frequently for dinner at our house. Recently though I’ve been making this vegan version more frequently, which is just as tasty as the meaty version. Thick fried tofu (atsuage) is the protein replacement, but it’s not just there for it’s nutritional benefits - I love the texture in a lot of dishes.

The recipe, plus some ideas on how to reform Japanese non-vegan recipes to make them vegan, after the jump.

Recipe: Potatoes stewed with fried tofu and green beans

Makes 4 servings as part of a Japanese meal

4 medium firm boiling type potatoes (not baking potatoes)
1 cup frozen green beans, or the equivalent amount of fresh green beans
1/2 small onion
1 to 2 squares of thick fried tofu (atsuage)
2 Tbs. sake
3 Tbs. soy sauce
2 Tbs. dark (grade B) maple syrup
1 Tbs. sesame oil

Peel and cut up the potatoes into small pieces. If using fresh green beans, cut off the tops and cut into pieces. Slice the onion.

Cover the fried tofu in boiling water, and drain. This gets rid of much of the surface oil.

Heat up a heavy-bottomed pan with the sesame oil. Add the onions and cook until translucent. Add the potato and tofu pieces, and sauté intil the oil coats the pieces well. Add the green beans and toss around some more.

Add just enough water to cover. Add the sake, soy sauce and maple syrup. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to about medium-low, put on a lid and let simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 10-15 minutes. To concentrate the flavors even more, take the lid off and simmer for an additional 10-15 minutes until the liquid is almost evaporated - this step is optional.

Serve hot or cold. The flavors mellow if you let it rest, which makes it very good for bento.

Notes

If you want bright green green beans, just add them in the last few minutes of cooking. I just add it with everything else because they taste better that way. (Sort of like the way green beans are cooked until they are almost falling apart in the South.)

This is even better if you use new potatoes.

Making non-vegan Japanese recipes vegan

If you compare this recipe to the classic nikujaga, the first thing you may notice is that there’s no meat. There is also no dashi stock used. Traditional dashi stock, which forms the basis of the majority of savory Japanese cooking, is not vegan, since one of the key ingredients is dried bonito (fish) flakes or niboshi (dried little sardines). Using a vegan dashi which uses just kombu seaweed and/or dried shiitake is an option. But it’s also possible in some cases to omit the dashi entirely, as in this recipe.

When you omit meat and dashi (or any soup stock), what you lose is a lot of umami. To make up for this, add ingredients that are inherently rich in umami or other flavoring ingredients. In the recipe above for example, the onion, sake, sesame oil, soy sauce and maple syrup add plenty of flavor to the dish - and without dashi the flavor of the potatoes comes through better too.

And about that maple syrup: Since Japanese recipes often call for sugar, using a flavorful sweetener instead of plain white sugar is a way to add some extra oomph. Raw cane sugar, brown sugar, palm sugar, maple syrup and honey are some options. Dark maple syrup goes very well with Japanese flavors.

(Incidentally, if you’re a North American visiting friends elsewhere, maple syrup makes a great gift because it’s really expensive over the pond!)

2008 will be the International Year of the Potato

maki — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:56:15 +0200

Next year, the United Nations wants us to celebrate the humble potato for an entire year. I’m not certain how the UN makes its decisions about such things (why not the Year of the Tomato or the Year of the Turnip?), but I have no objections against the humble potato, one of my favorite foods. Unless you are an avowed anti-carb person, how could you not love the potato? As a matter of fact, I do wonder if someone at the UN came up with the Potato Year idea to combat the anti-potato sentiments in certain developed and weight-obsessed countries.

Potatoes are really the ultimate comfort food. For me they rank right up there with a bar of milk chocolate in the I-may-regret-it-later but boy-I-need-it category. The best bowl of comfort in the world is a creamy mound of mashed potatoes, which I’ve written about before. (I do however use a ricer now instead of a masher, for a lighter texture.) If I want a bit of texture or variation to the mash, I make it into a champ (add chopped up green onions that have been poached a bit in hot milk) or do something low-rent and add canned sweet corn and crisply fried bacon bits. Ahh, potatoes and bacon. What could be better.

Here is the official site for the International Year of the Potato, which has lots of educational facts, but inexplicably lacks any recipes. I want to know how they eat potatoes all over world, especially in the Andes where the spud originated! Let’s hope they’ll add some recipes when the Year officially kicks off.

Some other potato recipes on Just Hungry:

Besides the mashed, I wrote about Rösti and Oven-fried potatoes.
Pommes Anna - a ruinously rich, time consuming and delicious dish. Plus a variation with truffles.
Nikujaga, stewed potatoes and meat - real Japanese home cooking!
Japanese potato salad is the best potato salad.
Shepherd’s pie and a not very classic (but tasty) fish pie, both topped with mashed potatoes.
Pae de queijo the very easy way, made with potato.

Very easy Pao de Queijo, Brazilian cheese bread via Japan

maki — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 12:52:03 +0100

This may not be well known outside of the two respective countries, but there are pretty strong historical and cultural ties between Japan and Brazil. There was a wave of emigration from Japan to Brazil in the early part of the 20th century and later on around the ’50s and ’60s. And in the last 30 years, many Brazilians of Japanese descent (people of Japanese descent born in another country are called nikkei-jin) have in turn emigrated to Japan to fill labor shortages. Perhaps because of this, a few years ago one of the staples of the Brazilian diet, pao de queijo, little cheese breads, became very popular. While their popularity may have descended a bit from their peaks (Japan tends to be periodically swept up by big food or fashion trends, which after a time get dropped without warning when people move onto the next thing, but that’s another story), they are still made by bakers throughout Japan.

I think that pao de queijo appeals so much to the Japanese palate because they are small, round and cute, and have a distinctive gooey-sticky-glutinous kind of texture inside. This texture is called mochi mochi, after mochi, the very gooey-glutinous rice cakes.

Traditionally, pao de queijo are made with a sour casava flour (here’s a good recipe, but that’s not that easy to find here. Looking around on some Japanese food sites, many recipes called for a readymade mix (!) or using rice flour…which isn’t that easy to get here either. Then, I found a recipe (not online…) that uses a regular mashed potato. If a potato is mashed up while it’s still hot, it does indeed get rather gooey, as anyone who’s tried to mash them in a food processor can attest to. Sticky, gooey mashed potatoes may not be ideal for straight up eating but here it serves its purpose perfectly.

The one thing I was missing though was the slightly sour taste in a traditional pao de queijo. I added some sourness by using some well drained feta cheese. The rest of the cheese should be a pretty sharp one like Parmesano or Asiago, aged Cheddar or Gruyère.

So, there’s plenty of faking going on in this recipe, but they are dead easy to make with ingredients that are widely available. So, if you are Brazilian please don’t beat me up. :) They’re still very good, I promise. And so cute. No one can have just one. They also happen to be gluten free (if you use potato starch; cornstarch may have a small amount of gluten) and vegetarian (no eggs) too.

Very easy Pao de queijo

200g / 7 oz potato, cut into small chunks (about 2 medium-small potatoes, but it’s best to weigh them after peeling)
90g / about 3 1/4 oz cornstarch or potato starch
100g / about 3 1/2 oz grated cheese - half feta and half a sharp cheese like cheddar, parmesan or gruyere (you can also try all feta, which would make them more sour)
Salt for cooking the potatoes

Suggested equipment: food processor

Preheat the oven to 175°C / 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Boil the potato chunks in salted water, until they are almost falling apart. Drain well, return to the pan and shake around until the potatoes have dried out.

Put the hot cooked potato chunks in the bowl of a food processor, and process until it’s pasty and gooey. Add the cornstarch or potato starch and the cheese, and pulse until all mixed. Take the dough out of the food processor and knead a little bit. It should be a non-sticky and very pliable dough - sort of like Play-Doh. If it seems too loose add a bit more corn/potato starch. (Note: the amount of cornstarch or potato starch required seems to differ for some people. I suspect this has to do with how well you drain and dry off the potatoes, and what kind of potatoes you are using. I use a firm boiling type of potato, such as Charlotte, Nicola or Bintje. In the U.S. Yukon Gold is a good kind to use here. Baking potatoes may be a bit too floury to achieve the slightly gummy texture you want from the mashed up potato.)

If you don’t have a food processor, mash up the hot potato chunks with a masher, then mix in the other ingredients while it’s still hot, being careful not to burn your fingers. Knead well. It’s almost as quick to mix by hand as by food processor.

Divide into 12 to 16 equal pieces, and form into balls. Bake for 25-30 minutes until lightly browned on the outside. (They won’t really puff up much since they have no leavening.) Best eaten while still warm.

You can vary this by adding sesame seeds, sprinkling grated cheese on the top (brush the tops with egg white or milk to make it stick), and so on.

Troubleshooting notes

A few people have had trouble with the consistency of the dough. I’ve added some notes about the type of potato to use, and the necessity of drying the potatoes off well. If the amount of cornstarch/potato starch indicated in the recipe is not enough, add a little more by spoonfuls until the dough ceases to be sticky.

Pao de queijo, the very easy way

maki — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 12:10:49 +0100

A week of miso soup, day 2: Potato and wakame seaweed

maki — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:38:09 +0200

Potato and wakame seaweed is a classic combination, but one that you rarely if ever see on a restaurant menu. I think the reason for this is that restaurants generally cook a huge pot of miso soup in advance, and if you keep simmering potato, it will just fall apart. In any case potato-wakame is one of my favorite miso soups, and depending on the amount of potato you put in, it can be quite filling. I really like it for breakfast, sometimes just on its own.

Wakame is a very versatile seaweed that can be used in salads or soups.You'll see it often as a garnish for sashimi. It's sold in two forms - preserved in salt, or dehydrated. For occasional use, I would recommend dehydrated wakame (often labeled fueru wakame), which is a lot easier to use than the salted kind. Just be careful not to use too much - a little really goes a long way.

Note: if you happen to have some wakame garnish from a takeout sashimi, you can use that for the soup provided that it hasn't been sitting next to raw fish for an extended period. A lot of people find cooked wakame easier to eat than wakame in salads and garnishes. So, if you find yourself always throwing away the garnish, just set it aside as soon as you get your sashimi and put it in the fridge to make a soup. Or - make a soup to accompany your meal!

Potato and wakame seasweed miso soup (jagaimo to wakame no misoshiru

4 cups of dashi stock
2 medium potatoes
1 Tbs. dehydrated wakame
1/4 to 1/3 cup white miso

Prepare the dashi stock following the instructions for Day 1.

Peel the potatoes and cut into small pieces. Put in the dashi stock, and simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 10 to 15 minutes depending on how big your pieces are.

When the potatoes are done, add the 1 tablespoon of dried wakame and stir. It will expand very quickly. Simmer for an additional 3-5 minutes.

Add the miso to the soup. Serve immediately.

Japanese Potato Salad

maki — Sun, 28 May 2006 15:14:00 +0200

Cool potato salad is one of the great summer dishes, though I can eat it on any day of the year. Every culture that eats potatoes probably has its own unique recipe for potato salad. While potatoes are not really part of traditional Japanese cuisine, it's now a fixture in everyday cooking. When I was in junior high in the suburbs of Tokyo, our school's sandwich concession even had something called a 'vegetable sandwich', which was actually a mound of potato salad between two slices of white bread. Potato salad is often tucked into a corner of an obento box (lunch box), and it's also a popular beer or sake snack. My ideal Japanese-theme picnic would include onigiri (rice balls), some chicken karaage, and potato salad for sure.

Japanese potato salad has a mild, creamy flavor, with no acidic undertone; unlike American or German style potato salads, no vinegar is used. It's seasoned only with salt and a little pepper, and lots and lots of mayonnaise, and is just a bit sweet from the other vegetables mixed in - boiled carrots, thinly sliced cucumber, and onion. Some people even add a little sugar. Chopped boiled egg adds to the richness. It's really designed to go well with rice (as are most Japanese savory dishes).

The ideal mayo to use is a Japanese one of course; Kewpie Mayonnaise is classic, but there are other (and some say, better) brands too. Look for them at your local Japanese or Asian grocery store. If you make your own, use a flavor-neutral vegetable oil such as canola or safflower, not extra virgin olive oil. ("Extra Light" olive oil is fine.) Lacking access to Japanese mayonnaise or the time to make your own though, any commercial mayo will do as long as it's not too heavy on the vinegar flavor. Salad cream should not be used however.

Japanese Potato Salad

3 medium boiling (firm) potatoes, well scrubbed
1 small carrot
About 10 cm / 4 inches of a seedless cucumber
1 small onion
1 egg
Salt and pepper
3/4 to 1 cup of mayonnaise, Japanese or homemade preferred (see notes above)

Boil the potatoes in their skins until tender (you can poke a skewer through one without any resistance). Boil the carrot, unpeeled, in the same pot. Boil the egg until hard boiled at the same time.

In the meantime, slice the cucumber and the onion very thinly. Sprinkle both with a little salt, and let sit for a while (10 minutes or more) until the vegetables exude their juices. Squeeze firmly to get rid of the juices.

When the potatoes and carrot are done, drain peel them while still hot (holding each in a kitchen towel to peel them helps). Cut the potatoes into small pieces, and slice the carrot. Toss with a little salt and pepper and leave to cool.

Peel the hard boiled egg and chop up finely.

When the potatoes and carrot mixture has cooled to room temperature, mix in the cucumber, onion and egg. Mix in the mayonnaise. Cover with plastic wrap and cool in the refrigerator until serving time (ideally at least one hour).

If you are bringing this to a picnic be sure to pack it in a cooler - it will keep better, and taste better chilled than at room temperature. If you are packing it in an obento box, make sure the rice and other ingredients have cooled before tucking in the salad, or carry the salad in a separate container.

[Update:] A not-traditional but still tasty vegan version of this potato salad

MasterChef challenge, day 12: Maple glazed duck breast with sweet potato, potato and parsnip oven fries

maki — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 15:56:17 +0100

Well it's day 12, the last day of the third week of the preliminary rounds. The ingredients were:

Guinea fowl
Sweet potatoes
Parsnips
Gorgonzola cheese
Bacon
Penne pasta

A word about the selection of the ingredients on the show itself. Sometimes they specify 'bacon', sometimes 'pancetta', and then they have specified 'gammon' once. Is there a huge difference between those? I think that 'gammon' is a big piece of bacon that is usually eaten like a pork chop. Pancetta is Italian bacon. Bacon is... bacon. Sliced. Um so... when you cook them is there a huge difference? I don't know. As far as I can see, there is smoked bacon, and non-smoked bacon; heavily cured bacon, and lightly cured bacon. It's hard to say what just 'bacon' might be. I'm a bit hazy on my 'pancetta' too, except that it's more expensive than plain old 'bacon' (or around here, 'Speck'.)

But anyway, back to the list for this day. Guinea fowl is something we can't get here, or at least certainly not in February, so I substituted duck breast. And what goes with a nice duck breast? Why, fries/chips/frites of course. (In the U.S. they are called fries, in the U.K. chips, and here-ish they are frites.) This is a mix of sweet potatoes, parsnips, and regular white potatoes. The sweetness of the sweet potatoes and parsnips goes very well with the duck.

This is my favorite way to make fries - not deep fried, but in the oven. With butter, or olive oil. The types of oil that have a high enough flash point to be used as frying oil, such as peanut or safflower oil, don't really add any flavor, but butter and olive oil certainly do.

The only thing to be aware of is that regular white potatoes take a bit longer to cook than sweet potatoes or parsnips, so they are parboiled. This also roughens up the surface of the potato a bit, making it more crunchy.

The duck breast really cooks fast, so you will want to start it off about 15 minutes before the end of your target cooking time. It will take about 5 minutes on the skin side, 3-4 minutes on the other side, then the rest of the time is for 'resting' - leaving the succulent breast lying there to relax and re-absorb its juices before slicing. Maple syrup is sweet but has other flavors in it so that it's not just sugary taste hitting you. It makes a really great glaze.

I have used a grill pan for this - this is the kind of pan with ridges on the bottom. It's really terrific for grilling, since barely anything sticks to it. If you don't have one, you can use a nonstick frying pan.

Serve with a green salad.

Unused ingredients: cheese, bacon, penne.

The verdict on this meal from an anonymous diner: "Plate-licking good!"

The amounts here will make two servings.

The order to make this meal is as follows:

Switch the oven on right away to heat it up.
Start the water boiling.
Peel your vegetables, and slice.
Toss the potato in to the boiling water and cook for about 5 minutes.
Melt the butter.
Toss the vegetables in the butter. Spread on the baking sheet and season with salt and pepper. Set your oven timer to 25 minutes.
Prepare the duck, while heating up your grill pan.
Grill the duck.
Rest the duck, while you take out the oven fries.
Slice the duck, assemble the plate.

Mixed oven fries/chips/frites

1 medium boiling type potato
1 smallish sweet potato
1 small or 1/2 large parsnip
2-3 Tbs. butter
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 400°F.

Start a pot of water boiling, with a little salt.

Peel and slice the vegetables into french-fry/chip/frites size, keeping each kind separate. Put the white potato slices into the boiling water, and cook for about 5 minutes.

In the meantime, melt the butter in a pan. Line a baking sheet with a non-stick silicon pad.

Drain the potatoes. Add them and the rest of the slices into the butter pan, toss well and season with salt and pepper. (You can add a little nutmeg here if you like.)

Spread evenly on the baking sheet, and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, turning them about midway through.

Serve hot!

Maple-glazed duck breast

One 300g / 10ounce boned duck breast piece, skin on
Maple syrup
Salt and pepper

Special equipment needed: grill pan

Dry the duck breast with several paper towels if necessary. Score the skin in a crisscross pattern with a very sharp knife. This is to release more fat from the skin, which also makes it crispier.

Heat up the grill pan until it's very hot.

Place the duck, skin side down, on the grill pan. Salt and pepper the exposed side. Don't move the duck for at least 5 minutes. At that point, take a look at the underside - it should be golden brown but not charred. Flip the duck.

Brush the surface of the skin with maple syrup several times. Salt and pepper that side. Cook for about 4 minutes, or more if you can't abide duck that's rare in the middle. (I love it that way though, and it's the most juiciest too.)

Take the breast off the heat and let rest for at least 5 minutes. Slice thinly, and serve.

Masterchef challenge, day 9: Pork Medallions and Bubble and Squeak

maki — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 15:08:50 +0100

The ingredients for the 9th day (1st day of the 3rd preliminary round) of MasterChef were:

Pork filet
Gammon - a kind of bacon
Fresh sage
Cider (I am assuming it was alcoholic cider)
Green beans
Potatoes
Pears
Blackberries

As I've written before, it's rather obvious that they taped this show during the summer or perhaps early autumn, because some of the ingredients are only in season at certain times. It's practically impossible to get ripe pears or fresh blackberries right now here in cold and dreary Switzerland, and fresh green beans are very expensive. We can get hard, unripe pears, frozen blackberries and frozen green beans, but it's not really inspiring to cook with such things.

I ended up making something pretty basic. Bubble and squeak, surely the dish with the cutest name in the world, is a traditional English or Irish dish consisting of mashed potatoes, onion, cabbage, and the drippings and gravy left over from a Sunday roast. I didn't have any drippings or gravy, but I wanted this bubble and squeak to just have the vegetable flavors so that was fine. I added a red pepper to the cabbage and onion for a little added sweetness, and one chili pepper for just a little bite.

The pork filet medallions are simplicity itself: just very quickly pan-fry the pork on both sides, and serve with a sauce that is made in the same frying pan. I used Calvados (an apple brandy) instead of cider since that's what I had in the liquor cabinet. We're lucky to have humongous sage bush in the garden that stays green all winter, so I was able to pluck a couple of leaves off for this, but if you will have to buy a bunch just for the two leaves and don't see a need for using the rest, just use a small pinch of dried sage.

This will serve 2 fairly hungry people. Have a green salad with this, followed by juicy oranges for dessert.

Unused ingredients: blackberries, green beans, pears, gammon (bacon).

Slightly spicy bubble and squeak

Note: the version in the picture is actually a bit burnt - you want it to be nice and golden brown, not brown-black. It was still very tasty though.

1/2 small cabbage, core removed (you want to have about 2 cups of shredded cabbage)
1 medium onion
1 medium sweet red pepper
2 medium potatoes
1 small red chili pepper
1 Tbs butter
1/4 milk
1/2 tsp. cumin seeds
Butter or oil for cooking
Salt and pepper

Peel and cut up the potatoes, and boil in salted water until tender. Mash it up roughly and add the butter and milk to make a slightly stiff mashed potatoes.

While the potatoes are cooking, finely shred the cabbage and sweet red pepper. Finely dice the chili pepper (whether you deseed it or not is up to your discretion - the more seeds, the hotter it will be.) Put the vegetables in a pot with about a cup of water, and the cumin seeds. Bring to a boil then lower the heat and cover the pot. Let it steam-cook until tender; add water if it shows signs of sticking to the bottom.

Thinly slice the onion and cook in a little butter or oil until tender. Add the steamed cabbage mixture and sautée a bit. Add the mashed potatoes, and mix thoroughly. Season with salt and pepper.

In a small, non-stick pan, heat up butter or a mixture of butter and oil until it's sizzling, then add the potatoe-vegetable mixture. Press it firmly into the pan. Lower the heat and let the bottom cook until brown and crispy, then carefully turn it over to brown the other side. (Alternatively you can cook this in a hot oven for about 20 minutes.) Flip it onto a plate, then cut into wedges.

Pork filet medallions with calvados-sage sauce

200g / 7 ounces of pork filet, cut into slices about 1 cm / 1/3rd inch thick. You want 2 or 3 little pieces per person.
1/4 cup of Calvados, or hard cider
1/2 cup or so of water
2 sage leaves, finely julienned, or a pinch of dried sage
1/4 cup creme fraiche or sour cream
2 tsp. butter
Salt and pepper

Heat up a frying pan with a little oil until it's red hot. Add the pork filet pieces, and cook for about 1-2 minutes on each side. You just want it to get browned, but be sure not to overcook it. Take the pieces out of the pan.

Pour the Calvados into the pan and rapidly stir with a spatula, scraping off all the bits stuck on the bottom. Add the water, and continue stirring and scraping. If the filets exuded more juice in the meantime, pour that back into the frying pan. Add the sage leaves and simmer briefly.

Add the butter and stir with the spatula or whisk very very rapidly so that it turns glossy and a bit creamy. Add the creme fraiche and again, stir rapidly. Season if needed with salt and pepper.

To serve, put a wedge of the bubble and squeak on the plate, and the pork filets. Carefully spoon the sauce over all.

MasterChef challenge, day 7: Cabbage Rolls and Potato Pancakes

maki — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 07:34:52 +0100

The ingredients for day 7 overall, and day 3 of the 2nd round of preliminaries were:

Ground beef
Savoy cabbage
Potatoes
Portobello mushrooms
Blue cheese
Frozen peas
Bacon

I think I have got what the objective of this ingredient round is in the MasterChef competition. The contestants aren't supposed to try and use all the ingredients presented: they are supposed to come up with the best dish they can from those ingredients, plus a few staples. Invariably. the contestants who try to use too many ingredients end up getting eliminated. In this round for instance, one girl made some kind of "sandwich" by putting some chopped up cabbage, peas, ground beef and something else between two huge grilled Portobello caps. It looked rather unappetizing, and apparently was rather unappetizing.

Anyway, when I saw ground beef and cabbage I immediately thought of stuffed cabbage rolls. Believe it or not cabbage rolls are a staple of Japanese home cooking, but in this case I went Germanic and did a classic combination of cabbage rolls with potato pancakes.

To add a bit of a twist to the filling, I added some chopped bacon and a bit of chopped mushroom. (I did get Portobellos, but since you are going to chop it up anyway, you can just use regular button mushrooms or any other mushroom.) This was ok, but I think the filling would have been just as good without the bacon.

In order to minimize the well, cabbagey-ness of boiled cabbage, add a bit of something acidic to the cooking stock, such as a squeeze of lemon, some white wine, or a can of tomatoes. In this case I added lemon juice.

I did serve the potato pancakes with a little quince jelly. You can also use apple sauce, which seems to be the usual accompaniment in German restaurants in the U.S., or just serve them plain.

Unused ingredients were the peas and the blue cheese.

The order to make this meal is:

Separate and wash the cabbage leaves, and blanch them.
Chop up the filling ingredients and mix.
Take out the cabbage leaves and let cool a bit, and throw in the flavoring ingredients.
Fill and roll the cabbage.
Beat the egg whites.
Grate the potatoes.
Make the pancake batter
Cook the pancakes.

Cabbage rolls

Makes eight compact rolls

8 savoy cabbage leaves, washed
1 large onion
1 lemon
1 green onion
1 celery stalk
1 vegetable stock cube
250g / 8 oz ground beef
3-4 slices of bacon
1 Portobello mushroom, or 4-5 regular button mushrooms
2 slices of toast bread
Salt and pepper
Dried thyme

If the stem part of the cabbage leaves is too thick, shave off a little of it to make the overall thickness more even.

Bring some water to a boil. Put in the cabbage leaves and cook for 3-4 minutes until limp. Take out and keep the cooking liquid warm.

Cut the green part of the green onion lengthwise into thin strips.

Take about 1/3rd of the onion and the celery stalk, slice roughly and throw into the pot with the stock cube and about 1 tsp. of dried thyme.

Chop the remaining onion, bacon and mushrooms very finely. Turn the bread slices into crumbs. (Needless to say, this part goes much faster with a food processor.) Mix all together with the ground beef, season lightly with salt and pepper and about 1/2 tsp. of dried thyme.

Divide the mixture into 8. Squish each portion into a rough oval ball and place on a cabbage leaf, near the stem end. Roll up, fold in the sides, and roll closed. (The key is to not overfill the cabbage leaves, so if you have small leaves, just blanch more of them and make smaller rolls.) Secure the roll by tying around a green onion strap.

Add the juice of 1/2 a lemon. Carefully put the cabbage rolls into the liquid. Heat until the liquid is bubbling, then lower to a simmer and cook for at least 20 minutes, preferably longer.

Potato pancakes

3-4 medium potatoes (you want to end up with about 2 cups of grated potato)
1/3 cup flour
2 eggs, separated
1/4 cup milk
Salt
Butter or oil for cooking
Optional: quince jelly

Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form when you pick up the beaters.

Peel and finely grate the potatoes.

Add the flour, egg yolks, milk and salt to the grated potato and mix well. Mix in about 1/2 of the egg white, then carefully fold in the rest so that you end up with a light and foamy looking batter.

Heat up some butter or oil in a large pan, or on a griddle. Put about 1/4 cup portions (I just use a ladle which has an approximately 1/4 cup capacity) onto the hot pan or griddle. Cook until golden brown, and flip; cook on the other side.

To serve, place a pancake or two on a plate, with a teaspoon of quince jelly or other not-too-sweet, slightly bitter jelly. (Marmalade may work even.) Take out a cabbage roll with a slotted spoon.

Note: another less fiddly way of securing the cabbage rolls closed is to use 1 or 2 pieces of spaghetti to skewer them. People often use toothpicks for this but I always forget to take 1-2 out, and it's not nice to end up with a mouthful of splinters. The spaghetti just gets cooked - no splinters!