Thanksgiving Recipe of the Day: Classic Potato Gratin

Note: With Turkey Day coming up, I thought I might steer attention to the online culinary world’s flowering of Thanksgiving-themed recipes for a few weeks.

Love It: I have nothing against mashed potatoes (I love Scott’s labor-of-love Herbed Mashed Potatoes at Thanksgiving each year), but I imagine some people out there might be plagued with gluey slop on the table each year (though I won’t go accusing others of resorting to potato buds on this most sacred food holiday). Here’s an alternative that’s steam-facial free and (yay!) includes cheese.

Fear It: Oh yeah, and cream. Three cups of it.

Teach It: Important! Note the instructions to let the gratin rest after it exits the oven. If you try to serve it right away, your guests’ plates will be awash is scalding-hot cream.

Eat It: You probably don’t need to drown this in any gravy. Though this gratin may be termed “Classic,” I imagine it would best be suited to a more upscale, more nontraditional Thanksgiving spread. This is the recipe for the kind of person who makes the “upscale” sort of green-bean casserole with real mushrooms and onions.

Classic Potato Gratin
Source: Fine Cooking
Yield: 6-8 servings

Try to get a good-quality Gruyère or Emmental, which will be moderately assertive yet mellow and nutty.

• 2 lb. Yukon Gold or russet potatoes, peeled
• 3 cups whipping or heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• ⅛ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• Generous pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
• ¾ cup finely shredded Gruyère, Emmental, or Comté

Heat the oven to 400°F. Using a very sharp knife or a mandoline, carefully cut the potatoes into 1/8-inch slices (no thicker).

Put the potatoes in a large heavy-based saucepan and add the cream, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and garlic. Cook the mixture over medium-high heat until the cream is boiling, stirring occasionally (very gently with a rubber spatula so you don’t break up the slices).

When the cream boils, pour the mixture into a 2-1/2- or 3-qt. baking dish. If you don’t want a tender but garlicky surprise mouthful, remove and discard the garlic cloves. Shake the dish a bit to let the slices settle and then sprinkle the surface with the cheese.

Bake in the hot oven until the top is deep golden brown, the cream has thickened, and the potatoes are extremely tender when pierced with a knife, about 40 minutes. Don’t worry if the dish looks too liquidy at this point; it will set up as it cools a bit. Before serving, let the potatoes cool until they’re very warm but not hot (at least 15 minutes) or serve them at room temperature.

Notes:
from Fine Cooking #36, pp. 36-37

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Recipe of the Day: Back-From-the-Bar Snack

Love It: Potatoes? Eggs? Cheese? Bacon? You’ve convinced me.

Fear It: Yeah, all those South Beach diet people better steer clear, as I imagine the only approved food here would be the paltry teaspoon of oil. Sorry, folks.

Teach It: Lesson Number One: Adding bacon grease makes everything taste better. Lesson Number Two: Neat idea, using the peas’ water to heat the potatoes at the last minute.

Eat It: Alone in a dusky kitchen, with a beer from the fridge if that’s your thing.

Back-From-the-Bar Snack

Source: Nigella Lawson

Yield: 1 serving

• 2 (slices) rashers bacon, cut into little strips
• 1 teaspoon oil
• ½ cup frozen peas
• 2 cups cooked new or waxy potatoes
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup Cheddar, diced

Put some salted water on for the peas, and in a skillet that will take the potatoes and everything later, cook the bacon strips in the oil.

Cook the peas in the boiling water, and at the last minute, tip in the potatoes just so they heat up. Drain and turn into the pan with the bacon and take off the heat. Whisk the eggs with the cheese and then pour this over the potatoes and peas in the pan. Mix well and pour straight into a bowl to serve.

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Recipe of the Day: Baked Potato Bites

Love It: Potatoes are eminently satisfying comfort food. This dish is a clever, more sophisticated spin on tater skins, with all the goodness of a baked potato in one bitty bite.

Fear It: Unless you substitute low-fat sour cream and cream cheese and cut back a bit on the fatty bacon. Rachael Ray may always choose the full-fat variety, but she’s also go – go – go all day, unlike most of us. Plus, a decent spritz of nonstick olive-oil spray would probably be a decent substitute for the olive oil. A generous hand with the olive oil always seems to turn my roasted potatoes soggy.

Teach It: Hmm, sour cream and cream cheese, united at last! I usually only see sour cream married with mayo (a product which Rachael Ray hates; bit of trivia for you there). I could imagine many applications for this — such as extra-creamy mac and cheese.

Eat It: I’m seeing these on a tray alongside a spread of other made-over bar food items, such as kielbasa pigs in a blanket with spicy brown mustard and fancy tortilla chips topped with homemade salsa and some variety of real, crumbly Mexican queso.

 

Baked Potato Bites
Source: Every Day with Rachael Ray
Yield: 2 dozen

 

• 4 red potatoes, sliced into 1/4-inch-thick rounds and patted dry
• ⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt
• ½ lb. bacon
• ⅓ cup sour cream
• ⅓ cup cream cheese
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped chives

 

1. Preheat the oven to 375°. Place the potato rounds on a rimmed baking sheet. Toss with the olive oil, season with salt and arrange in a single layer. Bake for 25 minutes, flip and bake for another 10 minutes. Transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate to drain.
2. Meanwhile, cook the bacon until crisp; crumble and set aside. In a medium bowl, stir together the sour cream and cream cheese until smooth.
3. Arrange the potato slices on a platter in a single layer and top each round with a dollop of the sour cream mixture, some bacon bits and the chives. Serve warm.

 

 

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Brown Mustard Potato Salad

I, like many, am a potato addict. Something about the mealy texture and starchiness make this vegetable feel satisfying on a level achieved by only beans in plant world (at least to me).

 

I, like many, tend to get my potato fix from French fries. In fact, French fries are likely the number one vegetable dish in most kids’ diets. (If you don’t think so, try visiting the local public school cafeteria sometime. Only if you consider pancake syrup a vegetable would fries be trumped.)

 

I, like many, think I should probably eat less fried foods. No matter what your position is on fat, no one can contest that foods cooked in fat have more calories than foods cooked in water. And as you might have guessed from my review of the CalorieKing software, I’m trying to cut back on calories.

 

You know, potatoes don’t often catch a break in the calorie department, though. If they’re not fried up into hash browns or home fries, they’re drenched in mayo (potato salad) or butter and cream (mashed and baked potatoes).

 

Potatoes can be part of a healthy diet, despite their starchiness. They get a bad rap from their fatty friends, that’s all. A baked potato, on its own, has fewer calories than weight grams (93 calories per 100 grams), making it a food you can enjoy with only a modicum of moderation.

 

A baked potato with salt and maybe 10 spritzes of the lovely I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray was a meal I could eat while trying desperately to drop pounds pre-wedding and still feel full. All for 169 calories!

 

However, this is an entry on potato salad, not baked potatoes.

 

How do we trim down the calorie count for potato salad?

 

First, swap out the mayonnaise. Replace some of it with reduced-fat or light mayo, and replace the rest with spicy brown mustard. This salad is so highly seasoned because of the mustard that you’re not likely to notice any difference in the taste of the mayo, even if you’re the picky sort who always goes for the full-fat kind. As for the mustard, it has way fewer calories than any mayo.

 

Second, bulk up the salad with low-cal vegetables. I did just argue that potatoes are not high-cal on their own, but they certainly don’t hold a candle to celery in the rock-bottom stats department. There’s even that rumor that celery takes more calories to digest than you ingest from the veggie. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that five medium stalks have only 28 calories total.

 

Third, garnish with more high-flavor, low-calorie items. Pickles have a yummy sour, salty zing, and if you stick with the dill variety rather than the sweet, they won’t cost you many calories. Seasonings like dill and garlic powder also help punch up the flavor so you don’t miss the fat.

 

Finally, sneak in extra flavor where you can. Potatoes can be a bit bland on their own. Sprinkling the hot tots with some sweet vinegar helps enhance their taste even without our spicy sauce. You could use balsamic vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar for a sweeter taste, but it might turn the potatoes a slightly unappetizing color. Still, it’s a thought worthy of future experimentation.

 

Now, the stats:

 

You can have one cup of regular homemade potato salad for 358 calories.

 

You can eat the entire four-medium-potato recipe of my Brown Mustard Potato salad for 589 calories. Since you wouldn’t do that, know that one serving registers a mere 147 calories. That’s a savings of . . .

 

211 calories per serving! And you get more than one cup per serving in my recipe, too.

 

Brown Mustard Potato Salad
Source: Colleen Fischer
Yield: 4 servings

• 4 medium all-purpose potatoes, diced
  
• 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
  
• 4 stalks celery, sliced thin
  
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
  
• ¼ cup sour pickle slices, diced
  
• ½ teaspoon dried dill
  
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  
• ½ teaspoon paprika
  
• ½ cup brown mustard
  
• ½ cup light mayonnaise
  
• salt
  
• pepper
  

Place the potatoes in a pot of salted water and bring to a boil. Cook for about 10 minutes or until fork-tender. Drain the potatoes and then place them on a baking sheet. Drizzle the three tablespoons (or enough to coat) of vinegar on the potatoes and toss them to evenly distribute the acid. Spread the potatoes out to cool.

Meanwhile, chop up the other vegetables and place them in a mixing bowl. Add the dill, garlic powder, and paprika. Stir. Add the potatoes when they are cooled and mix again to distribute the seasonings.

Add the mustard and mayonnaise to the bowl. Mix thoroughly. Taste, add salt and pepper as necessary, and mix again. Serve.

Notes:

If you happen to get slightly larger potatoes than I had and need more sauce, add mustard and mayo in equal proportions, about a tablespoon each at a time, until the consistency is right. But don’t start adding more until you’ve thoroughly mixed the salad, as it will look kind of dry at first. Keep stirring until the sauce is evenly distributed before adding more so that you don’t end up with a drowned salad.

If you take the salad to a picnic, remember to keep it on ice as the starchy pototoes are bound to get germ-friendly if they’re out in the sun too long.

Nutritional notes:
per serving:
147 calories
4 g fat
3 g protein
20 g carbohydrates
3 g fiber

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Happy Thanksgiving (in Canada)!

I bet Scott will be upset when he reads this tomorrow and realizes that, Canada-phile he is, he missed out on celebrating the second Monday in October as anything but Columbus Day.

Columbus Day. Yawn. We never even got a day off from school to make it somewhat worthwhile celebrating Europe’s second “discovery” of America and the nutter who was convinced to his death that he’d landed in Asia.

In celebration of Canada’s great Thanksgiving feast, I present the delicious mashed potatoes recipe Scott makes us every year. We found it in Real Simple a few years back, and it’s become his side-dish specialty.

Don’t forget to put the garlic cloves in the pot to boil with the potatoes. It mellows the flavor, turning the garlic a bit sweeter and softer.

Herbed Mashed Potatoes
Source: Real Simple

• 8 medium russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/2″ cubes
• 10 cloves garlic, peeled
• 6 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 cup milk, at room temperature
• 1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
• ⅓ cup parsley, chives or tarragon, chopped

Place the potatoes in a large saucepan with the garlic and enough lightly salted water to cover. (Can be done to this point up to 4 hours ahead. Cover and refrigerate.) Place over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 15 to 20 minutes or until fork-tender. Drain. Beat with an electric mixer or mash with a potato masher until smooth. Add the butter. Gradually add the milk until the potatoes are fluffy. Blend in the salt and herbs.

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Fall’s Figure Foes

Most of the items in MSNBC’s list of the “Eight Most Fattening Foods of Fall” aren’t at all surprising (I wouldn’t have expected to see turducken just because it’s not exactly commonplace, though with the duck and sausage stuffing, it sure sounds fatty), but it’s good to have a kick in the pants every now and then to remind one not to overindulge.

Some of the usual suspects here can be made healthier, though. For that Starbucks drink, how about ordering it with nonfat milk (instead of getting the default whole or 2%) and asking for a smaller size than the giant venti? No one needs a venti-sized anything when it comes to hopped-up-on-caffeine coffee drinks, frankly.

As for mashed potatoes, you can make them without butter and cream! Cut back on those calorie-laden flavor enhancers to save a ton of calories. I prefer to be able to taste potato and seasonings rather than butter in my mashers.

Let’s look now at the apple pie. Most of the bad stuff in any fruit pie is in the crust. You need a lot of fat to make a flaky pastry like that, and in pie crusts (especially those you buy pre-made) bakers often employ those nasty trans fats in shortening — not that the saturated fats in butter or lard are much better. And most of the time — let’s be honest — the pie crust doesn’t taste very good. It’s soggy on the bottom, or flavorless, or burnt . . . the list of potential problems is long. I say skip the crust (it’s a thankless task working with crust anyway) and just serve the filling, maybe with a little oatmeal and brown sugar streusel on the top. Still indulgent, but less so than before.

You can make stuffing a bit lighter if you don’t cook it inside the bird. Cooked in its own dish or on the stovetop with some fat-free broth, it doesn’t absorb all the greasy drippings. I know, it certainly tastes a lot better with the drippings, but keep in mind as well that stuffing a bird pretty much always leads to either underdone (and bacteria-infested) stuffing or overcooked meat.

(Link via FitFare)