Where the Goats and the Buffalo Roam

Previously I described how, buried under bags and bags of unexpectedly-sprouted organic russets, I was obliged to engage in an emergency boiling-and-mashing session.

Subsequently faced with something like four pounds of cold riced potatoes in the bottom of the fridge (an only slightly improved situation, it must be admitted), I decided to make Cottage Pie, which of course is just like Shepherds' Pie, except fabricated with beef instead of lamb (the Kid Squid is not a big fan of lamb and I live to serve his wishes, as has been remarked upon many times in the past). Off I toddled to the supermarket for the requisite protein.

I rarely buy beef, and probably have purchased it only once or twice since the onset of gluten-freedom a few months back. I may not have been paying much attention on those occasions, so I would fairly describe my attitude towards supermarket beef as out of touch. 

What did I discover to my chagrin? The only organic beef they had was from Paraguay!  Now, I am as admiring of those marvelously colorful gauchos as anybody possibly could be, and wish them well as they gallop around the pampas (or whatever the Paraguayan equivalent might be) with their lassos and large hats. I do not want to see them all out of work or forced to find employment in American jeans factories. But am I wrong to think that air transport of organic food (which is supposed to be about saving the planet, after all) from a faraway country rather defeats the purpose? (I make an exception for Hunza raisins, of course, which are a separate category all their own. I should be forced to protest noisily, placard in hand, in front of Pakistan's Embassy if they ever stop airlifting those little beauties to my local market.)

I seem to have lost the point. Oh yes, Paraguayan beef. Anyway, I searched for a somewhat more local equivalent and found ground organic bison from Colorado, which at least is on this continent. I bought two pounds and felt nobly principled.

I got it home and whipped up a fine main course, the recipe for which is heavily borrowed from Gordon Ramsay's famously delectable Shepherds' Pie. The only suitable red wine I had in the basement (stored next to my sprouting factory-farmed potatoes, which is where this whole saga began, ironically enough) was from the good folks at the Goats Do Roam winery in Paarl, heart of the sunny South African winelands.

I therefore christen this dish ...

Cape Buffalo Pie

• 2 pounds of ground bison
• 1 gigantic onion, chopped
• 4 regular-sized carrots, grated
• 2 to 3 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce
• one and one-half tablespoons tomato puree
• thyme, a bay leaf, etc.
• a cup or so of red wine
• 1 to 2 cups of beef stock (does not need to be clarified)
• some corn starch (certified gluten-free, if you please)
• about one and one-half pounds of mashed potatoes, seasoned
• 2 egg yolks
• one quarter cup of grated fresh Parmesan cheese

Heat some olive oil in your biggest saute pan (I use my favorite straight-sided one for things like this and it always works a treat). Saute the bison, seasoned with salt, until it's brown and there are some crispy bits. Remove to a safe holding area with a slotted spoon.

Add the onions to the pan and saute them over low heat until they are very soft. Add the grated carrots and stir them around for a bit. Return the bison to the pan. Add your herbs of choice and cook it for a bit more.

Add the Worcestershire sauce, the tomato puree, and the wine: cook the mixture until it is very very thick and unctuous. Add the stock and cook it some more until it's reduced. If the sauce possesses insufficient body, remove some to a small bowl and thicken to a slurry with a few teaspoons of corn starch. Return that to the pan, stir it in, and assess your progress. You can always do it again if you have to: remember, nobody likes a watery Cape Buffalo Pie!

Check your final seasoning and add ground black pepper.

While your bison mixture is doing its thing, turn your attention to the potatoes. I heat them up a bit in the microwave at this point to make them easier to work with, but not too hot otherwise the eggs scramble, yuck. Beat the eggs and cheese into the mash.

Then, when your bison is gorgeously done and the kitchen smells amazing, pour your saucepan's contents into some sort of oven-proof dish. I had a nine-inch ceramic pie plate handy and used that. Spread the potatoes over the top, starting from the outside and working inwards, until every micron is covered and there is no way the sauce will bubble out all over your oven (just in case, it's a good idea to put a pan underneath when it's baking).

Bake at 400 deg F. until it's golden and wonderful.

Mine took about half an hour and would have fed six if we hadn't greedily gobbled it all ourselves.

The Eyes Have It

Ten days ago I bought two huge bags of organic russet potatoes during my Whole Foods buying bash. Normally, I don't buy spuds in such large quantities, preferring to purchase them as needs arise. However, since the Market is, like, a million miles away and I don't get there very often, buying in bulk seemed like a sensible option.

I kept the sacks on the bottom-most of my Metro shelves, just inside the garage door, judging that they would benefit from the cool drafts thus provided whilst at the same time being near to hand whenever the urge to cook them became unbearably strong. After a fair amount of time during which I served the taters in a variety of delicious ways, you can imagine what happened. They all sprouted! Every single one! Four pounds of potatoes with little shoots bursting out in all directions, looking like so many porcupines after one of those home perms that, urban legend tells us, causes one's hair to turn green.

Now, I am not afraid to eat sprouted potatoes but they are no longer aesthetically suitable for serving in their formal jackets. So I hurriedly peeled them and boiled them, put them through my ricer, and bought myself some time by making a huge bowlful of mash that is lasting forever (more on its myriad uses later).

All this kerfuffle (smack dab in the middle of my mozzarella experiments, no less) reminded me of the DDT and fungicide-filled specimens lurking in my basement. It may be recalled that they were part of another food study, begun on December 10, which was prompted by the Rodale Press' rather rash claim that it is impossible to sprout a commercially-grown, non-organic potato.

I'm afraid that in the grand whirl that is my life, I quite forgot about those benighted tubers languishing under the kitchen stairs.

Down the rickety steps I went, clump clump clump, into the dark, bleak basement. I retrieved the brown paper bag from its hiding place next to the beer, wine, bags of rice, and rolls of paper towels. I hesitated for a moment before peeking inside. What would I find? There could have been almost anything in there! My heart thumped wildly and a cold sweat broke out upon my furrowed brow. Almost afraid to look, I carefully opened the bag and peered into the dark recesses.

Guess what I discovered?



Those are sprouts - unless my eyes deceive me!

You Like Potato, I Like Pot-aaah-toe

Preparations for Christmas dinner are in full swing chez Fractured Amy. This time of year I go into a requisition mode that would be the envy of any army: lists are retrieved from their appropriate files, shopping accomplished with efficiency (if not economy); and the refrigerator and larder stocked so no supermarket visits of any kind will be required between December 23 and December 28. Quite honestly, if I'd been Napoleon's quartermaster, today they'd be speaking French and eating moules in Moscow.

The key is organization.

And, it must be said, predictability. Christmas dinner at our house means a traditional English roast dinner. Sir would not have it any other way and I am happy to oblige, since it leaves me off the hook for the rest of the year. The menu is comfortably unvarying: roast beast (which Sir insists on calling 'the joint'); proper roast potatoes; Yorkshire pudding (gluten-free this year, but more on that in a future posting), and two vegetables: one is always my famous pear and parsnip puree, although the other - generally a green veg of the family Brassicaceae - is still up for grabs.

Yesterday, I bought the potatoes. As loyal readers are aware, there has in my house been a certain amount of spud kerfuffle lately, with the result being that I am currently buying organic Russets. Skeptical at first, I am now forced to admit that we all prefer the taste and texture of these all-natural tubers. Who knew there would be such a difference between the organic and DDT-filled varieties? I have not carried out a double blind tasting, as good science would normally dictate, because the dissimilarity is so pronounced: the organic specimens are sweeter and fluffier; their skins are softer (though still crispy under the appropriate circumstances); and I have found fewer instances of weird black spots insde them. Although I am officially waiting for the outcome of my basement sprouting experiments to announce my final verdict, I must say $1.40 per pound is not an outrageous sum for seriously delicious potatoes, especially at this time of year when they are one of the stars of the show.

In my opinion, Crunchy Potatoes en Anglais (I made that up) are one of the triumphs of farmhouse cooking. I say 'farmhouse' because, without one of those huge cast iron cookers I so admire, you really need two ovens if you are going to make potatoes with a roast (excuse me, 'joint'). This is because the two dishes cook at completely different temperatures. If you try to use the beast's low oven for the spuds, the crispy, crunchy exterior (gold-hued, with charred bits here and there) so prized by connoisseurs will forever elude you. It is a fact that, in the days before my Wolf, guests for a roast dinner had to bring their own oven for the potatoes. That they were willing to do so says a lot about how fantastic they were (both the potatoes and the guests).

A few additional notes about roasted spuds. I have cooked them in beef dripping, lard, and (in a pinch) shortening, but this year  - for extra amazingness - I am going to do them in the duck fat left over from my confit project. Some effete types turn their potatoes after peeling them to make regular ovoid shapes, but I eschew this practice. First of all, it ruins the rustic appearance of the final dish. Second of all, without the well-defined angles that result from rough chopping, you don't get the crispy caramelized edges that add such depth and mystery.

Here is how I make proper golden roast potatoes, crunchy on the outside with tender, not-at-all-greasy insides. Believe me, they are aces.

Roast Potatoes

1. Fill a large pot with plenty of salted water and bring it to a boil. Preheat your oven to 425 deg F.
2. Peel sufficient potatoes for the number of people you will be feeding (I use Russets). Add a couple extra because seconds will be required. Chop them into rough chunks: I favor pieces approximately one-and-a-half to two inches in diameter.
3. Parboil the potatoes for ten minutes then drain them well. Here follows the key step, which I learned from Delia Smith. Return the potatoes to the empty but still-warm pot, put the lid on (hold it down tightly with your thumbs!), and give the whole thing a few really good shakes. I mean, give yourself a strenuous workout - the idea is to fluff up the edges of the potatoes by agitating them with some force against the sides of the pan. When you remove the lid and peek inside, the potatoes' surfaces should be all floury and soft. You can put them aside now while you get the fat ready.
4. You will need about 2 oz. of fat (see above) for every pound of potatoes. Put the fat into your sturdiest roasting pan and put the pan in the oven to get hot. When the fat is all melted, transfer the pan to your stove top over medium high heat. This will keep the fat hot and sizzling while you add the potatoes - a crucial step for ensuring grease-free crunchiness!
5. Transfer your potatoes to the hot pan. Be careful, obviously, because if there is any residual water on them they will go up like one of those deep-sea thermal vents the Discovery Channel is always on about. Stir them around to make sure they are coated with the fat.
6. Into the oven for about an hour, turning them half-way through. Pull them out when they are tender on the inside (stick 'em with a knife if you aren't sure) but golden and crunchy on the outside. I do not generally salt them, but a couple grinds of pepper are appropriate. You could garnish them with fresh herbage, I suppose, but why bother? They are gorgeous just the way they are.
7. Serve them immediately, since they will lose their crisp outer shells if left to sit too long.

They are awesome with roasts, of course, but also gussy up grilled meat and stews in a very impressive way. They are certainly easier with the latter choices, because only one oven is required. They are always a hit.

Spud Busting

Ardent readers know that I am a big potato booster. The humble tuber has provided welcome starch-laden succor in my gluten-free hour of need, its well-known fibrousness proving a boon in these breadless times. I admit, however, that I don't think too much about my spuds and their provenance - I buy them (Russets at this time of year, mostly) in batches of eight or nine and they usually cost around ninety-nine cents per pound. I bake 'em and mash 'em and sometimes get fancy, but most of the time we eat them and forget them. We love them the way we love the sunrise, or Spring daffodils, or the twists and turns of Lost - while appreciating their fabulosity, we also tend to take them for granted.

Recently, however, potatoes hit my consciousness like a 50 lb. burlap sackful falling unexpectedly off the back of a pickup truck. It happened like this. Finding that the NYTimes online was updating me on Julian Assange and the marvelously scandalous Wikileaks commotion with insufficient celerity, I was reluctantly forced to log onto CNN for the breaking story. Would Blondie turn himself in? Would the British judge offer bail? What about extradition to Sweden? Gripping stuff - and my rapt attention was such that I almost missed the wee promotional link off to the side, promising with some urgency to reveal what seven foods I must never, ever, under any circumstances feed my family.

I saw the link just in time and duly clicked. Now, I have written before (and at some length) that I have not traditionally been into earnest food as a rule and that is still the case. However, I must admit that all of this watching-what-I-eat business has wrought a few changes in my life: I cook brown rice now and consume chia seeds for breakfast. My intake of saturated fat is way, way down and I'm feeling slightly better, I suppose, as the Nutritionist predicted. For some time I've tried to buy organic proteins where possible and I've always kept processed food to a minimum. Seven foods one must avoid like the plague? I guessed that, in a typical week, I didn't buy any of them. I prepared to scan the List of Doom and congratulate myself on my canny shopping habits and healthy lifestyle.

Well, campers, you will have guessed the cataclysmic truth. Of the seven foods most likely to kill you and destroy the planet (as identified by Prevention magazine, brought to us by the very sincere folks at the Rodale Press just up the road), four to five are regularly (if not commonly) to be found in my recycled Wegmans shopping bag.

Good news first. I never buy canned tomatoes or microwave popcorn. At least I'm off the hook there. Farmed salmon is something I already knew was evil evil evil, but sometimes I can't bring myself to pay $24 per pound for wild-caught fish and one can only eat so much tilapia in a given week, am I right?

This leaves milk, corn-fed beef, apples, and potatoes. It is potatoes about which I am choosing to vent my spleen, because that is the thing on this list of which I eat the most. Milk makes me gag (except in tea or coffee); beef we eat only on the rarest of occasions; and I'm more of an Anjou pear girl, anyway. Tatties, now - that gives me serious pause.

Here's the scoop. According to Jeff Moyer, Chair of the National Organic Standards Board, most commercial potato farmers will not eat their own product, preferring to grow their families' supplies in separate organic plots. This is because the tubers (underground growers that they are) absorb the herbicides, pesticides and fungicides that are spread in the fields to increase yields. In addition, spuds are treated after harvesting with chemicals designed to keep them from sprouting during storage. Quite apart from the sad impact this treatment must inevitably have on bonsai potato artistes worldwide, it is claimed that no amount of scrubbing can remove these noxious substances once they have been absorbed into the taters' flesh.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I am not usually an alarmist where food is concerned, so in addition to all my other kitchen experiments (gluten-free baking, molecular gastronomy, and no - I haven't forgotten that the pasta situation is still unresolved) I will be testing the theory that you cannot sprout a commercially-farmed, chemical-filled potato. I currently have three specimens strategically placed in the basement: one organic russet, one non-organic russet, and one strange waxy potato I bought by mistake last week that I'm sure is full of fungicides and DDT (it has that look about it). I will check on their progress regularly and update readers with the results when I have them. I will be most relieved if the malevolent potatoes do, in fact, sprout - organic potatoes cost $1.40 per pound and I'm not sure the bank balance can stand them for long.

Stovies

Since the gluten-free pasta situation is still in a fluxious state, we've been eating a lot of potatoes chez Fractured Amy.  I tend to bake the tubers six or eight at a time for a dinner of what Sir insists on calling 'jacket potatoes' followed by mash a day or two later. This time of year, though, the Russets start to get big and bold and suddenly six potatoes are more than three people can comfortably eat over two meals. Faced with a second bowl of leftover mash this morning, I considered my options and hit upon that olde Scots standby, stovies.

Now, stovies should not be confused with bubble and squeak (potatoes and cabbage, English version), colcannon (potatoes and cabbage, Irish version); rumbledethumps (potatoes and cabbage, Scottish Borders version), or panackelty (corned beef and potatoes, Geordie version). The name, fittingly enough, is derived from the Scots for 'stew'. The dish is traditionally made by frying up potatoes and onions in some sort of animal fat and adding leftover stew or whatever bits and bobs are remaindered from the Sunday roast. They are best when served up hot from the oven with lots of black pepper. I know, I know. They are gluten-free, not calorie or cholesterol-free.

There is nothing highfalutin' about stovies. My favorite version used to come from the chip shop up the road from my Edinburgh office, where they were served unashamedly in styrofoam cups at lunchtime. Despite their humble origins, however, they often appear on the menus of fine Scottish and northern English restaurants (tarted up, of course) and have a wide and somewhat fanatical fan base (Facebook's Stovies Appreciation Society had 3,367 members at last count). I attribute stovies' popularity to their warming, comforting appeal and the delicious aroma that fills the kitchen when they are in the oven.

The trouble I had writing that last paragraph leads me to a question: is stovies singular or plural? According to the Scots-English dictionary helpfully provided online by Wikipedia, it is plural in English and singular in Scots. That figures. What it is in American, heaven only knows.

Here is how I made the stovies for breakfast this morning. I started with some spare uncooked bacon from a dinner of spaghetti carbonara I prepared a couple of nights ago (made with De Boles' corn spaghetti - sadly, the technique for cooking g/f spaghetti still needs some work, or I would have shared it long before now). I chopped up the bacon and browned it in an ovenproof skillet. Upon removing the slightly crispy lardons from the pan, I added a chopped onion to the bacon fat, seasoned it with thyme, and cooked it over a medium-low heat until soft and sweet. I reintroduced the bacon, stirred it around for a minute, then spread the mashed potatoes over the top (they were already well-seasoned with salt and pepper from an earlier dinner). The pan went into a 375 deg F oven for about 15 minutes, where the potatoes puffed up and became nicely golden and toasty. The result was almost sliceable, with lovely distinct layers - although it's perfectly appropriate to dollop stovies into a bowl using a soup ladle.

Sir reported feeling like a Lanarkshire coal miner during the feast, and actually used the word 'fodder' to describe the dish before him (I'm pretty sure he meant this in a positive way, as in 'good wholesome fodder'). I decided they tasted good enough to ignore the fact that I could hear my arteries slamming shut. And the Kid Squid, allowing that they were a nice change from plain mash, snarfed his in about thirty seconds flat.

I may need to start baking Russets ten at a time.


Stovies fresh from the oven:
muckle braw!