Potato Onion Cheese Pie

This picture is from a similar pie I made last summer, but the concept is the same! I wanted a nice savory pie for a pie party, and nothing says "comfort food" like potatoes and cheese. Noel chose the spices for this one, and they were genius. The pie had a beautiful yellow color and a warm, almost mustard-y, flavor. Whip up this pie on a gloomy day; it's the pie equivalent of a cozy blanket!

I used baby yellow potatoes, so the slices were bite-sized. If you use larger potatoes, you might want to cut it up so that it's smaller sliced. Of course, that would be completely up to you!

What you need:

Chilled dough for a double-crust pie

3 cups of sliced yellow potatoes

2 medium onions, diced

1 cup of crumbled sharp cheese (I used Gloucester)

2 eggs, beaten

1 tbs turmeric

1 tsp cayenne pepper

Salt to taste

What you do:

Combine all your filling ingredients in a bowl and toss together until everything is evenly distributed.

Roll out the bottom crust and place in a well-greased pie dish. Spoon the filling into the pie. Roll out the top crust and cut a few vents into it, then place on top of the pie. Pinch the edges shut.

Bake at 350 degrees until the crust is golden, the cheese melted, and the potatoes soft - about an hour. Wait at least 15 minutes to slice into this one.

Eat your amazing pie!

Latkes

I know Hanukkah is over, but too bad. Latkes are awesome all year long! This recipe makes a lotta latkes but feel free to halve it if you aren't making them for a party or aren't a fatso. You can freeze extras and reheat them in a toaster oven.

Ingredients
2 lbs baking potatoes (about 3 large potatoes)
1 medium yellow or white onion
1/2 cup matzo meal (or flour or breadcrumbs)
2 eggs, beaten
salt and pepper to taste
2 Tbsp potato starch (optional, see below)
oil for frying (for tips, also see below)
apple sauce and sour cream for serving

Directions
1. Grate the potatoes into a fine strainer over a large bowl. They will start to drain into the bowl, and you want to rinse them with a little water when you're done grating (if they've oxidized and turned red, rinse them till they are white), but catch all the water in the bowl! Squeeze out as much water as you can by pressing on the potatoes and remember, save all the drained liquid!
2. After you've pressed out a lot of the water, pour the potatoes onto a large cheesecloth or paper towels. Squeeze the potatoes until they're pretty dry. You might need to do this with a fresh towel 2 or 3 times.
3. Pour the mostly dry potatoes into another large bowl. Grate the onion into the bowl.
4. Slowly pour the rinsed potato water down the sink. When it's mostly poured out, you will notice a white substance at the bottom of the bowl. This is potato starch! Potato starch is one of the secrets to delicious latkes. It helps give them a good texture. Pour as much of the water out as you can while keeping as much of the starch. It's ok to have a little extra water. Scrape the potato starch into the bowl with the potatoes and onion.
5. Add matzo meal, extra potato starch (if you're using it, it's not necessary and if you don't already own it, it's probably not worth buying just for this use, but it's great for baking so I always have it in my kitchen), salt, pepper and eggs. Mix well. Allow the mix to rest for at least 10 minutes. Some more water will come out of the potatoes, but just leave it there.
6. Heat your fat in a large flat pan over medium heat. My mom swears by duck fat, which is kind of gross to think about but if you ever cook whole ducks, it's easy enough to save the fat that melts out in a jar (hey, some people save their bacon fat, so no judging!) and it will keep in your fridge for months. If you don't want to use that, peanut oil is the best vegetable oil for latkes. It has a really rich flavor and is really saturated/unhealthy/delicious. You can also use olive oil, which would be preferable to canola, but it doesn't matter that much. Don't use butter, it just doesn't work well. Probably something about the flame point or whatever.
7. Put a small piece of potato in the oil. When it turns golden brown, the oil is ready. Make balls of potato mix and gently place them in the oil. Flatten them with your hands or a spatula. Let them cook for 2-3 minutes, then flip and cook for 2-3 minutes on the other size. Remove from oil and allow them to drain on paper towels. Replenish the oil as necessary, but make sure it has heated up before adding the potatoes!
8. Serve immediately with sour cream and apple sauce.

Potato Salad – Two Ways

I used gold potatoes, which make for a particularly creamy tasting potato salad. Cut the potatoes into Boil the potatoes until they can easily be pierced by a fork. Try not to cook them too long; if they are too soft they will turn into mush as you mix everything together. Drain the potatoes and let cool.

Cilantro Potato Salad

Caramelize a large onion (chop the onion and sauté in olive oil on medium heat for about 20 minutes or until the onions turn golden brown). Remove from heat and let cool.

Finely chop a big bunch of cilantro (just go ahead and chop the entire bunch that you get from the grocery store). Finely mince 1-2 cloves of garlic.

Combine some olive oil and lime juice together in about a ratio of 3:2. I really have no idea how much I used, but I’m guessing that 3 teaspoons of olive oil to 2 teaspoons lime juice might be good. It also might not be enough dressing. Add the cilantro and shake up everything together. I like to do this in a small Tupperware. I find this is the best way of mixing and emulsifying everything together.

Grate some parmesan cheese. Really however much you want. Mix this together with the potatoes, onions and Cilantro-Lime Dressing. It’s perfectly enjoyable right away, even still slightly warm, but it is even more delicious the next day.

Mustard Potato Salad

This potato salad is even simpler. Because I was feeling sick and lazy perhaps. But just ask Heather to choose her favorite.

Make a vinaigrette with olive oil and a good quality mustard. This time I might try a ratio closer to 2:1. Though again, I’m really not sure what I did.

Chop up some garlic chives (or green onions). Mince 1-2 cloves of garlic. Add these to the vinaigrette and shake everything up. Mix with the potatoes and enjoy.

Scallop, Leek and Mushroom Chowder

Rainy weather is soup weather. Even though it's supposed to be wonderful weather in Santa Barbara, apparently it rains on Sunday nights. So, time for soup!

I'd picked up some oyster mushrooms at the farmer's market because I am a big fan of wild mushrooms, but I'm too afraid for my safety to go mushroom hunting myself. I think the oyster mushrooms gave the soup a really good flavor that went well with the scallops, but I'm sure you can use any mushroom variety. My friend really wanted to have leeks in the soup. We are an indecisive bunch and it took a while for me to figure out that we should just make a creamy chowder. I think this soup came out really well, and it was all devoured so I think everyone else thought so, too!

I wanted to make it thick, so I started with a roux. It didn't really get very thick though. I didn't use too much flour because I didn't want it to be tooooo thick like a gravy or anything. I have a feeling if this soup had rested it might have thickened up but we ate it all immediately, so who knows. If you want it thicker, then you should use more flour/butter than I suggested in this recipe, but if you don't, then who cares!

The scallops were kind of an afterthought but I think they were really important to the flavor. You could of course vegetarianize this by not adding scallops, but I think if you did this, you'd want to add another vegetable (maybe carrots or something sort of sweet?) and/or a few more spices.

Ingredients
1 large potato, peeled, cut into 1/2" cubes
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 leeks, sliced into thin (~1/8 inch) rounds
1 shallot, minced
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups mushrooms (I used 1/2 oyster and 1/2 crimini), diced into small pieces
1 tsp thyme
1/2 cup sherry (keep the bottle around, you may want to add more)
3 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp flour
3 cups vegetable stock
3 cups milk (I suggest using at least 2%)
1 tsp ginger
1 lb bay scallops (the small ones), cut into small bite size pieces if you prefer
salt, pepper, cayenne to taste

Directions
1. Boil the potatoes in salted water until soft, about 5 minutes.
2. In a large pan or skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Add leeks and shallot and cook, stirring, until soft, 3-5 minutes. Add garlic and stir until fragrant. Add mushrooms and thyme and stir until the mushrooms are soft but not browned. (At any point in this step, if the pan is looking too dry, add a little oil or water to make sure things don't stick!) Add sherry and stir until the sherry is reduced to about half.
3. In a large soup pan, melt the butter. Add the flour and stir until it is fully mixed in and becomes a paste. My soup wasn't as thick as I'd wanted it to be, so you might want to start with more flour/butter, but I suggest using equal amounts of both.
4. Slowly add the stock to the roux. You want to make sure it mixes in fully and doesn't get lumpy.
5. Then add the milk and stir to mix fully.
6. Add the mushroom/leek mixture, making sure to scrape out all of the sherry glaze on the pan.
7. Add ginger, salt and pepper to taste. Keep it undersalted a little bit for now. You can add a little more sherry if you want at this point. This will give a rich, sweet taste. You want to add sherry before the next step (boiling) so the alcohol has time to cook off.
8. Bring the soup to a boil. Once it is boiling, add the scallops and boil for 3 minutes. The scallops shouldn't need more time than that, but test one to make sure it's done before serving!
9. Stir in the potatoes and add more salt, pepper and cayenne pepper as desired. I think creamy soups taste great with a strong bite of cayenne.
10. Serve! Garnish with more cayenne if you'd like. This soup goes well with Heather's family recipe bread.

Hash Browns

Breakfast is my favorite meal. I love cooking breakfast! I had some people over for brunch today and made hash browns, which I haven't made in a while. They take a while and it's best to make them for a group, I think. I have made them a few ways before, and I think this is the easiest way to make them. The onions in this recipe will obviously cook much faster than potatoes and will turn crunchy and delicious! This recipe makes about 4 servings.

Ingredients:
2 large baking potatoes (or any other combination of potatoes that is about that much quantity), chopped into 1/2 inch cubes (you can make them larger, but they will take longer to cook)
1/2 medium onion, diced
~4 Tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste (I used about 1.5 tsp kosher salt and 10 twists of pepper)
1 Tbsp potato starch (optional, this helps it get a little crunchier on the bottom. you can probably substitute corn starch but I don't know! you don't need the starch)

Directions:
1. Toss potatoes, onion, salt, pepper, potato starch, other spices and ~2 Tbsp oil (enough to cover everything) in a bowl.
2. Heat 2 Tbsp oil in the largest flat bottomed skillet you have over medium heat. I think a cast iron skillet works best because it gets nice and hot and helps facilitate a nice crunchy texture on the bottom, but if you don't have one, any skillet will do.
3. Pour potato mixture into skillet and spread out evenly over the whole skillet, press with a flipping spatula.
4. Let cook for 5 minutes.
5. Flip over all the potatoes, cook another 5 minutes.
6. Keep flipping/cooking until almost all of the potatoes look crunchy, usually 15-20 minutes.

This goes well with salsa, cheddar cheese, sour cream, sriracha (or other hot sauces), parmesan cheese, ketchup (ew! I hate ketchup! but other people don't...) or anything else you like on your potatoes!

Creamy Broccoli and Potatoes

I bought a crock pot a while back and so far I have only used it to make soups and chili. I really want to use it more. The vast majority of crock pot recipes use meat, which makes sense I guess. I read something somewhere a while back about making cheesy potatoes in a crockpot. I looked up a bunch of recipes and they are all pretty similar. So, this is based off the whole internet, and some things I wanted to get out of my fridge/pantry.



This is pretty tasty but pretty heavy, because it's full of carbs and dairy! It actually tasted better the second day, maybe the flavors needed some time to blend? I think next time I will use cheddar cheese soup instead of mushroom. I saw some recipes that called for cream of mushroom, others for cream of celery and others for cream of cheddar. I think the cheddar is what my taste buds really wanted! I was really worried about the sauce being too thick. Some recipes called for just cream cheese and undiluted soup. It seems like that would be really, really thick and I was worried about the potatoes drying out/not cooking, so I added a can of evaporated milk. I think any other dairy would be fine as well, depending on how much fat you want to add! The broccoli was a good idea because a) it adds some color/something other than the heaviness of the starch and b) adding the water actually would have made it too liquid-y without the broccoli, I think. As made, I thought the consistency of the sauce was perfect.

This makes a huge quantity! And I'd suggest eating it as a side dish instead of a main course, so it feeds many. You could reduce the amount of potatoes, but then you might have too much sauce.

Ingredients:
4 Tbsp butter (1/2 stick) (you can probably use oil, use less or eliminate all together)
8 oz Neufchâtel cheese (or cream cheese)
12 oz can evaporated milk
10 oz can condensed cream of mushroom soup (or other creamy soup, see above!)
1/4 cup water
1 Tbsp oregano
1-2 tsp Kosher salt (to taste!)
2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
red chili flakes to taste (I used 1 Tbsp, which I think was too much, not because it was too spicy, but it was just too dominant of a flavor)
2 lbs potatoes, diced into 1/2"-1" pieces (I used red, yellow and blue potatoes because they are pretty!)
1/2 large onion, diced into 1/2"-1" pieces
1 large head of broccoli, chopped into 2" pieces, I keep the stems because I like them, but feel free to toss if you don't!

Directions:
1. Lightly grease the inside of a crock pot with cooking spray or butter.
2. Turn the crock pot on high. Melt butter and cream cheese and stir to mix.

3. Add evaporated milk, soup, water and spices and stir thoroughly.

4. Mix in potatoes and onions.

5. Reduce heat to low and cook for 6 hours, adding broccoli only for the last 30 minutes.