Ask The Foodie : Pick the Perfect Potato December 13, 2007

What is a potato bar and can I go there to pick up chicks?

“And I knew, as I gazed into her deep green eyes from the other side of the chafing dish full of beef stroganoff, that I could ask her something I’d been dying to ask for hours… if she could please pass me the sour cream.”

OK, so this probably isn’t quite what will happen to you this holiday season (or maybe it is, who knows) but potato bars really are one of the best solutions for a busy ChrismHaunaSolstiKwanzzaka season – or anytime you need to feed a large, fairly varied group of people. They tend to be a favorite of catering services because they’re fairly easy to set up, everyone gets an option as to what they eat, and the preparation can be as complicated or as simple as you want to make it.

The basic idea of a potato bar is baked potatoes with a wide variety of toppings, set up so each person – even vegetarians – can choose what goes on their spud. Usually the toppings will include some combination of butter, sour cream, bacon bits, cheese (or cheese sauce), steamed vegetables, chili, and beef stroganoff.

Of course, the most important element of a good potato bar is a good baked potato. Now, I admit, I’m an Idaho Girl. And at some point, I will probably go off on every different potato type and what they are perfect for (because even I admit russets aren’t the ideal spud for every use). However, for a good, basic baked potato, a russet really is one of your best options. It doesn’t have the waxiness of Yukon Gold or New Red potatoes, and is exceptionally easy to prepare and bake without paying too much attention to. The 16% (average) starch content makes them nice and fluffy, and the relatively low water content means they bake easily. I won’t even say that you have to use Idaho taters (the tuber cops are on my door for this), but a good russet is the way to go.

So, how to bake them? Two options – oven and microwave. I recommend the oven for this – you’ll get more than 2 taters done at a time, and the skins will be much much more tasty. Save the microwave for your one-or-two spuds for breakfast or a weeknight dinner.

Wash the spuds. Use a veggie brush if you’ve got it, or the roughest, scratchiest washcloth you own. You don’t have to scrub off the skin, but you do want to get the dirt off. Pat the taters dry. Now comes the fun part – pull out your can of vegetable shortening and spoon out a few teaspoons into a separate bowl. Get a very small amount of it on your hand, then rub it all over each potato until they are coated. Then stick them in a 400 – 450 degree oven for about an hour, or until you can easily stick a fork in one. The grease provides a very thin layer of protection for the skin and helps keep it soft during baking, without hindering the ability of the potato to evaporate water. DO NOT wrap potatoes in foil to bake them! When you do this, you seal in all the steam, and you end up with a wet, mushy, soggy potato instead of a light, fluffy potato.

If you are microwaving, just wash the potato, stick it with a fork a few times (to allow the steam to escape) and microwave on high for 5-10 minutes (10-15 for two, 15-20 for three), or until you can easily stick a fork through it.

To set up your own easy potato bar, bake a bunch of potatoes, heat up some of your favorite (even canned) chili, microwave some frozen vegetables, and set out pre-shredded cheese, sour cream, and butter. Spend the remaining 45 minutes while you wait for the potatoes to bake actually enjoying your own party!

After dinner, save any leftover baked potatoes. After a night in the fridge, they are practically perfect for *real* hashed browns the next morning! Just shred them with a cheese grater (or cut them into chunks) and cook in a frying pan with butter, salt, onion powder, and pepper.  Yum!

See It Make It : Spanakopita December 4, 2007

These appetizers, also known as Terapitas, are not “quick, just-throw-them-together” treats. Start to finish time is usually somewhere between 90 minutes and 2 hours. While they are not necessarily difficult, they do take time, concentration, and effort – so I would recommend starting them sometime before your third glass of wine. You can also forgo the wrapping the filling up in phyllo dough, and just use the filling as a veggie dish on top of pasta.

Filling:
1/3 cup olive oil
1 bunch green onions, chopped
Green Onions are also known as “scallions” – you’ll see this name in a lot of Mediterranean cookbooks

2 10-oz. packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
See this post for more info if you’re using your own spinach. To “squeeze dry”, thaw your spinach in low power for 2-5 minutes in the microwave. Then place the spinach on the center a thin, lint-free towel. Gather the four corners of the towel around the spinach, then hold it over the sink and squeeze down. Green water should come pouring out. Do this until it’s reduced down to a drip. This removes all excess water and helps keep your recipe from getting soggy.

1 bunch parsley, chopped
You can pick up parsley in the produce section of just about any grocery store. One “bunch” is usually wrapped up with a rubber band or veggie tie of some sort. If it’s not, anywhere from 10-20 stalks is usually a good estimation. Rinse it, then place small bunches of it on your cutting board and chop using a large cooking knife, in a rocking motion. Don’t worry about getting the pieces tiny – just a rough chop works well here.

1 teaspoon dill weed, chopped
As with parsley, you can pick up dill fresh in the produce section – it’s usually in small plastic packages. If you don’t find any fresh, or have dried dill already in your house, use two teaspoons of the dried herbs. This usually goes for most dried vs. fresh herbs – dried simply isn’t as pungent, so you should use more of it.

1/2 pound feta cheese, crumbled
Most packages of feta no longer come packed in water, so don’t worry about “draining” it if the package you buy doesn’t have much water. If it does, however, don’t forget this step! Feta is very salty, and the water it is packed in will add quite a bit of salt that you don’t necessarily want in your recipe.

Assembly:
3 lightly beaten eggs
Just crack them into a bowl and whip them for a few seconds with a fork. All you need to do here is break the yolks and mix them up a bit.

1 pound unsalted butter
The unsalted here is important. The feta cheese adds plenty of salt – and while the amount of salt in butter is usually negligible, it is noticeable here.

1 pound phyllo pastry
Phyllo is usually right by the frozen pie crusts. Be sure to get the “sheets” of phyllo and not the “shells.” Phyllo is a very very very thin dough that can be a pain in the arse to work with. Buy it a day or two in advance and let it defrost in the freezer. Because the sheets are so thin, they dry out very quickly and rip very easily. The good news is, because you’ll work with several layers at once, a rip or four isn’t that big of a deal. The easiest way to handle phyllo is to unroll it onto a cookie sheet, then cover it with a sheet of plastic wrap and a damp, clean kitchen towel. Get each piece out as you need it, and keep the rest covered. This will help keep it from drying out so quickly, and keep it easier to work with.

Over medium heat, warm the olive oil in a large frying pan and saute the green onions until soft – about 3 minutes. Add the spinach and heat, stirring occasionally, until warmed through. Add remaining the parsley, dill, and feta; blend well. Cool completely.

To assemble: Melt the butter by microwaving for 30 seconds, then stirring until it is almost entirely liquid.

On a cutting board, slice the phyllo into approximately 2-inch wide strips. A pizza cutter works wonderfully for this. Cover the dough with a sheet of plastic wrap and a damp kitchen towel.

Separate one two-inch strip of two layers of dough, and using a new paintbrush or pastry brush, brush the dough with butter. Spoon a small amount of the filling onto the end of the strip. Fold into a triangle like a flag (begin by taking a top corner of the dough and folding it over the filling into a triangle shape. Fold that triangle down, wrapping the filling, and continue until you’ve reached the end of the strip.) Brush with beaten eggs and place on a baking sheet. Once you have a full sheet, bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes, or until golden brown.

Can be kept for 2 days in fridge. Or, freeze the unbaked triangles and allow to defrost for 30 minutes at room temperature before baking.

Try this with fresh basil or thyme instead of dill or parsley. Or, replace the frozen spinach with other chopped, frozen leafy greens. The feta can also be switched out, just be sure to use “dry” crumbly cheeses such as Parmesan. Cheddar and other oily cheeses will melt all over your baking pan and soak through the dough – yuck! (I, sadly, speak from experience here.)

Ask the Foodie : Storing Leafy Greens November 20, 2007

Q: How do you extend the life of spinach or other greens? They seem to go bad SO quickly.

The two things that make leafy greens spoil quickly are moisture and air – they work in tandem with bacteria to break down the cell walls and create the “slime” that coats greens after a few days in the fridge. When vegetables look fresh from the store (or better yet, the garden) the cells are full of water and push out against their cell walls (this is, honestly, known as “turgid”). As soon as a plant is cut off from it’s water source, the cells start to very slowly lose water via evaporation. When this happens, the cell walls start to collapse in on themselves and the leaves begin to wilt.

Eventually, the cells have lost enough water that the cell walls start to break down and create that “slime” that shows up after a few days in the fridge.

The first instinct most people have is to seal up leafy greens in an airtight container in order to prevent evaporation. However, this usually leads to them spoiling even more quickly. This is because the water still evaporates from the cells, but with nowhere to go, it hangs out in the air near the leaves and adds more moisture and “weight” to the air, which encourages the cells to break down even more quickly.

The best way to store leafy greens in the short-term (up to a week or so) is to wash them in cold water, pat them mostly-dry, and wrap them in paper towels (no more than one or two layers of greens – if you have more, layer them with more paper towels). Then put this paper-towel-greens layering into a plastic grocery sack, and store it in your fridge (the “veggie” drawer if you have one.) The slightly damp paper towels get a degree or two colder than the fridge and help slow down how fast water evaporates from the cells. The grocery sack protects the greens from the breezes in your fridge while still allowing what moisture does seep out to actually evaporate.

If you want to freeze your leafy greens, however, you’ll need to treat them a bit more harshly. If you just throw the leaves in the freezer, then the water inside the cells will freeze, expand, and burst. Burst cells equals plant mush. It’s easiest to process leafy greens for freezing in medium to large batches, because you’ll need to get a few things set up.

First, get a large bowl and fill it with half water, half ice.
Second, wash your greens. Don’t worry about drying them.
Third, in a large, wide-mouth pot, boil some salt water (about 1 tablespoon salt for every 2-3 cups water)

Using tongs, take a bunch of the greens and dunk them in the boiling salt water for about a minute. Pull them out and immediately dunk them in the ice water. The boiling water kills bacteria and softens the plant fibers. The cold water stops the cooking process, so you don’t have fully cooked (and therefore mushy) greens on your hands. Once the greens are nice and chilled, either 1- wrap them in paper towel, seal in an airtight zip lock (evaporation isn’t an issue in the freezer) and freeze; or 2- chop them into small bits, seal in a small zip lock bag, and freeze. You won’t want to use these frozen greens for salads, but in dips, baked dinners, or soups, they are amazing.

However you choose to store, process, and use your leafy greens, they’re worth enjoying. Thanks to Laurie, my beloved plant geek, for making sure I remembered my basic cell biology correctly!

Ask the Foodie : Veggie Bake November 17, 2007

Q: Is there any way to bake vegetables without them drying out?

Short answer: add moisture 🙂

Long answer: There are several options, depending on what kind of vegetable you’re talking about. To understand why this happens, you need to understand how an oven works. When you bake with an oven, you are using hot, dry air to cook something from the outside in. This hot, dry air caramelizes the sugars in food (turns them brown and crispy), which gives cookies that dark brown edge,vegetables that slightly sweet flavor, and breads their crust.

However, because the air is so hot, it tends to drive away humidity and moisture, much like a desert does. With no source of water, it gets rather parched inside your oven. So when the water molecules in the food you’re baking get hot, they evaporate rather than staying in the food.

So how do you solve this? Several ways:

First, try the microwave. I know, I know, this is sacrilegious. However, a microwave cooks food by exciting the molecules already inside the food, rather than evaporating and baking. This makes it an exceptionally good choice for already dry and/or stringy vegetables, such as squash. You are, in effect, steaming what you microwave in its own water and juices rather than “baking” it. However, this means you don’t get that brown, baked taste.

Second, try wrapping the veggies up in foil, perhaps with a bit of water, then baking them. What happens here is you create a “microclimate” where the water that evaporates from the veggies gets caught, and sticks around to create a humid environment.

Third, take a page from bread bakers in dry climates, and put a glass dish full of boiling water in the oven along with the veggies. You are, again, simply raising the ambient humidity of the oven, so not as much moisture evaporates.

Fourth, try “pan baking” – saute the veggies in a frying pan just long enough to get the carmelization, then add a few tablespoons of water or broth and cover with a tight-fitting lid. “Bake” on the stovetop, over low to medium heat, until the vegetables are tender. This combines steaming and baking. You could also saute and then microwave, although I wouldn’t recommend it, because that would cook everything at different rates, and you’d end up with mushy veggies.

Good luck!

Have a question? Ask the foodie! Email jadetater (a) yahoo [dot] com