Potato

Leftover mashed potatoes work wonderfully in this recipe.

This recipe can be frozen and whipped out whenever company comes over. Also try stuffing the potatoes with different kinds of cheese, sautéed shrimp, etc. Makes a great meal with a green salad.

This dish is indigenous to Savannah and our lifestyle. Calling up a dozen friends for a cookout is a great casual way to entertain, especially if the food is cooked outside over an open flame (you can also use a portable gas fish cooker). Once the Low Country Boil has been cooked and drained, I like to pour it out on a table covered with newspaper.

Poached veal tongue is one of the ingredients in the classical Italian dish bollito misto, boiled mixed meats. It is one of my favorite dishes, but even without the other four or five meats I enjoy the poached tongue. The brining somewhat cures the meat and makes it retain the lively pinkish color throughout.

In my family, favorite dishes are always being altered according to what is available and what is best—especially when I’m cooking. Here’s a perfect example: chicken and potatoes, fried together in a big skillet so they’re crisp and moist at the same time, is my mother’s specialty. Growing up, my brother and I demanded it every week; our kids, Tanya and Joe and Eric, Paul and Estelle, clamored for it too. And now the next generation of little ones are asking their great-grandmother to make chicken and potatoes for them. When I am at the stove—and though I follow my mother’s basic procedures—I can’t resist playing around. Some days I add sausage to Grandma’s recipe, or capers or olives; I might douse the chicken with a splash of vinegar; sometimes I cut up a whole chicken, other times I’ll split little poussins or Cornish hens. If I’m in a hurry, I quickly cook small pieces of chicken breast with the potatoes. (You can see what experiments have worked well if you look through my previous books.) This recipe gives you Erminia’s classic formula—chicken, small potatoes, a bit of onion, and fresh rosemary—with two of my latest twists: pickled cherry peppers and bacon strips, in bite-sized rolls. Cherry peppers are plump golf-ball–sized antipasto peppers in vinegar that you’ll find in jars on the pickle shelves of the supermarket. They come in sweet and hot varieties—and the latter are explosive, if you take just a bite. But when they’re seeded, sliced, and added sparingly to the chicken, they imbue the dish with a mellow heat that I love. If you and your family are hot heads, cut up two or more peppers; otherwise slice only one, or use the sweet cherry peppers and see how you like that. My latest spin on our chicken-and-potato tradition is one everybody loves, especially the kids: we roll bacon slices into little bundles, pin each one closed with a toothpick, and caramelize them along with the chicken. The bacon fat slowly renders and lends the meat a layer of flavor that’s picked up by the potatoes and onions too. By the end of cooking, the rolls have turned into crisp morsels that are a treat to eat with the juicy chicken and tender potatoes. (But be sure to remove all the toothpicks!)

Poached zucchini, cut into rounds or cubes, is a terrific salad ingredient. This salad is a lovely combination of tastes and colors, but you can follow the same basic approach without the potatoes, without the eggs, or even without the onions. If you are preparing zucchini and potatoes for salad, it’s easy to cook them in one pot of water. Start boiling them together and remove the zucchini when they are “droopy,” as described in the main recipe. Usually the potatoes will need to cook a bit longer, until they are easily pierced with a fork or sharp knife. Let everything cool, then toss your salad and dress it just before serving.

This versatile soup base is not really a broth, in the way my turkey broth is—that is, a clear liquid strained of all the ingredients that gave it flavor. In truth, the base starts cooking with several pounds of potatoes, carrots, and celery, and they stay in there. Yet, remarkably, it ends up light, clear, and clean-tasting, like a broth. To enjoy the clarity and consistency of the base, often I’ll add nothing more than rice, for texture and flavor. Onion and poached garlic make a flavorful yet light cream soup. On the other hand, I might fill the base with lots of textured ingredients, like mushrooms and barley, or lentils and ditalini pasta. And vegetables that break down during cooking and melt away, such as parsnip or winter squash and chestnut, utterly transform the texture.