Potato

Crunchy, flavorful, refreshing, nourishing, and colorful, this salad makes a fine meal by itself. Its assortment of vegetables, apples, nuts, and cheese should be fresh and well prepared. It is especially important to use a top-quality table cheese, because it is a major contributor of taste and texture. In Trentino–Alto Adige, this salad would always have a fresh local cheese, most likely an Asiago pressato, made with milk from farms in the province of Trento (and the neighboring Veneto region). Aged only 20 days, this young cheese has a sweetness and soft, chewy consistency that’s perfect in salad. If you can’t find genuine Italian Asiago, don’t buy the inferior cheeses called Asiago produced in other countries (including the United States). Choose instead Montasio—a favorite of mine from my home region, Friuli—similarly soft and sweet, though richer and more complex than Asiago. Cubes of fresh Grana Padano (which also is made in Trento) or even good American cheddar, younger and on the mild side, would be great here as well. You can dress this salad in advance and set it out on a buffet. In that case, though, I suggest you add the walnuts just before serving, so they remain crunchy.

This is a terrific salad for your repertoire, especially in winter, when vegetable choices are limited (though I like it any time of year). It is tasty and versatile, good as a side dish for grilled chicken, lamb chops, or pork chops, and substantial enough to be a meal in itself. It doesn’t wilt and is excellent for a buffet table or picnic. Best of all, you can make and dress it ahead of time—in fact, it gets better if you do.

These tasty canederli are fried and baked rather than poached, with a potato-cake crustiness that is delicious any time of day. Serve them with eggs for a special breakfast or brunch, with a salad for lunch, or with juicy meats, like the Roasted Chicken with Beer (page 17), or Beef Braised in Beer (page 19). And they are also good (though not crusty) if you poach them—follow the procedures for the preceding canederli di speck.

To save yourself some chopping, look for bags of mixed, pre-cut braising greens, available at some supermarkets. (Buy spinach separately for the gremolata.) Serve with warm bread for a filling main course.

The Thanksgiving table would not be complete without potatoes to absorb all that delicious gravy. Mashed potatoes are the most common, but sometimes you yearn for something with a bit more texture. That's where the Swiss rösti potato cake is ideal. Although you'll see some recipes for rösti that start with raw potatoes, it's more commonly done with whole cooked boiling potatoes that have been chilled at least eight hours, if not a day ahead. Once they are peeled and coarsely grated, you pack the shreds into a skillet and brown the cake on top of the stove. Instead of going through the angst of attempting to flip the cake over to brown the other side, just turn on the broiler and it browns easily in a fraction of the time.

Potatoes are, without doubt, my favorite vegetable. You can keep your squashes and artichokes, your fennel and snow peas, your kohlrabi and endive just as long as I have my potatoes. After all, according to A. A. Milne, "If a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow." But what's so good about potatoes? In a word: versatility. Once you think you know every way that you can cook a potato, another one comes along, and the Swiss rösti stretches the possibilities of the mighty tuber even further. I fell in love with its great blend of 'tato textures: crispy on the inside, creamy in the middle, it makes an ideal hungover breakfast with poached eggs on top. The best way to prepare the potatoes is to boil them in their skins the night before and place them, unpeeled, in an airtight container in the fridge, for use up to 24 hours later. But if you haven't been able to organize this, just leave them to cool down for at least 30 minutes before grating them. A word of warning: watch those shaky hands with wobbly poached eggs!

This dish might not be to everyone's (westernized) taste on a hungover morning, and it's also a breakfast with many components—rice, grilled fish, miso soup, pickles and a Japanese-style omelette—and some relatively obscure ingredients. Having said that, this is as clean, wholesome and nutritious as breakfast gets, so if anything is going to make you feel better it may well be this. However, I advise you to steer clear of tofu with a hangover (vegetarians: you may shoot me now); I've used cubes of potato instead.

These cinnamon buns are well worth the extra effort to make. They're so moist, sticky, cinnamon-y, and delicious you'll never miss those sugar-laden ones sold at malls. P.S. These smell even better than "those" when they're baking...and they don't have a million calories. Make them vegan by using butter and milk substitutes.

Panino alla Primanti
Just down Smallman Street from our Lidia's restaurant, I have serious sandwich competition in Primanti's, a Pittsburgh institution. I am charmed by their incredibly oversized warm capicola sandwich stuffed with French fries and coleslaw. I am not sure where in the U.S.A. this tradition of stuffing a sandwich with French fries became Italian, but the sandwich was so tall that I could not open my mouth wide enough to get my first bite. Primanti's started as a sandwich pushcart, manned by Joe Primanti, in the Strip in the 1930s, selling sandwiches to truck drivers. One night, a trucker wanted to check if his load of frozen potatoes were good, so Joe Primanti cooked them up. Customers began asking for them, and to expedite the service they were added to the sandwich.

Serve these pillowy rolls along with the ham and set out small bowls of your favorite mustards. Double the recipe for a large crowd—or, if you want to forgo baking your own, brush store-bought rolls with the egg wash, sprinkle with the caraway salt, and warm them in the oven.

Duck fat and potatoes are a match made in heaven in this rustic, savory galette (bacon fat makes a fine substitute).

This mash gets a punch of flavor from freshly grated horseradish. Use a combination of potato varieties to add more texture.

To ensure that the grated potatoes bind together in this classic Swiss dish, squeeze as much liquid out of them as you can.

How do you take gnocchi to the next level? Bake them in cream and melty gorgonzola cheese, of course.

Crackling and textured on the outside and super-creamy inside, this three-ingredient recipe couldn't be simpler (or more delicious). Pair the potatoes with any roast for the perfect one-two combination.

Forget the salad. This colorful assortment of vegetables will stay fresh and snappy on the buffet all night long.

We've rarely gone out for Indian food without including aloo gobi among our selections. It's a vegetarian/vegan standard. This rendition comes together quickly, and the tofu mimics paneer, the bland, soft cheese found in some Indian dairy dishes.

I became obsessed with chips around 1992, before I had even opened the Fat Duck, and this was probably the first recipe that I could call my own. It has since cropped up in restaurants and pubs all over the place. Achieving the crisp, glass-like exterior depends on getting rid of moisture from the potato and creating little cracks in the surface where the oil will collect and harden, making it crunchy.

Chef Todd Aarons of Tierra Sur at Herzog Wine Cellars in Oxnard, California, shared this recipe as part of a Hanukkah cocktail party menu he created exclusively for Epicurious. These potato and Jerusalem artichoke latkes fry up quickly and are best served immediately, but if necessary, they can be held briefly in a warm oven. If you can't find Jerusalem artichokes—also known as sunchokes—Aarons recommends substituting parsnips or celery root.