Skip to main content

Potato

Spicy Potato Stacks

Look for potatoes of similar diameter so that they line up easily when stacked. You should be able to get 3 to 4 slices from the Yukon Gold and red potatoes and 5 to 6 slices from each sweet potato. To make these stacks hot and spicy, add cayenne pepper to the barbecue spice blend. You can also slice an onion into very thin rings, coat with the same spices and roast alongside the potatoes. Insert a roasted onion slice between each potato slice.
Parve
Non-gebrokts

Kale, Potato, and Onion Frittata

All hail kale: Research shows it turns on your body's natural detoxifying enzymes to help ward off lung and stomach cancers.

Braised Short Ribs with Potatoes and Apples "Risotto Style"

This is a Web-exclusive recipe for Epicurious from chef David Padberg at Park Kitchen in Portland, Oregon. It's perfect for serving to watch the Super Bowl or on any cold, wintery night.

Sweet Potato Soufflé

This is a nice variation on regular sweet potatoes for a Thanksgiving side dish. It's almost a dessert, it's so sweet!

Root Vegetable Fries

Roasted potatoes are good and all, but a roasted root vegetable medley is just as easy to make and a little bit fancy too. Substitute any root vegetable, including starchy potatoes, turnip, parsnip, celery root, or rutabaga. While the veggies are roasting, toss a garlic bulb or two into the pan at about the 30-minute mark—the result: easy, creamy garlic! Yum.

Fillet of Fish in Parchment

Making a parchment envelope in which to steam a fillet of fish surrounded by aromatic vegetables may sound a bit fancy for just one, but cooking in parchment is actually one of the simplest and most effective ways of steaming, because it seals in the flavors. What a treat it is to have that golden-tinged, puffed-up half-moon of parchment on your plate, and then to tear it open and breathe in all the heady aromas. Moreover, you’ll have no cleanup afterward; just wipe off the Silpat mat and throw away the parchment after you’ve scraped and scooped up every last delicious morsel and its jus. If you want just one meal out of this, get about a 6-ounce fillet of flounder, halibut, salmon, red snapper—whatever looks good. Or, as I did recently, try tilapia, which is quite readily available these days and at a reasonable price. But bought almost twice the amount I needed, so I could play with the other half of the cooked fillet a couple of days later. I learned from Katy Sparks, whose book, Sparks in the Kitchen, is full of great cooking tips from a chef to the home cook, the trick of pre-roasting several slices of new potato so they can go in the parchment package. This way you have a complete, balanced meal-in-one cooked all together.

Boeuf Bourguignon

Make this rich stew on a leisurely weekend. You’ll probably get a good three meals out of it, if you follow some of the suggestions below. When buying stew meat at a supermarket, you don’t always know what you are getting, so ask the butcher. If it’s a lean meat, it will need less time cooking (in fact, it will be ruined if you cook it too long), but the fattier cuts can benefit from at least another half hour.

Heaven-and-Earth Tempura Cakes

All sorts of neglected or leftover vegetable bits can be transformed into these lovely, lacy-crisp, colorful tempura pancakes.

Candied Sweet Potato

Daigaku Imo Hanamaru Market, a highly successful, long-running Japanese television talk show, opens with a short cooking segment every weekday morning. Finding ways to make impressive classic cuisine simpler and less technically demanding is the theme of many of the episodes. In the autumn of 2008, one of the broadcasts featured an innovative recipe for daigaku imo (candied sweet potatoes) that topped all previous viewer-rating charts. Indeed, as of this writing, nearly a year later, it remains the all-time favorite. Syrup-glazed, black sesame-studded sweet potato first became a popular snack among university students at the turn of the twentieth century. Indeed, that is the origin of the name of the dish: daigaku means "university" and imo is "potato." Most recipes for daigaku imo instruct the cook to deep-fry sweet potato chunks first and glaze them afterward. Although delicious, the classic version results in a high-calorie snack that is messy both to make and to clean up. In contrast, the Hanamaru Market version offers a (relatively) healthy snack.

Goat Gratin

This casserole is based loosely on the French home-cooking standard, le miroton. If you fear goatiness, please turn the page. This dish celebrates the sweet carnality of the goat with abandon.

Potato and Kale Cakes with Rouille

Mashed potatoes take on a new form in this delicious dish. A mixture of mashed potatoes and wilted kale is shaped into patties and pan-fried, then paired with a dressed-up mayo. Serve as a first course or with a salad for a light lunch.

Rosemary-Rubbed Side of Salmon with Roasted Potatoes, Parsnips, and Mushrooms

A whole side of salmon makes for a light, delicious—and impressive—main course.
99 of 201