Yukon Gold Potato

This hearty dish, which is a great way to reinvigorate leftover Foster Family’s Pot Roast with Herb-Roasted Vegetables (page 199), is inspired by Southern dishes featuring “low” cuts of meat. With savory layers of potato, roast, and poached eggs finished with the cool heat of the Horseradish Mustard Vinaigrette and brightened with fresh greens, this crowd-pleaser makes for a decadent Sunday brunch, but it can just as comfortably double as the main event at dinner. Serve with warm, crusty toast for a complete meal.

These are my downfall—as are french fries, sweet potato fries, or anything else that involves spuds and a deep-fat fryer. I can resist the fudgiest brownies, chewiest cookies, or even the loveliest threelayer cakes, but I cannot walk away from a single salty potato chip. I’m a believer in the golden rule of party giving: Feed your guests as you would like to be fed yourself. No wonder my cocktail parties invariably include potato chips. I often serve them with Chipotle Ketchup (page 254), but sometimes I crave them bare with just a light shower of plain or fancy salt and a large glass of good red wine.

I’m such a purist about some things—I think all food people are. Tell me you’re putting beans and tomatoes in chili, and the Texas boy in me bristles. But when one of my friends, an Israeli man of Norwegian heritage, came to a pizza-tasting party and—before he sampled it, I should note—declared this pizza combination “wrong, just wrong,” why did it irritate me so much? Well, I suppose it’s because I’m neither Norwegian nor Italian, so I couldn’t understand why something so delicious could be anything but right. This combination was inspired by a pizza that friends told me I had to try from Coppi’s Organic in Washington, D.C. I’ve taken shameless liberties with it.

Salt isn’t fat soluble. On the face of it, this statement might not exactly make your spine tingle with excitement. Another unsexy observation: solid fat melts when heated. But combined, these two fatty facts provide the basis for one incomparably delicious meal. Heat a Himalayan salt block and toss on a duck breast, fat side down. The fat will immediately melt, but because salt isn’t fat soluble it will not dissolve, and the duck breast will pick up only the faintest trace of salt. When you flip the breast to the lean side, the moisture on the surface of the meat will start to flow and the meat will take on a beautiful glaze of salt that carries the whole dish. Meanwhile, you can fry potatoes in the hot fat glazing the salt block! Simple as this dish may seem, it makes the best duck breast I have ever eaten. Serve with a good Rhône or Languedoc wine.

The chicken is in the oven—heat forming a golden crust that seals in the juices, salt working its silent alchemy within, denaturing some of the proteins in tough muscles making those parts more tender and flavorful. Roasting is the easiest way to cook chicken and the tastiest. All that is required to reach perfection is time and the perfect salt. Sugpo Asin, a king among salts, glowing rose-cloud white, lush and firmly crunchy, with dulcet brine notes that play lavishly (but with discipline) against the sweet tamed gaminess of poultry, honors this basic meat and vegetable meal as all basic meals should be honored—asserting the preeminence of simple home cooking as the cornerstone of eating well.

Watercress (shown below) gives these mashed potatoes a peppery bite. They are a perfect accompaniment to fish, chicken, and mushroom entrées. Try serving them with the Grape and Ginger–Glazed Chicken (page 56). If you have leftovers, add hot stock to make a warming soup. Alternatively, whisk in milk or cream and serve as the classic cold potato soup vichyssoise.

This lighter take on cold spinach soup gets its rich texture from potatoes instead of the traditional cream. Lamb’s quarters grow wild and are sometimes considered a weed, but they taste like chard or spinach when cooked. Pea shoots are the young leaves and tendrils of pea plants (shown below). Long used in Chinese cooking, pea shoots have a strong, fresh pea flavor.

The key to this dish is the texture of the eggs—they should be airy and light. For fluffy eggs, take them out of the pan when they are just barely cooked. For a richer dish, use milk instead of water, or add a cup of Cheddar or other mild cheese just before the eggs leave the stove. Serve with Cilantro-Jalapeño Sauce (page 184), Tamarind Ketchup (page 178), or Citrus Chutney (page 182).

This savory mushroom dish is the vegetarian equivalent of a steak dinner. The rich taste and dense texture of the portobellos are complemented by creamy parsnips and lightly cooked greens.

Tortilla Española is an indispensable dish: It makes a great breakfast, goes well in a sandwich, and makes a hearty hors d’oeuvre when cut into small squares. The only challenge is removing the tortilla from the pan intact, but you can cheat by waiting until it’s cold. Embellish the tortilla with Stinging Nettle Pesto (page 115), Cilantro-Jalapeño Sauce (page 184), or plain ketchup. For a light meal, serve the tortilla alongside the Puntarelles with Anchovy Dressing (page 156) and fresh bread.

A French classic, this soup marries humble ingredients and well-executed technique to produce an excellent first course or a warming meal with cornbread on a cold winter night. When chilled, this is the famous vichyssoise, a great soup for a cool day. Omit the cream if you want a lighter soup.

This recipes involving as few dishes as possible. (I like to cook, not do dishes.) It’s also a bit larger than many of my vegetable dishes—it makes for delicious leftovers. Succotash has many versions, but all contain corn and beans. If butter beans are not available, I often substitute shelled edamame or black-eyed peas. Small farm stands, local and state farmer’s markets, and even the Whole Foods in my area usually carry shelled peas and butter beans in the summer. They are both doubly precious—extremely delicious and fairly expensive, the result of the luxury of not having to shell your own.

The bay tree at La Varenne is a monster, more than twenty feet tall. There’s a niche or cubbyhole on one side, the side that everyone approaches to cut fresh leaves for classes. I implore my students to discard the jars of brown, tasteless dried bay leaves in their pantries: even a semi-fresh bay leaf several weeks old from the fridge will have more flavor.

Years ago in France, many homes did not have an oven, so if anything was to be baked, it was taken to the local baker (boulanger) to cook in his oven. This recipe, known in France as pommes boulangère, is a healthy departure from classic potato recipes that use lots of butter and cream. It really shines with freshly harvested potatoes, when they are at their finest. Serve it with Herb Roast Chicken (page 110) for a warming winter meal.

Edamame is the Japanese word for soybean. Soybeans are somewhat mild in flavor, a cross between a pea and a fava bean. We’re lucky enough to sometimes find them fresh during the summer months, at the farmer’s market or a specialty store, but they are widely available frozen, both in the pod and shelled. Adults and children alike love edamame as a snack. Once the soybeans are cooked or reheated, drain them well, and season with coarse salt or sea salt. Squeeze the seeds directly from the pods into your mouth. Think highbrow boiled peanuts. Edamame may be eaten as a snack or a vegetable, and used in soups or stir-fries. I also like to mash them with potatoes, as in this recipe.

The key to a fluffy mash is to use the right tool: a ricer, a food mill, or an old-fashioned potato masher. A ricer resembles an overgrown garlic press. Cooked vegetables are placed in its hopper and forced through tiny holes with a plunger, producing a texture vaguely like that of rice. A food mill consists of a round metal bowl with a curved blade that turns with a hand crank. Secured to the bottom of the bowl are interchangeable disks with holes from fine to coarse. When you turn the crank, the blade mashes the cooked food through the holes. Both the ricer and the food mill produce exquisite mashes and purees with a smoother texture than the humble old-fashioned potato masher. These simple tools are the precursors to the efficient food processor. However, they do a better job than a processor or electric mixer for any mixture that contains potatoes, as both food processor and mixer produce a gummy mass instead of a silken puree. Meme had a ricer she used for years. Mama and I joke, “The Smithsonian called and wants their exhibit back.” The truth is, sometimes older is better.

Rich, buttery potatoes are the perfect foil for pungent, spicy, freshly grated horseradish, a fiery cousin to kale, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. Although bottled horseradish will do in a pinch, there’s nothing like the bite of the freshly grated root. For spectacular results, serve Pepper-crusted Beef with Cognac and Golden Raisins (page 93) or Braised Short Ribs (page 87) on a bed of this.

French-style potato purees are very finely processed, and often incorporate copious amounts of butter, so the resulting puree is silky smooth. In this recipe, the addition of celeriac to the potatoes creates another layer of flavor. Traditionally, in classic French cooking, white sauces use white pepper instead of black, making the finished dish appear more refined. When we were children and would see pepper in a dish we would complain, often without tasting, that it was “too hot.” Sneakily, Mama started using white pepper to pull the wool over our eyes.

One of the most common curry puff fillings features well-seasoned potatoes and a little meat. I like to use ground lamb because it pairs terrifically with the bold spice blend that Malay cooks often identify as meat curry powder. I’ve broken it down for you here, but feel free to substitute 2 1/4 teaspoons of your favorite curry powder (if salt is already in the powder, add salt to taste only after the filling is done). For a vegetarian rendition, omit the meat and increase the potato to 3/4 cup, adding extra water as needed during cooking.