Archive for the 'Sides' Category

©2008 Harry Kenney

Cooks are generally pretty imaginative. That said, when something gets popular, everyone jumps on the bandwagon. In the last few years we’ve seen the big bulsamic vinegar craze, and then there was the Parmesano Reggiano fad, and of course endive has long replaced the boring iceberg lettuce as the salad staple. The first one is still going, though I see some chefs lately such as Bobby Flay starting to use sherry vinegar instead; and as for grated cheese, it seems of late Pecorino Romano is the food world’s “new black”.

What brings this up? Especially in terms of this particular dish? Well while there’s not too much wrong with everyone jumping on a bandwagon (well, there is to some degree), the thing is few people seem to know when to jump off that wagon, not even when it’s been run into the ground. And that brings me to the mango. Like most people I enjoy it, and yes, I’m sure I will use mango in future recipes just as I have in the past. But, please folks, there is a world beyond. In short, the wide-spread massive over-use of the mango to the exclusion of everything else stops here.

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©2008 Harry Kenney

Chefs are funny people. Normally they’re drawn to foods that are inherently flavorful. Sometimes, as a challenge I think, they are also drawn to things not so flavorful, but which if cooked a certain way can be made tasty and tender. Meats that are very lean such as rabbit or venison which need long time cooking and often a fat added to them come to mind.

Then there are these foods such as couscous and polenta which basically are, well, by themselves quite bland — and in recent years top chefs go nuts over it. Apparently because they can infuse taste to them. I sorta get it and I sorta don’t …. depends upon the food, the technique, the time it takes and my mood for that day. All of that said, of course this polenta is indeed tasty. For me the taste infusion comes from the long roast, browning and carmalization, and adding cheese that does it.

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©2008 Harry Kenney

So how do I follow up a recipe on prime rib? Why, this way. Am I crazy? Like a fox. How can I top prime rib? How does a successful recording artist top a monster selling album? The same way. You don’t. You go different. And that’s the thing here at cooking @ home …. It’s home cooking. And that runs the gamet. Or at least it should. You might see on this page prime rib and stuffed mushrooms, but you might also see french fries and meatloaf and beef stew.

Home cooking doesn’t have to be “plebian” for lack of a better word. It can be (although I have problems with this word too) “gourmet”. On the same note it doesn’t have to be all gourmet either. It’s all of it. Why? Because that’s exactly what cooking at home means. You — and I — are doing this at home, and we might have hot dogs and soup one day and filet mignon with a panna cotta dessert the following. Same person cooking, same kitchen. We can and we should do what we want, and that is from simple everyday meals up to five-star dining. At home. And on that note …

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French fries. Another item that is so very “all-American”, yet, as with the people who populate the U.S., it came from elsewhere. We just popularized it. How can anyone not like the quintessential “fry”. It goes with everything. Like it’s cousin, the potato chip, you put it on the side of something else and it turns whatever it’s accompanying into a meal.

And name any other food in the world in which all women will say they don’t want, but when your meal comes with fries, they will eat a third of them from your plate! Admit it, ladies. Guys, you know this is true.

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This year I wanted to make stuffing from scratch and I wanted to do something completely different from the usual, traditional Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing. I also wanted it to be something a bit more “modern”. Seems chorizo is all the rage, and as I finally got my hands on some — yes, it’s easier to find in the South and Southwest then here in the Northeast — so I decided that was where I would go with this recipe.

Now then we have the words “stuffing” and “dressing”. So what is what with that? Well, they’re pretty interchangeable, basically. In the US, stuffing is used more often in the Eastern and Southern areas, whereas dressing more preferable in the rest of the country. That said, none of this is written in stone by any means.

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Here’s another side — one I did for Thanksgiving — and yet another “odd” root vegetable. Now, depending upon where you live, you’re saying “that’s not at all odd; we have it all the time”. Here in the Northeastern United States, well, common as it is at the market during the winter, it’s also one of those vegetables most people tend to pass up when they’re shopping. Often for the same reason as they might a rutabaga or the various winter squashes, simply because they are both unsure of what it is and of how to cook it. (But then that’s why you come here to find out, isn’t it?)

While the recipe itself is one of the simplest and shortest, there does need to be a some-what extended backstory here. You see, not only is this vegetable very much confused with at least two other veggies, but to make matters worse, depending upon what country you live in, they all have different names. And, of course, to compound things still further these differing names all confuse each other, meaning the same veggie called one thing in one place, that same name refers to a totally different vegetable in yet another place.

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If you’re coming here for leftover turkey recipes, sorry. I work in “real time” like you. What does that mean? Well, it means beginning today I’ll start putting up recipes for what I had for Thanksgiving. But wait, shouldn’t I have put them up last week or the week before, you might be asking. You know, back when you were interested in such things. Like, before Thanksgiving? Well, as I said, I do what you do; I work in “real time”.

Again, what does that mean? It means I’m not the Food Network. I’m not even PBS. I don’t get paid for this. I am not given money by someone to go purchase a mess of food and cooking it all up weeks ahead of time. And then who would eat it all? My vast kitchen or network staff? You know, the one’s I don’t have. So that is why I don’t have things ahead of time. Because I am just like you. Average everyday person making meals on and for the days I’m going to eat them.

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This began as one of my experiment meals a good decade or longer ago. You go to restaurants, you see various veggies in the rice. Get a box of Rice-a-roni, little carrots or peas in the rice. So, what the heck, one night way back when, I put two dishes together, spinach and rice. They tasted good, looked great together. My mother and step-father Dave who I was cooking for enjoyed it a lot, as did I.

Can’t say it was great, but it was darn good. As time went on I started to mess with it more — aka, perfect it. Adding raw onion was too bitey. Dave thought it was an improvement though. Mom and I didn’t. Then again, Dave could smother so much horseradish sauce on a hot dog you couldn’t see the hot dog.

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I needed a side for my oven BBQ brisket. Yeah I had little baked potatoes and some fresh coleslaw, but I still wanted something warm and flavorful and that was (for lack of better words) very “veggie”. I also wanted something more “regional” … in this case, southern or western or southwestern. It just seemed like that would go right with my indoor BBQ meal.

Now last week there were quite a few things I had bought for my BBQ party that I never made it out to the table. Why is that, you may ask? A combination of my being too ambitious, wanting to make too much food than was necessary, as well as for various reasons six people, three couples basically, had to bale out because of sickness or previous commitments. So there just wasn’t the impetuous to cook twice the amount of food for half the amount of people.

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At last, some true “play time” with food. I let my inner child run amok and came up with a grown-up fantasy come true. This is, as the title suggests, what I consider to be my ultimate twice baked potato.

Well, almost. I couldn’t believe when I shopping the day before the party I could not find a good, large baking potato! Must be a Murphy’s Law thing. If I didn’t care, they would have been there at the store the size of watermelons. But no, the day I want to get a big bag of really large ones, every single bag of russets — and not an Idadho in the place — contained pm;u three inch and unders.

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