Baked Potatoes Three Ways
By Sam Sifton
Twice-Baked Potatoes With Cauliflower and Cheese
By Sam Sifton
Baked Potatoes With Crab, Jalapeño and Mint
By Sam Sifton
The nights are coming faster now, and dead leaves rustle across grass and sidewalk. “Look at that moon,” Thornton Wilder wrote in “Our Town.” “Potato weather, for sure.”
Baked-potato weather, for sure. Slide a rack of russets into a hot oven for 45 minutes while you sort mail or pay bills, check email or help someone with homework. Set up a fixings bar of butter and bacon and Cheddar, chives and sour cream. The reward is one of the great, undervalued actors in all dinner theater: Mr. Split-Top himself, dressed in finery.
A recipe for basic baked potatoes follows. The key instructions are to pierce the jackets of the potatoes in a number of places to allow them to exhale steam as they cook; to lightly grease their exteriors with oil, so that they crisp; and to salt them a little, just because.
Be patient as they cook, and feel absolutely no pressure to accompany them with anything but toppings. If bacon and Cheddar do not appeal, you can try a combination of thyme, chervil and chives. The hedge-fund set may prefer a heaping tablespoon of caviar.
Dressed to your tastes, a baked potato makes a nice accompaniment to a slice of prime rib or a steak, even a roasted chicken. It is also quite nice served with a tart salad.
But a baked potato can be a meal too. This is particularly the case when you start making additions to the starch — cauliflower and cheese in the case of the second recipe, and crab meat, jalapeño and mint (cheese, too!) in the case of the third.
For the cauliflower version, abide by the teachings of the great British home cook and writer Nigel Slater, and cook the florets in milk scented with bay leaves as you bake the tubers. You’ll be rewarded with a sweet pairing for the starchy potato flesh, beautifully countered by the salty nuttiness of Parmesan at the end. For the crab, be very gentle with the meat, tossing it lightly with lemon, mint and jalapeño. The idea is to have a topping to the mashed potatoes that is pillowlike in its delicacy.
These potatoes are sometimes called twice-baked. That is a misnomer, but still an excellent name. They’re baked, then disassembled, then heated through with a cheese hat that melts across their surface. The amount of time added to the overall process is neither negligible nor problematic. The result is a simple, elegant one-plate dinner, an old-school pleasure best consumed with friends.
Baked-potato weather, for sure. Slide a rack of russets into a hot oven for 45 minutes while you sort mail or pay bills, check email or help someone with homework. Set up a fixings bar of butter and bacon and Cheddar, chives and sour cream. The reward is one of the great, undervalued actors in all dinner theater: Mr. Split-Top himself, dressed in finery.
A recipe for basic baked potatoes follows. The key instructions are to pierce the jackets of the potatoes in a number of places to allow them to exhale steam as they cook; to lightly grease their exteriors with oil, so that they crisp; and to salt them a little, just because.
Be patient as they cook, and feel absolutely no pressure to accompany them with anything but toppings. If bacon and Cheddar do not appeal, you can try a combination of thyme, chervil and chives. The hedge-fund set may prefer a heaping tablespoon of caviar.
Dressed to your tastes, a baked potato makes a nice accompaniment to a slice of prime rib or a steak, even a roasted chicken. It is also quite nice served with a tart salad.
But a baked potato can be a meal too. This is particularly the case when you start making additions to the starch — cauliflower and cheese in the case of the second recipe, and crab meat, jalapeño and mint (cheese, too!) in the case of the third.
For the cauliflower version, abide by the teachings of the great British home cook and writer Nigel Slater, and cook the florets in milk scented with bay leaves as you bake the tubers. You’ll be rewarded with a sweet pairing for the starchy potato flesh, beautifully countered by the salty nuttiness of Parmesan at the end. For the crab, be very gentle with the meat, tossing it lightly with lemon, mint and jalapeño. The idea is to have a topping to the mashed potatoes that is pillowlike in its delicacy.
These potatoes are sometimes called twice-baked. That is a misnomer, but still an excellent name. They’re baked, then disassembled, then heated through with a cheese hat that melts across their surface. The amount of time added to the overall process is neither negligible nor problematic. The result is a simple, elegant one-plate dinner, an old-school pleasure best consumed with friends.
Be patient as they cook, and feel absolutely no pressure to accompany them with anything but toppings. If bacon and Cheddar do not appeal, you can try a combination of thyme, chervil and chives,
No comments:
Post a Comment