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Hash brown potatoes are a quick and easy side dish.
I don't buy much that's frozen, but I've always used frozen hash browns. They seemed like a tough dish to get right so I figured I'd stick to the packaged variety.
Read MorePotato Pancakes!
I have been buying frozen potato pancakes for a long time now, but always loved Gran Fran's homemade ones. We would sometimes have breakfast for dinner, which mostly meant bacon and eggs or french toast, but sometimes included potato pancakes. I love the crispy outside and the warm, soft inside. Gran Fran's were loaded with salt and sometimes had corn added to them. I remember the sizzle of the hot oil and Gran Fran yelling for all the kids to back away from the stove (and to leave the kitchen) in case the oil splattered when she put the potato pancakes in the pan. I can't recall anyone every getting hurt when Gran Fran fried things, but she still tells the kids (meaning me and my five adult siblings) to back away when she's frying. Old habits die hard, I guess.
The other night I had some leftover mashed potatoes and remembered that this was the base for Gran Fran's potato cakes. I don't think I made them the same way she does, but they tasted great. Gran Fran's version definitely had flour involved. Mine use just an egg and the mashed potatoes, which I made with almond milk and olive oil, making them gluten and dairy free.
Isabella, my daughter, loved them so much, she told me not to give her anymore because she wouldn't know when to stop eating them and did not want to over do it. These are definitely being made on a regular basis around here.
So enjoy these with your family and friends. You can even try some add ins like leftover bacon (but for real, who has that on hand?), scallions or grated cheese. Have a lovely weekend!
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Enjoy!
Recently, I went to dinner with my uncle (known as Uncle), who is Gran Fran's brother. For the most part, I'm a lettuce with olive oil and salt kind of salad girl. Uncle ordered just this as his salad, which floored me. I hadn't realized there maybe a family connection to my style of salad. He told me that he has always eaten his salad this way, and that he thought it did come from his parents. Who knew?!
Warm weather has arrived in San Francisco. You never know how long this nice patch of weather will be in town, so it's fun to pretend like we have seasons and cook like it's going to stay warm for a few months.
This weather puts me in the mood for a good salad. I made a nice roast pork with Greek flavor a few weeks ago, reminiscent of a the Greek sandwich I had in Paris. Since I have salad on my mind, I decided to take all the Greek sandwich fixings and make a huge salad.
Seeing as I don't usually make fancy salads (except for my salad nicoise) , I really had to think about how to layer everything in. Some special dressing, which includes Za'atar, a Middle Eastern spice, added a nice extra kick. It's earthy, sour, salty and just interesting. You can just use oregano here, but I love the unexpected flavor.
You don't have to follow my ingredients exactly, but do put the roast pork, red onions and fried potatoes in the salad as these are the keys to the Greek sandwich-ness of the salad.
serves 2
You can put some nice warm pitas out on the table to serve with this great salad.
Reposting a great egg Frittata recipe for Easter. enjoy....Picture a hot summer morning at the beach. Five kids, two parents, pitchers of water, seltzer and juice, and tons of sunblock. It must be noted here, that many members of The Family (as the larger group of my siblings and parents shall hence forth be known, no cult-association intended here) hated the beach.
Herewith, some back-story on The Family history with the beach. Joe, our Dad, does not care for the sun. Being one of those blonde-haired, non-olive-skinned Italians, it is understandable why. So, we would head out to Jones Beach, in Long Island, at the crack of 7AM on a potentially sunny Sunday. We'd get there by 7:30, eat pastries on the boardwalk and then set up on the beach. At that hour, there was always plenty of choice real estate available, so we were right near the shore. We were usually packing up sometime around lunch, to avoid the high sun and the traffic back to Queens.
Another major issue, were the jelly fish. I'm not sure when it happened, but I do recall as early as age six that Gran Fran had scared us witless regarding these slimy creatures. Walking on the edge of the ocean was fraught with looking for the telltale globs of jelly-fishness. Gran Fran was convinced that if we got within even five feet of one, we would come away stung. Needless to say, none of us ever got a sting, but we all steered well clear of the jelly fish. And, to this day, poor Iz has to deal with my ever-lasting fear, with calls of "You keeps your eyes open for jelly fish. You don't want to get stung!" I guess no matter what we do, we all eventually turn into our parents.
As the morning progressed, we played in the surf, buried ourselves in the sand and collected a multitude of seashells (and some kelp, if I remember correctly, that was not allowed in the car home). We'd get hungry again around 11:00. This was the big event.
Enter the greatest lunch on earth: Gran Fran's Fritatta. Simply put, it is just a potato and egg pie, like an omelette, but fluffier and filled with fried potatoes.
But, Gran Fran has a way with eggs like no one else. It must be said here that she cooks all egg dishes in olive oil, not butter. Olive oil is the preferred cooking medium for all things savory in Gran Fran's world. Heaven forfend using butter for anything other than baked goods, especially eggs. She gags at the thought of it.
Out came the Frittata. Gran Fran is known for her wrapping (no, it's not elegant, but it is always thorough), and did not scrimp on the waxed paper then foil wrap to ensure the eggs would stay nice and soft, and the temperature would remain as cool as possible.
Cups of seltzer were poured and the eggs handed out. There was always quiet once everyone was served and was munching on their delectable treat. At those times, it was nice to see such a large family having a nice peaceful lunch on a sunny beach day.
But once the eggs were eaten, everyone dispersed again to do what they had been doing before lunch (avoiding the jelly fish, mind you). Overall, we were sated, happy and sunburned. And, it was high noon, time for The Family to head out. That Gran Fran, she sure knows how to feed a crowd!
Fritatta A la Gran Fran
Serves 4 as a meal, or 8 as a side dish
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You will need a broiler-proof non-reactive deep skillet.
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Enjoy hot, warm, cold, or at room temperature. Wonderful with a ripe tomato salad sprinkled wiht finely minced scallions, a dusting of kosher salt, and a good dollop of olive oil (this is Gran Fran's addendum to the above recipe).
A version of this recipe is featured on The Fruit Guys website.
Please meet my new favorite way to prepare Brussels sprouts: shredded. What a delightfully easy way to make a very healthy salad, using something other than your standard issue salad greens.
I first came across this method in the Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food cookbook. Their version (which I made and wrote about here) includes bacon. Which, in so many ways, makes me so happy. But, I've found that I need to cut back on the pork products (oh wait, I have a rack of pork ribs in the oven right now....). Therefore, I've created a new recipe using the shredded Brussels sprouts in not only a vegetarian recipe, but also a vegan one. A girl's got to keep her sleek physique and all of the lovely recipes I've been writing have begun to add up on the I-think-my-pants-shrunk-in-the-dryer meter.
The potatoes are the only cooked item in the whole shebang. You can either roast them, dice them or fry them, just do whatever you prefer. And, I didn't include how many this recipe feeds. Seems that the shredded sprouts really go on for days. I've taken to shredding a while bunch of them and storing them in a zipper bag in the fridge. That way I can make any kind of salad I want whenever I want to.
Please do make this or the other recipe referenced above. It really tastes great and is a nice change in your salad repertoire.
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I'm proud to say that three of my recipes have been featured this week on DailyBuzz Healthy Living's website:
Pretty cool, huh?
Thanks for the feature!
Spring is here. At least in SF. It's got to be close to 70 degrees here with lovely clear, blue skies. A perfect day for a walk over to our local farmer's market.
There was a nice kale salad in our lunch this past week, so I decided to try my hand at cooking some. I've used kale in soups before, but never any other way.
Many varieties of kale showed up this week at the farmer's market. I got some and then stared it in on my kitchen counter for a good long time. I realized that I had no idea what to do with it. Since it seems very fibrous, braising seemed like a good idea. Then I remembered how we always cooked sausages in boiling red wine before putting them into the tomato sauce when I was growing up. Maybe red wine was the way to go.
It most certainly is the way to go with kale. I don't know if there are purists out there who have a particular right way to cook these hearty leaves, but I recommend that you give the red wine a try.
Once I had the kale cooked down, I thought I'd try two different final dishes with it. I served it alongside boiled potatoes straight from the pan with some of the braising liquid and garlic.
And, I made a pesto-style preparation, by pureeing the cooked kale, garlic and braising liquid in the food processor. Both were good, but I preferred the pesto-style, since I'd never tasted kale this way before.
A version of this recipe is featured on The Fruit Guys website.
Do you love a good baked potato as much as I do?
I noticed that I rarely make them at home these days. Ordering them in a restaurant is out of the question: they always show up soggy and over cooked. But, they are quite easy to make and reheating them is a snap as well.
A good baked potato can really start your day out well. During High School my Dad (Joe, remember him?) used to give me a baked potato for breakfast on occasion. It was a great, warm breakfast with plenty of butter and I recall it keeping me good and full for the morning.
There were some very nice small russet potatoes available at the market this past weekend. I bought a bunch and cooked them up and cooked them in the evening.
The next morning, I reheated them for a few seconds in the microwave and we enjoyed a lovely breakfast. For myself, I put anchovy butter (recipe here) on one and onion and shallot marmalade (recipe here) on the other. For Ms. Iz (my daughter) I just put plain old butter on the baked potato.
The best breakfast ever! Just as I recalled, it lasted all day and I was happy to pass along a nice breakfast memory from my childhood to my daughter.
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The salade nicoise has got to be the best salad ever. It involves only a handful of ingredients (two of which I've featured recently as make-ahead basics, here and here).
When my daughter and I were in Paris, I ordered salade nicoise. What I got was not at all what I was accustomed to from our American version.
For one thing, there was rice in it. Yes, you read that right, rice. For another thing, the tuna tasted and looked odd, and overcooked. Lastly, there was some heavy dressing with a bit of cream in it. I won't judge the entire country on how this one brasserie made their Nicoise. Instead, I guess I'll just have to venture back over to France to find the perfect version.
In the meantime, I decided to try my hand at home making this lovely salad. Usually, there are boiled eggs included, but when I was almost finished making (and photographing) the salad, I realized I had forgotten to make them. To my surprise, I didn't miss the eggs at all. I actually think I preferred it without the eggs, but you can go ahead and add them back in if you want to.
The key to my success was the freshness of the tuna steak. Of course, if you can't locate a tuna steak, you can use a can of best-quality (that's a Gran-Franism, the best quality thing) solid olive oil packed tuna fish. Drain some of the oil out, so that the flavor of the dressing will shine through.
I really enjoyed making this, especially since it was so simple and tasted so darned good.
serves 1
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The mighty potato.
It is starchy.
It is filling.
It can be sweet.
It can be saucy.
But it is always delicious.
I've been working on ways to create multiple sauces or preparations starting from a basic ingredient. The idea is to create the basic ingredient once, in bulk and then add different sauces, etc. throughout the week so that you don't get bored with the same leftovers over and over.
This is part of my exploration into Cooking for One (see
for my first installation). Once I have enough of these recipes worked out, I'll post a succinct compendium (that there is a $20 word), but for now, I'll link them all through the individual posts. Of course, they'll all be tagged Cooking for One, so if one needs to find them quickly, this key phrase can be put in my handy search box on the right hand side of this site.
But I digress.
Potatoes seem like a great base for many things. I've got two variations here: a light potato salad (light because there's not too much mayonnaise involved) and a pan fried potato with bacon. Both are great, and are based on a large pot of boiled potatoes. Stored in an airtight container, once they've been fully drained and cooled, the potatoes I made kept for a week.
All you need to do is boil up the potatoes and then create sauce variations when you are ready to serve them. Easy as pie.
serves plenty, portion out to one-person servings as you see fit
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