One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Eight

I love potatoes. Who doesn't? Even a bad french fry, when the potato has behaved like a sponge and soaked up a bit more oil than intended, is good. And who did not live off of the classic baked potato when they were in college? With some broccoli tossed on, and a sprinkling of cheddar cheese, an entire, homey meal, made for a king-- or a college student. Boiled, steamed, hash-browned, or sauteed, I am an equal-opportunity queen of the starches.

The potato is like the little black dress of the culinary world. However you decide to dress it, it is infinitely adaptable. So when it is dreary out, cold and gloomy, when you wake up each morning, put on your glasses, and gaze out the window toward the barren, bud-less trees, hoping that maybe tomorrow, you will see a burgeoning bit of greenery, sometimes the only thing left to do is retreat into the kitchen with your good ol' friend-- the potato.

My mom sent me this recipe, for a crispy potato cake. It's been sitting in my inbox, just waiting for the right, somber day to do a little savory baking. Perhaps little is not the correct word, rather, fat or heavy might be more appropriate, because that is what this cake is. Made by ricing 5 lbs. of potatoes, the batter is mostly that-- potatoes. Mixed with prosciutto, bechamel, Parmesan, et al., this cake is not for the timid. It is for the hungry, those that have a gaping hole where their stomachs used to be, waiting for some starch to come by and spackle it.

Delightfully neutral, the potatoes get warm and crisp on top, smooth and hearty on the inside. The recipe is a bit labor-intensive, with the boiling, ricing, mixing, making bechamel, etc., but it proved to be the perfect meal to make when the only thing you wanted to do was to curl up inside anyway. Just make sure and do your calisthenics beforehand. With eight potatoes, this cake weighed a ton. If you would like the recipe, it is on the Daily Specials page.

Offaly Good

Innards. It's what's for dinnards. Awhile back, when finally coming clean to you all about my, well...diversity of eating habits, I mentioned that offal, delicious though it may be, "doesn't photograph too well." I stand corrected. Though it may not be the beautiful girl, with a sparkling smile, and hair so buttery blond she is simply crying out to have her picture taken, it is not necessarily the gangly, pre-pubescent, girl with wiry hair and a mouth full of metal either. I guess it is all in how one handles a little bit of liver, that makes one exclaim-- beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I myself was not always a lover of liver. When I was young my mom would prepare them every so often for Sunday supper, and I would gag. She would drag out the heavy, cast-iron skillet, and set the individual chicken livers to sizzle in the buttered pan, with a healthy seasoning of sliced onions, salt and pepper. My nose would set to twitching even before I could see what we were having for dinner. My family would sit down to eat, my parents each taking a hearty portion of liver, and even my sister, my kindred spirit of sorts, with an even more timid palate then my own, liked the liver too. I, on the other hand, would take a small serving, poking it, rolling it around my plate, smelling its acrid, pungent odor, and ultimately leave it. It was just plain nasty.

But then I went to Italy. Oh, and about 10 years passed. In Florence, on a warm July evening, with people zooming by on their scooters, anything, even chicken liver, smeared on a crostini, and drizzled with fruity, olive oil is going to taste good. Smooth and creamy, with just the right amount of heft to truly remember what it was that you were eating, I was now a chicken liver convert. And I have never gone back. Now it is me, who drags out my cast-iron skillet to fry up some liver for dinner. I make my own rustic pates. That smell that was once so acrid is now deeply savory, and a bit smoky.

So this weekend, while watching cooking shows on PBS, I saw Lidia make a pasta sauce with chopped-up chicken liver and I knew that this was a sauce I had to try. Although this may appear to look like a hearty bolognese, it is anything but. Don't get me wrong, it is no primavera, but it is simply not heavy and rib-sticking either.

To make the chicken liver sauce, saute an onion and a few cloves of garlic with a bay leaf. Add a few tablespoon of butter, and a bit of tomato paste. When all is toasty, add about a pound of coarsely chopped chicken liver, and some peas. Continue to saute, until the liver has a nice crust on the outside, and then add a bit of stock. Stir well to mix, and heat through. Season with salt and pepper, then add in your cooked pasta (I used linguini) and some Parmesan cheese.

Delicate and buttery, smooth in both consistency and texture, with a pop of sweetness from the peas, this sauce was a dream for those who have a taste for the innards. And maybe it is even unassuming enough to sneak past the liver haters left out there.

Pudding for Lazy People

I can be a lazy cook. I am not however a lazy eater. I often have very lofty aspirations about what I want to eat, it is just getting there that can seem a bit daunting. But I have found that from laziness often comes resourcefulness, or pudding, as it was this time.

Pudding is not something that is in my file under often-rotated recipes. I generally prefer something I can sink my fork into for dessert, and well, pudding is the stuff which won't even hold your spoon straight. But when it is a snowy Sunday, with the wind whipping around so quickly the flakes do not fall softly to the ground but briskly fly at you, perpendicular to the sidewalk, in a pinch, pudding will have to do.

Making pudding from scratch is just about as simple as making it from the box. In fact, I made this dessert with ingredients I found in the fridge and pantry-- you can't beat that. For this particular batch, I substituted light brown sugar for white sugar. I suppose that makes this pudding butterscotch, but I found the dessert not so much butterscotch-y as just different from the usual.

Cool and creamy, with just the right amount of sweetness to satisfy my sweet tooth in even the nastiest of weather. I set the plastic wrap right on top of the surface of the pudding, so nary a skin was in sight as I set it to chill. Then spoonful after wobbly spoonful I ate the pudding up. If you would like the recipe, a similar one is found here.

Just Like Chicken

Looking over my past posts to Nosheteria, I make a lot of salads. Because I eat a lot of salads. There is nothing more satisfying to me than a pile of crisp lettuce, a crumbling of cheese, and for interest, a melange of crudite. What can I say, I grew up in California-- bring on the sprouts. So, I realize that it is possible for my readers to think I am a vegetarian, or at least close to one. Well, that couldn't be farther from the truth.

I will eat just about anything. There were the bunny hearts of last year, grilled and skewered on pine-y rosemary branches. They were chewy. I have loved sweetbreads from the time that I was young and traveling in France with my father. At the time, I thought they were artichoke hearts and ate them right up. Yes, give me your snails, slippery and drenched in garlicky butter! I don't suppose I cover my carnivorous leanings on this site because offal usually doesn't photograph too well. But roasted mustard rabbit, wrapped in salty prosciutto, adorned with pan juices deglazed with cream and lying on a bed of soft polenta, that looked, and tasted pretty darn fine.

When my sister (who still lives in California) called me this weekend, our conversation went something like this:

"So what are you doing?"
"Making dinner."
"Oh, what are you having," she asked, as she heard pans clattering in the background.
"Rabbit."

Silence.

"That's gross. I couldn't."

And I realize many people couldn't. No amount of soothing my sister's nerves by telling her how they were farm-raised, or that many people think that rabbit tastes just like chicken could alleviate her gag reflex. And I understand, I really do. But I thought that you, my faithful readers might like to see what I had for dinner this weekend.

I can see why parallels are so often created between rabbits and clucking barnyard fowl. The meat tends to exactly the same in color and texture. But with rabbit it is more subtle, more delicate. I tucked one fresh sage leaf under each slice of prosciutto, this perfumed the meat in a woodsy, herbaceous way. And the pan-juices, salty from the ham, and pale from the cream, were perfect. I thoroughly enjoyed my supper, but you should feel free to make the same recipe with chicken as well.