by Eric

Mom’s German Potato Salad

…and a visit to German Village

gps_potato_platter_det

Dad–
I raved so much about Gary’s rendition of the German Potato Salad to Alison that now she wants us to make it with our latest crop of potatoes. Therefore you *HAVE* to do an EatsForOne feature on the recipe, especially if you can track down Martha’s version (Gary might be able to help you there, a good excuse to give them a call).
–ER

And so the quest began. I called Amy and Gary.

When Amy answered, I said, “Eric’s on me to write something about “Mom’s” German Potato Salad you guy’s brought to the Pigroast. Can you give me the recipe?”

Amy said, “Gary made it, I just helped and coached.”
“Is Gary there?” I said.

“He’s outside, under his truck,” said Amy. “I’ll call him.”

Gary said, “Gosh, I just started cooking… Amy peeled the potatoes and I sliced them… we were just cooking together…

“I don’t remember the proportions… I know we started with a lot of bacon… 1 1/2 pounds, and a lot of onions… saute the onions until they’re good and caramelized… deglaze the pan with a bit of water, then start adding vinegar and sugar until it tastes like the German Potato Salad in German Village. I’ve never seen the recipe written down. Maybe next time, I can make some notes.”
gv_Schmidt_lunch

After thinking about it, I fired off an email with a couple more questions, to which Gary quickly replied:

Mustard? No mustard, but that could be a worthy secret ingredient.
What kind of potatoes? The potato was a russet brown skin and Amy states that we once used some red skin potatoes. Peeled, sliced on a mandolin. and parboiled.

I tried to conjure up what I remember about Mom’s German Potato Salad — I’m sure my recollections were heavily influenced by what I had just eaten at the Pigroast.

Potatoes were sliced, not cubed
Potatoes were firm, not mushy
No other vegetables or eggs.
Sweet and sour taste.

I looked for German Potato Salad recipes on the internet. Surprisingly, none were very close to the picture in my mind. One, from House & Garden, February 1957, on Epicurious, by Eloise Davison was just potatoes, bacon and sauce, but she used cubed potatoes, and only four teaspoons chopped onion, coupled with flour to make a roux with the bacon fat.

The best clues came from Recipes from a German Grandma

What makes a good German Potato Salad?
The Potato
Any potato works well but it is good to understand the qualities of each potato to their advantage in your salad. ?Many Germans like the firm red skin potato but the russet works well as also.
The Dressing
The typical dressing is a very simple vinaigrette that is equal parts water, vinegar and sugar.
Trouble is, the pictures showed a mooshy mass of potatoes, so I didn’t read that recipe carefully before I started writing my own and cooking. (Looking back, its pretty close to what I did.) Continue reading →

08.20.10

by Eric

Jannie’s Keystone Pasta

Jackson, Ohio to San Francisco

Sent from my iPad
hello Marc. My typing skills are not very good. I have room for Lots of improvement. What are you having for supper. We are having Keystone Pasta. You put lots of basil in the bottom of a 9×13 pan. Peal about 8 large tomatoes. Sprinkle o.o. Over salt, pepper bit of sugar. Bake 350for@30minutes and serve Over pasta. This is a Hale original. I make this when I have lots of basil. Just wanted to
Let you know we are enjoying the iPad. I think it was a good choice. Say hi to Carol.
Jan

Jackson, OH

On our way to the Hale Hollow Pigroast, we stopped for an overnight at Carol’s brother Mark’s farm in Jackson, Ohio. Jackson is about as far southeast as Ohio goes — you want to get away? — this is away.

Keystone tomatoes

When we walked into the house, I remarked on a gorgeous plate of sliced Keystone tomatoes we would be having for dinner. Mark and Jannie are proud of their tomatoes and this is peak season, so tomatoes are a big part of mealtime. I don’t remember ever having Keystones, but Mark pointed out they’re a close cousin to brandywine tomatoes.

Mark took me on a ride around his place on his Mule, a four wheel get-around-easy-to-keep-up-the-place toy. Fun.

t_mule

t_ripping_thru_woods We went rippin’ through the woods and crusin’ th’ dale.

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Passing the garden he showed me the Keystone tomato plants, standing taller than me. Continue reading →

08.03.10

by Eric

Spring Cassoulet

… peach and tomato salad
Gone again… back again

the farm lane

This time we were off to Ohio, a land of heat and humidity, but one of family celebrations, as well. This one was Carol’s brother Alan’s annual pig roast on his farm just south of Lancaster – where Carol grew up – which is just north of Logan – my birthplace – and about 30 miles southeast of Columbus – where I grew up. Having lived in San Francisco for nearly 20 years, a trip “back east” is July is like a hot, wet slap in the face, and Carol tends to obsess over the heat. To my way of thinking, it’s good to go someplace really hot from time to time – not too often. I don the Ohio July uniform of a loose tee shirt, shorts and sandals and live with it. It’s the clammy, usually way too cold air conditioning that gets to me.

dude... check out these Ohio tomatoes!

All of that, to say that I haven’t contributed to eats for a while.

sc_beans_sausages

I found this recipe for Spring Cassoulet in the CUESA newsletter and though it’s a bit past spring, I had all the ingredients and SF is cool enough just now to enjoy a bean dish.

So, you make a pot of beans and throw some sausages and pancetta on top, and sprinkle that with baby lettuces and edible flowers. How easy and yummy is that? Quite.

But Dominique Crenn of Luce at the InterContinental hotel showed me a few tricks to make this simple thing sophisticated and sublime.

For the beans, she cooked bacon, shallot, garlic, celery and carrot in a generous amount of olive oil and deglazed the pan (I used my bean pot) with white wine. OK so far… that’s the way I start beans. For the twist, she tied up that vegetable bacon mixture in cheesecloth and put it back in the pot for the beans. Viola… no pesky vegetable and bacon pieces in the beans, just their flavor. She used Rancho Gordo White Runner Beans, I used Golden Eye.

Chunks of lamb sausage, pork sausage and chopped pancetta, sautéed with onion and garlic, then cooked with red wine and chicken stock, made it a cassoulet. I used Fatted Calf Merguez and Mild Italian sausages. Continue reading →

07.15.10

by Eric

Grill it all

…sausages, beans, cabbage

What’s for dinner?

My question to myself each day. Carol likes to cook, so she has taken over on days she doesn’t work. We reached agreement on that a few weeks ago. But the day was Wednesday and I was pondering, “What’s for dinner?”

It was a beautiful day for grilling and I had some fennel sausages from Fatted Calf. That’s a good start. But do I light up the grill just for sausages? The fridge offered cooked Mariquita pinto beans… red beans and rice would be good, but Carol is not a lover of beans. Braised cabbage also had a place on the second shelf. A nice fennel sausage nestled in a bed of braised cabbage would please Carol. Beans, rice, cabbage — that’s stovetop work; I would be back and forth between the kitchen and the grill. Of course the beans, rice and cabbage will hold, but still.

g_ready_for_grill

Why not do the beans and cabbage on the grill? They can sit over the gas flame – hardly different than being on the gas range – and I can turn off the center flame and grill the sausage there. Good idea.

g_sausage_grilling

g_sausage_in_pan

And I can cook the rice in lots of boiling water – like pasta – on the stove while the grill is heating up. That takes about 12 minutes and the grill takes 15 to warm up. That’s a plan!

“When I’m making rice salad, a huge pot is just right. Boiled like pasta in too much water, rice gives up its starch. Drained and cooled, it drifts apart into separate grains, no clumping.”

From Pete Wells in a New York Times column on boiling

We have a rice cooker, but once I tried the boiling method, that’s my method of choice. Once cooked, I drain the rice and put the strainer in the empty rice pot with the lid on to hold.

g_view

That gives me time to sit on the back porch and contemplate the Pacific Heights skyline while the grill is going. I love that. (OK, a bit of Pacific Heights and a lot of the Alhambra roof and my neighbor’s trees.)

g_served

So everything went just right. I loved my beans and sausage and Carol loved her cabbage and sausage. We slathered the sausage with Raye’s mustard, had a bit of the tarragon potato salad on the side and that made a simple, easy, beautiful dinner.

07.14.10

by Eric

Three Egg Whites

…aioli, vinegar, cookies and halibut… and tomato.
Along with the cherry tomatoes from Mariquita Farm, we got three bunches of tarragon. That’s a lot! I have a jar of tarragon vinegar waiting in a cool dark place until ready to bottle in a few weeks, but there is plenty of tarragon still to be put to use.

tarragon

a_cookies

I’ve had my eye on a tarragon potato salad recipe made with aioli. This converges with the recent purchase of a Kitchen Aid stand mixer that I’ve wanted for ages. I’ve used it to make a couple batches of cookies and figured it would be perfect to make the aioli. Well, new things take a lot of agonizing for me. I’ve made mayonnaise in the past with the Cuisinart, but I gave that to Brian when I got the mixer; besides, that’s why I got the mixer.
So, I looked up the mayonnaise chapter in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It’s called “Julia Child’s Hand-Beaten Mayonnaise” and doesn’t mention using a mixer, but the principle is the same. I hit the Internet and found some recipes that allow as how a Kitchen Aid can be used for mayonnaise. In Instructions and Recipes for your Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer it says to use the Wire Whip for mixtures that need air incorporated, such as mayonnaise. And the introduction to one of the “hand beaten” recipes suggests, for electric beaters, use the large bowl and the “moderately fast” speed. That’s enough information to agonize over for a couple days, so I did.

potato salad, oven roasted halibut on bean salad with ponzu soy vinaigrette

The potato salad was a component of yesterday’s dinner… I could wait no longer. Mayonnaise uses three egg yolks, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, a pinch of salt and dry mustard, says Julia Child; and to make it aioli, use olive oil and 1 teaspoon garlic for each egg yolk, says freeculinaryschool.com. I went old school and crushed my garlic in a mortar and pestle.

Dribbling in two cups of olive oil takes a while, even with a snazzy mixer, otherwise things went smoothly, producing a lovely, smooth aioli.

aioli

Now I have three egg whites. Being a saver of all things edible, I put them in the fridge, envisioning breakfast this morning.

After my morning walk, I got out the egg whites, added a whole egg and a dollop of crème fraiche, and beat those guys. I cut up half of a previously grilled Italian sausage and got out my cherry tomato sauce. Viola, scrambled eggs with sausage topped with a bit of tomato sauce… a fine breakfast.

a fine breakfast

“Bill selects a few tomatoes for lunch, and we walk up the gravel road to the farmhouse. For a few minutes, we make mayonnaise and tomato sandwiches in silence, spreading a healthy layer of mayonnaise over white bread, putting on layers of tomato thicker than the bread itself.
With each bite, my fingers press through the bread and dissolve into the tomato.”

From the chapter The Seed Saver,
Food Heroes by Georgia Pellegrini, Stewart Tabori & Chang, New York
a_tomato_sandwich
Now that I have my mayonnaise, now that it’s tomato season, guess what I had for lunch. Now that’s eatin’.

As for the tarragon vinegar, cookies and halibut dish, I’ll write about those later, or not.

07.13.10

by Eric

Cherry Tomatoes

…five ways

ct_tomato_detail

Andy and Julia at Mariquita Farm went and added a new service for us San Francisco folk: The Ladybug Buying Club Truck Farm.
In this iteration, instead of sending us a prix fixe Mystery Box, they allow us to actually make up our “dream order,” albeit from a short list of goodies.
This time it was French fingerling potatoes, tarragon, mint, Sungold cherry tomatoes, and Youk’s Hot Sauce (made from our chiles!) Julia always includes a short informative and entertaining marketing pitch and instructions on how and when to order.

Hello, Ladybug Friends: Saturday, July 3rd, from 10am to 11:30am (4 days from today) I’ll be at Local Mission Eatery (24th between shotwell and folsom). Potato Salad, Cherry Tomatoes, Tarragon (vinegar!? infused drinks? or tarragon potato salad! recipe links are below.), Mint… If you’d like any of this email me back. (parking concerns? There are many 1 hour and 2 hour meters throughout the neighborhood so parking is suprisingly easy.)

If you want an order for Saturday return this email with your name, cell phone number, and your dream order. I’ll email back a confirmation within 2 days. thank you. -julia

I was nearly out of sauce that I made from flats of their Early Girl and San Marzano tomatoes last fall, so the notes on cherry tomatoes caught my eye.

three baskets

Julia’s cherry tomato sauce & notes:
-I like these as a snack as is.

-Basic (cherry) tomato sauce: Wash several baskets worth, then put in a pot with onion, garlic and oregano and cook down for about 1/2 hour over medium heat. (olive oil can be added if you like). Then let it cool some, put through a food mill, and voila: tomato sauce.

I generally don’t add any seasoning when I make my tomato sauces because I’ll season when I use it, depending on the dish. In this case, I made it as she suggested since I wouldn’t be making much and this is a new tomato type for me.

So, I cooked up five baskets of Sungold cherry tomatoes plus about a half basket of red from last Saturday’s Farmers Market. (I held out one basket of the tomatoes for snacking and stuff.)

1 onion, rough chopped
1 teaspoon Rancho Gordo oregano
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
Sautéed onions in olive oil, added garlic and oregano, added tomatoes and cooked for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Put through food mill with the small disk. Cooked down about 20 minutes. Yield, 7 cups. Continue reading →

07.12.10

by Eric

eats is back

…with a full belly.

I’ve been gone for a while. Sons Eric and Brian produced a fabulous party for us to mark the occasion of our 50th Anniversary. Wow. They were ably assisted by Alison and Natasza and anybody else standing around — except us, the gracious honorees.

Sister Amy does a set with the band at Hidden Valley Regional Park in Reno.

They prepared lots of good food, including:

grilled leg of lamb,

latke and cream cheese “sandwiches,” and…

crepes suzette for dessert.

I was too busy eating and schmoozing to take food pictures, but in addition to the above, the menu included a 21st Century twist on the kids favorites from their childhood:
pimento cheese spread, stuffed mushrooms, Brunswick Stew, and agretti dressed with olive oil and lemon juice (a ringer).

MnA_reserved

The very next Saturday, we attended the wedding of our nephew Matthew and his new bride Andrea Robb in Pismo Beach, Shell Beach and The Hudson Ranch.

Pre-nuptial festivities on Friday evening featured the opportunity…

to burn your own meat or fish over a roaring hickory fire.

The wedding was lovely, on a grassy bluff at Shell Beach.

At the party that followed at Hudson Ranch, plenty of Mexican inspired food awaited us.

And to follow dinner, a very architectural and delicious wedding cake.

How could we resist the chance to throw an O-H-I-O in front of the mariachi band?

Now, we’ll get back to the food-on-the-table stuff, starting with a feature on cherry tomatoes… ‘tis the season.

06.15.10

by Eric

Spring Vegetables garnished with Steak

Pan-Roasted Spring Vegetables with Brown Butter Sauce and Hanger Steak garnish

Leftovers + leftovers + new vegetables = a good meal; and the right equipment helps.

My brother accused me of openly coveting his Circulon skillet the last time we visited his South Carolina home. I believe we were cooking shrimp and grits.

My covetous manner paid off. Last Christmas; he gave me a Circulon 10 1/2-inch open skillet, 3-inches deep. Since I’m a mature home cook, I already had a 10-inch cast iron skillet and 10 and 12-inch stainless steel sauté pans, but to my mind, this was something special. Often, when I’m thinking about what to cook for dinner, I think about the pan to use and visualize the cooking procedure.

I had some leftover grilled hanger steak and a couple sprouts of broccoli, not used when I did a veal scaloppini with morel sauce, steamed broccoli as the vegetable. I thought of a pan-roasting procedure from a Cooks Illustrated recipe for Pan-Roasted Broccoli with Lemon Browned Butter. It’s something I’ve cooked many times, one of my favorite broccoli recipes. I can pan-roast the broccoli and garnish with the steak. Viola, a meal easily prepared in my Circulon skillet.

mise en place

As it turned out, there was a bit less broccoli than I thought, and a bit more steak than I thought. I needed other stuff I could cook in the same pan with the same procedure. Summer squash and tiny new potatoes from the Mariquita Mystery box will work. More vegetables than meat, that’s good. All cook in about the same amount of time. Good again. While I prepped the meat and vegetables, I put some rice in the rice cooker to catch the juices.

the vegetables brown

Brown the broccoli stems, squash and potatoes with a little oil… add the broccoli flowerettes and brown… add some seasoned water, cover and cook for a couple more minutes, uncover and cook off the liquid. Reserve the vegetables in a bowl.

b_steak_browns

Brown the steak in the same pan and reserve on a plate in a warm oven. Deglaze the pan with butter while making a brown butter sauce with a chopped shallot, garlic, salt, pepper; finish with lemon juice and fresh thyme. Add the vegetables to the sauce and toss – easily done in the deep skillet. Serve over rice, garnish with the steak.

b_veg_steak_served

Carol noted that the potatoes were superfluous with the rice, but I consider those fine tiny new potatoes a vegetable, rather than a starch.

b_caprese_salad

But wait… there’s more; the Caprese Salad also featured leftovers. Half of a big pineapple tomato – I had the other half for lunch with cottage cheese (a favorite lunch in tomato season). A bit of Buffalo Mozzarella – most of it used on pizza Sunday night. The basil, OK, fresh from the Mariquita box.

One fine meal. Yum. And I have only the one pan to wash and a bunch more refrigerator space.

06.02.10

by Eric

Spring Supper

Sausage in a sandwich of greens

Spring is in the air and the Market is fraught with the fresh and the new. A simple spring dinner is in the offing. I hung the spring garlic on the wall in my kitchen next to the bamboo bread bag.

s_spring_garlic

“You play the guitar on your MTV
That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Get your money for nothin’ get your chicks for free”
— Dire Straits Money For Nothing Lyrics

Shoppin’ at the Market, that’s the way you do it,
Money for red beets get your greens for free
Over there at Star Route, that’s the way you do it,
Money for turnips, get your greens for free

And so it goes.

s_red_beets_spring_onions

s_lil_caulif_turnip_beet_gr

After lunch, I washed the beet greens and left them in a big bowl of water, the turnip greens in a plastic vegetable bag. I wanted to use them but didn’t know quite what to do, so I took a nap. Lying on the couch with my eyes closed, drifting, it came to me; I could cook them separately and arrange on a plate on each side of one of those Craft Beer Links I got at Fatted Calf. I could see the picture in my head, so I got up and drew it.

s_drawing

Craft Beer Links are described as “plump smoked pork links made this week with WTF from Lagunitas Brewing Co,” and the guy at the Fatted Calf stand was all over them with praise.

I set to work trimming the greens while roasting the beets. Sauté some chopped spring onions and sliced spring garlic, blanch the greens and brown the links. Drain the greens and add some of the garlic and onion to each. Pot intensive, but easy and quick.

s_saute_n_blanch

The only thing left to do is arrange the plates. s_serve_2

Bring assorted Raye’s mustards to the table and open a bottle of Cline Cool Climate Syrah. Enjoy.

05.27.10

by Eric

Roasted Tomatoes

…an Italian stallion.

It is not yet tomato season in northern California, but hothouse tomatoes are available from certain growers at the CUESA Farmers Market. It seems as though the hothouse heirlooms go south faster than those grown in the fields, but maybe it’s just been so long since the end of last tomato season that I don’t remember.

In any case, I discovered a new variety – for me – at Madison Growers: Costaluto Genovese. I had to noodle around Google for a while before finding the correct spelling of “Costaluto.” I asked Jane Atallah at the Madison Growers stand for the name of this unusual tomato and she was glad to oblige. She told me that Costaluto means “ribbed” in Italian. This is a different – and very good tomato, very high in acid, with a thick, rather tough skin. The skin slips off easily though when its roasted or parboiled for five seconds or so.

I bought five of these tomatoes at the Saturday market, and ate two that day for lunch with cucumbers and cottage cheese. By Wednesday, the three remaining were getting a little wrinkly around their shoulders. As I prepared warm potato salad with smoked tuna for dinner, I figured I better use them.

w_tomatoes_to_roast

Roasted Tomatoes
As served May 2010 with Warm Potato and Smoked Trout Salad

Costaluto (ribbed) Genovese tomatoes
fresh bread crumbs
butter
cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450°F

Core the tomatoes.

Fill the core with bread crumbs, pressing them in. (I made fresh breadcrumbs in the little Braun food processor from an Acme Herb Slab.)

Lay a thin slice of butter over the crumbs.

Lay cheese matchsticks over the butter. (I used Cowgirl Creamery Batch 35 cheese (I found they call it Wagon Wheel on their website)… It didn’t melt smoothly. Probably better with grated parmesan or a thin slice of fresh mozzarella or grated cheddar.)

Put tomatoes on a baking pan covered with non-stick aluminum foil. Slather the tomatoes with olive oil.

Bake for 10 minutes or so.

w_roasted_tomato

eats for one

Eats For One…or More

Mom’s German Potato Salad

Jannie’s Keystone Pasta

Spring Cassoulet

Grill it all

Three Egg Whites

Cherry Tomatoes

eats is back

Spring Vegetables garnished with Steak

Spring Supper

Roasted Tomatoes