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September 29, 2007

Crispy Potato Cakes

I'm bored with making the same old potato side dishes and my search for new potato recipes led me to a Cooking Light recipe for Crispy Potato Hash Browns. The technique used in this recipe interested me. You combine grated potatoes with cornstarch, form them into "cakes" using a 3-inch biscuit cutter, then bake them in a 475º oven. The online reviews for the recipe were good, and they sounded like a good side dish for the meatloaf I was making for one of my clients this week, so I put them on the menu.

Some side benefits of this recipe is that it is gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, and it has just a trace of fat.

I don't have a 3-inch biscuit cutter, but I am a whiz with aluminum foil, so I made a 3-inch ring form with foil. Take a 2 foot long strip of foil, fold it in half the long way, then continue to fold it in half the long way until you have a strip that is about an inch wide. Then twist the strip into a rope. Fold the twisted strip in half and form it into a 3-inch diameter loop. You'll get something that looks like this.

The potatoes are grated, then soaked in cold water for 5 minutes. The comments for the recipe indicated that the box grater gives much better results than grating in the food processor, so stick with the box grater. It doesn't take long to grate the potatoes. I didn't have a salad spinner to spin dry the potatoes. I set them in a colander and used a clean towel to press down on them until I couldn't squeeze out any more water. It worked perfectly for me. Even with the hand grating, the recipe was quick and easy to prep and the results were very tasty.

I renamed these to Crispy Potato Cakes because that is what they are. I see myself adding different herbs and spices to them to pair them with different dishes. How about some chili powder or cayenne pepper for a spicy potato cake? Or fresh thyme. Or curry powder. The possibilities are endless.

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Posted September 29, 2007 11:10 AM in Gluten-Free, Recipes, Test Kitchen | Comments (5)

September 23, 2007

No Knead Bread - I finally made it

Last November, Mark Bittman wrote about no-knead bread. The recipe caught my attention, but at the time, my oven counldn't maintain the 450 degree temperature required to cook the bread and I didn't have a covered pot that was safe to 450 degrees. So I just read everyone's blogs and forum posts about their breadmaking and whimpered quietly because I wasn't able to make this wonderful bread. Last March, we replaced my clunker of a stove with a wonderful GE Profile and this June when a local cooking school was having a moving sale, I bought a gorgeous Mario Batali 6qt enameled cast iron dutch oven. But by then, the buzz about the bread had completely died down and I forgot about it. Until I read about it on Jaden's Steamy Kitchen. Heck, if her four year old can make this bread, I can too! We were having a cool spell, so I hauled out my new pan and got to work. I had read that some people had trouble with the dough sticking to the floured towel and I found someone who used parchment instead of a towel, so I decided to try that method. I used the adaptation of the recipe posted on Jaden's blog. It calls for slightly less water and a little more salt than the original recipe posted on the NY Times site.

Step 1 is to mix the dough. All you do is mix together flour, water, yeast, and salt. It went together in minutes and I left it to gurgle overnight. I let it ferment for about 16 hours.

Step 2 is to shape the dough and let it rise. Jaden's blog said that the dough would be really sticky and that you'd need to wet your hands to work with it, but mine wasn't that sticky. I worked on lightly floured parchment. It took about 1 minute to shape the dough. I covered it with parchment. The dough rises for 2 hours and after 1 1/2 hours, you put the dutch oven in the oven and preheat to 450.

Step 3 is to remove the pot from the oven. This was the hardest step of the day. That pot is HEAVY! You simply dump the dough into the pot and shake it a little to even out the dough. Put the cover on and it goes into the oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, remove the cover from the pot and bake the bread for another 15-20 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the internal temperature is 210 degrees (Farenheit). My loaf looked great after baking for 15 minutes uncovered, but I decided to measure the temperature, something I've never done with bread. It was just 200, so I put the bread back in for 8 minutes.

The bread came right out of the pan with no sticking. It smelled like heaven!

We ate it with a pressure cooker adaptation of Pan-Roasted Pork Loin with Leeks, which I thought I took a picture of, but I can't find it right now. The bread was light with a beautiful crust. It was perfect for sopping up the leek sauce.

I have a feeling that this bread is going to make many appearances in my kitchen.

Posted September 23, 2007 6:06 PM in Test Kitchen | Comments (4)

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