Salt Roasted Potatoes

When we were in Honolulu, we had dinner at Morimoto's, which is a restaurant owned by an Iron Chef. I had some salt-roasted fingerling potatoes with my dinner that were incredibly tender and flavorful and had zero fat.

I love potatoes but tend to drown them in butter so I was intrigued by these salt-roasted potatoes. A quick Google search turned up several recipes so I got some boxes of kosher salt, a bag of fingerling potatoes and Kent made a batch.

We used a total of 10 small red potatoes, with five in each baking dish. We also use kosher salt because of the texture. I've read other recipes that use a mixture of rock salt and kosher salt and we'll give that a try. I don't think that normal salt would work as well since the salt would bake to solid rock-like consistency.

Ingredients:

10 small red potatoes
Kosher salt

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 400° F
• Place the potatoes in a baking dish or two (we generally use two small baking dishes)
• (Here's where things get less precise) Using enough salt to cover the potatoes entirely, moisten the salt with water to form a thick paste. You don't want it to be runny, just sort of sticky.
• Cover the potatoes with your salt mixture and bake at 400°F for about 30 minutes.
• Let cool a bit before you start cracking the salt crust
• Break the crust and carefully extract the potatoes
• Brush off any excess salt and serve immediately

Sticky, not runny

Cracking the crust

Green Bean Casserole

My daughter-in-law adores green bean casserole for holiday meals. I have to be honest, I’ve always disliked the dish, largely because it uses canned green beans. I find most canned vegetables to be awful and green beans are the biggest offenders in my world. But this year, she made the casserole from scratch. Oh my word, what a transformation! Here’s her recipe, cut down to serve two.

Ingredients:

Crispy Onion Topping
½ yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced (use a mandoline if you have one)
1/8 C flour
1 T breadcrumbs
Dash of salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Canola, safflower, peanut or other high-heat oil, for deep-frying

Beans in Mushroom Sauce
1 ½ T butter
6 ounces baby portabella mushrooms, thinly sliced or coarsely chopped
Freshly ground black pepper
Dash of salt
1 garlic clove, minced
1 ½ T flour
¾ C vegetable or chicken broth
¼ C milk
½ pound fresh green beans, trimmed and cut into pieces

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 325° F*
• Toss onion with flour, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper 
• Heat oil in a skillet and fry the onions until light golden brown 
• Remove and place on plate with paper towel – set aside
• Over medium-high heat, melt butter in a skillet
• Add the mushrooms, salt and pepper and sauté them until they start releasing their liquid, anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes 
• Add the garlic and sauté one minute more
• Add the flour and stir it until it fully coats the mushrooms
• Add the broth, stirring the whole time
• Simmer mixture for 1 minute, then add cream and bring back to a simmer, cooking until the sauce thickens. Stir frequently.
• Add greens beans to sauce and stir until they are coated
• Put bean and mushroom mixture into a casserole dish
• Sprinkle crispy onions over the top
• Bake for 30 minutes, or until sauce is bubbling and onions are a shade darker

* I put the beans into the oven while our Christmas pork roast was cooking at 325°. The beans cooked for probably half an hour and were perfect, so no need to blanch them.

Corn Salad

We like to eat out, probably a little too much, but when we lived in the South End of Boston we had a lot of great restaurant choices. During the summer of 2011, we went to Tremont 647 several times and I got absolutely hooked on what they call Local Corn and Tomato Salad. Their version uses just sherry vinegar as a dressing, but I didn’t have any at home. So I used a bit of balsamic vinaigrette instead and it worked well too.

Basically you’ll want to have equal parts of the corn, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers; as written, this recipe serves two people.

Ingredients:

2 ears of corn, cooked, cooled and cut off the cob
½ C cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 small or ½ large cucumber, peeled, seeded, quartered and diced
¼ C red onion, coarsely diced
2 T feta cheese, crumbled
1 T light balsamic vinaigrette (I love Paul Newman’s Own Lighten Up Balsamic Vinaigrette)

Directions:

• In a bowl, mix the corn, tomatoes and cucumber together. You want these proportions to be fairly equal so add in more if you need to.
• Mix in the onion and feta cheese.
• Drizzle the vinaigrette over the dressing but be sparing. It’s not the point of the salad.
• Toss and serve.
• Also this worked as left-overs for a couple of days but I wouldn't want it after that. Things just get too soggy.

Spicy Carrot Salad

We adore spicy food—the spicier the better. And this dish is spicy. It’s also nutritious and ridiculously tasty, too. Let’s put it this way. One person in my home dislikes carrots but makes an utter pig of himself when I serve this dish. I’m lucky to get any.

Ingredients:

4—5 carrots, peeled and shredded in a food processor or with a microplane
Pinch each of salt and sugar
1 T canola oil
1 t cumin seeds
1 t dry mustard seeds
1 t sesame seeds
½ t cumin
¼ t hot red pepper powder (we make it with ½ t and it is HOT)
2 T fresh cilantro, chopped
1 t fresh lime juice (substitute lemon if that’s what you have on hand)

Directions:

• Add the pinches of salt and sugar to the shredded carrots, mix and set aside.
• In a saucepan, heat the oil and add the cumin, dry mustard and sesame seeds. Heat until the sesame seeds begin to pop. Remove from heat.
• Add the cumin, hot red pepper powder to the saucepan and stir.
• Stir in the chopped cilantro and lime juice.
• Add the mixture from the saucepan to the shredded carrots and mix well.
• Chill.

Oven Roasted Potatoes

These potatoes cook up easily, require little in the way of prep or attention and you can add carrots, onions, garlic or even nasty turnips or parsnips to them. As pictured, I used just potatoes because I served them with the Sunday Dinner Pot Roast which already had carrots and onions.

Ingredients:

1 pound red potatoes, washed and cut into large chunks
About 2 t olive oil

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350F.
• Line a jelly roll pan with foil and spray with cooking spray.
• Toss the potato chunks with the olive oil until they are lightly coated.
• Place the potato chunks on the pan and bake for an hour, stirring every 15 minutes.
• Add salt and pepper at the table.

Cranberry-Port Sauce

This recipe is based on a Food & Wine recipe I found about eight years ago. I never liked cranberry sauce until I made this and now I adore it. Serve the sauce warm or at room temperature; you can make this ahead of time and store it refrigerated for up to two weeks.

Ingredients:

½ C port (I've used tawny and ruby port and generally prefer a ruby port)

½ C pomegranate juice

12 ounces fresh cranberries

¾ C sugar

Directions:

• In a medium saucepan, combine the port and juice and bring to a boil.
• Add the cranberries and sugar and simmer over moderately low heat until the sauce is jam-like and most of the berries have popped, about 25 minutes (you can also help the berries along by smooshing them as they cook).

Roasted Broccoli

I get tired of steamed vegetables. This is my go-to option for broccoli any more.

Ingredients:

1 head broccoli (or a crown)
Olive oil

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 400F.
• Cut the broccoli into flowerets.
• Toss with a bit of olive oil. Don’t drown the broccoli—if you have a Misto sprayer, this is the perfect time to use it.
• Place on a baking sheet lined with foil (for easier clean-up).
• Roast for about 15 minutes.