Month: February 2004

Breakfast this morning was a glass of orange juice and a serving of hash browned potatoes. I weighed 155 pounds and did 8 good sit ups. Still pathetic, but getting better.

This afternoon I had a glass of Bolla Merlot. Gretchen and I made turkey pies for dinner, with frozen peaches for dessert and two glasses of Bolla Cabernet Sauvignon.

It took us the longest time to figure out how to make really good hash browned potatoes. I cannot tell you how many innocent potatoes suffered unnecessarily in our attempts at finding the perfect hash browned potato. In an effort to stop the needless suffering of future generations of potatoes, I would like to share our technique.

Now the first thing you are going to think when you hear hash browned potatoes is that this is a decadent, fattening dish that should be avoided by people who are watching their calories. Well, let us take a look at that.

First off, remember that with every dish the key to maintaining your diet is portion control. If you were having baked potatoes, you would easily understand that one medium potato was the proper serving size, but for some reason, while making hash browned potatoes, people get the idea that they should prepare two or three potatoes per person. Do you think that because you are changing the shape of the potato that it suddenly has fewer calories? Do you think it is going to cook down? Have you ever seen a potato cook down? No! Plan on one medium potato per person.

Now let us take a look at that potato. Thanks to our friends at the United States Potato Board we know the nutritional information for your typical potato.

Take a look at that. Only 100 calories. No fat. High in fiber, potassium, and vitamin C. Heck, it’s practically health food!

The next question is “What kind of potato makes the best hash browns?” Well, what kind do you have? Wow! What a coincidence. That’s the best kind to use. No, seriously. I don’t think it matters. Use whatever you have. If you try it a few times and you think one kind works better, use that. This isn’t rocket science, after all. It’s just a potato. Our garden was prolific last year, and the root cellar has kept our potatoes really well since the winter has been so cold, so we’re still using red skin potatoes.

One thing to remember when you are making hash browns, or when you are browning anything for that matter, is to avoid overloading the pan. You need to have the pan good and hot in order to get that good brown color on the potatoes and the wonderful flavor that comes with it. If you overload the hot pan with cold food, the pan will not be able to keep the heat up and you will just end up warming the potatoes, not browning them. So, if you are making a lot, make them in batches.

I cannot over-stress the importance of this. Remember that the potato will brown where it touches the heat of the pan. The more you can spread out the potatoes in the pan, the more of it will touch the pan, and the better the browning will be. As such, the pan selection is almost as important. We only make hash browns for two. That is, we are only cooking two potatoes at a time, and yet we want so much surface area to brown our potatoes that we do not trust it to our traditional cast iron fry pan. It’s too small. We actually use a 12-inch chicken fryer. It may sound excessive, but the delicious results say otherwise.

Most hash brown recipes call for shredded potatoes. That’s fine, but it’s not best. The best thing to do is to julienne the potatoes. The thinness of the julienne slices help the potato cook rapidly, while the length helps them bind together into that satisfying mass like you get from the corner diner and fast food restaurants.

So now you are thinking I am truly insane. Who on earth is going to get out their knife and julienne potatoes for a whole family? Nobody, and neither would I. There is an easier way. We use a really cheap mandoline slicer with a julienne blade and we can zip through a whole potato in about 15 seconds, and we are left with a big pile of perfectly uniform, long, thin julienne potato slices, perfect for hash browns. You can pick one up online or at your local kitchen store for around ten bucks — cheap, and worth it!

Before we get too far, let us list our ingredients (per serving):

• 1 medium Potato, any kind
• ¼ medium Onion, any kind, or ½ tablespoon Dried Onion Bits
• 2 tablespoons Olive Oil, not extra virgin
• ½ tablespoon Butter, unsalted
• 1 pinch Coarse Sea Salt

Notice that we are using olive oil. Olive oil contains no cholesterol. Around 77% of the fat in olive oil is monounsaturated fat, the highest percentage of any edible oil. Monounsaturated fat is healthier than the polyunsaturated fats found in corn oil and much healthier than the saturated fats found in butter. It is the most desirable type of fat in the diet because it helps to decrease the LDL (bad) cholesterol in the blood and helps to increase the HDL (good) cholesterol. Some people do not like to use olive oil for frying because it has a low smoke point. Remember though, in this case we are not actually frying, we are using a frying pan, but we are only using it to brown the potatoes. The oil is just here to keep the potatoes from sticking. The butter is just for flavor. We are not going to use a temperature high enough to reach the smoke point of the oil. Just enough heat to get the Maillard reaction to occur. You could use extra virgin olive oil if you really like the taste, but we are really just using it here to keep the potatoes from sticking. There is no need to go to the expense of using extra virgin.

A lot of other hash brown potato recipes will have you peel and blanch, or even microwave your potatoes before you grate them. Let’s see… I am going to scrape a hot, slippery ball of starch across a grater with my bare hand. Yeah, right. That’s an accident waiting to happen. At best, an uncomfortable mess. Again, there is an easier way. Just wash off your potatoes and run them through the mandoline with the julienne blade. Leave the skins on. It’s easier and better for you — a lot of the good stuff in a potato is in the skin.

Now that you have your pile of julienne potato slices, stick them on a microwave safe plate, drape a piece of paper towel over them, and microwave them. You actually want them to cook, so that you can simply concentrate on browning them in the fry pan. We have a 1,250 Watt microwave and we use around 2½ minutes per potato. You will have to adjust your time according to the power of your microwave.

While the potatoes are in the microwave, mince a quarter of a medium onion per potato. If you want, you can use those dried onion bits you get in the spice aisle at the grocery store. They will re-hydrate just fine in the fry pan. If you are using dried, a half tablespoon will do, per potato.

When you take the potato out of the microwave, you will notice the they have sweated quite a bit. You want to take some paper towel and pat off as much of that as possible. Wet food will only steam in the fry pan. Dry food will brown. You want them to be as dry as you can get them.

Heat your pan to a good medium high heat. Add two tablespoons of olive oil — two turns around the pan — add one tablespoon of unsalted butter — just for flavor — and add your potatoes¹. Spread them out as much and as evenly as you can. Now let them sit. If you insist on getting in there with your utensil and stirring, poking, and prodding, it is not going to brown. Just be patient and let them sit. They know what they’re doing.

In three or four minutes, start giving the edge of the potato mass a poke and lift it enough to check the underside. When it is brown enough for you, add the minced (or dried) onion, put another two tablespoons of olive oil on top, and use a spatula to flip it over. Again, let it sit for about as long as you did for the first side.

When the second side is browned to your liking, use your spatula to extract it from the fry pan to your plate and add a pinch of salt. We like to use a coarse sea salt so that our tongues can have a unique saline encounter with each individual grain.

Serve it beside your favorite breakfast egg dish and porcine product, or just by themselves. Enjoy!

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¹ In the interest of full disclosure, I must point out that each tablespoon of oil you use adds about 120 calories. The ½ tablespoon of butter adds another 50 calories. As this recipe stands, about three-quarters of the calories come from the oil and butter. However, if you cut down too much, the potatoes will stick. This seems like the ideal balance to us — two tablespoons of olive oil and one half of a tablespoon of butter per potato. That makes about 390 total calories per serving, or a little less since some of the oil will stay with the pan.

We knew we ate more; we knew we had gained weight. Now a new study that looked at 30 years of Americans’ eating habits has pinned down how many more calories, carbohydrates and fats are eaten daily.

From 1971 to 2000, the study found, women increased their caloric intake by 22 percent, men by 7 percent.

Much of the change was found to be due to an increase in the amount of carbohydrates we have been eating. The findings may reinforce the current trend, among those sometimes known as carb-avoids, of reducing or even eliminating foods like breads and pasta.

And while the percentage of calories Americans get from fat, especially saturated fats, has decreased, the numbers might be deceiving. The actual amount of fat eaten daily has gone up. It just makes up a smaller percentage of the total caloric pie now that we are eating so many more carbs…

Part of the problem, some experts say, may stem from the traditional dietary advice to steer clear of fatty foods. This advice, they say, helped set off an explosion of “fat-free,” carbohydrate-laden foods that Americans mistakenly believed they could eat with few consequences. [NYTimes]

As long as I am mentioning food events that you can participate in without even leaving your home, I thought I would mention this event proposed recently by albiston over at Il Forno:

Why not put up a day where, just for the fun, bloggers take up a certain theme and come up with a recipe (original or not) for it? It would be really interesting to see what people from different backgrounds come up with and a great chance to get new ideas. It would be even better if bloggers who don’t usually post about food would take part… surprise us! In honour to cooking disasters (which everyone meets sooner or later) I thought that maybe calling it the “Is my Blog burning? day” would be a nice idea. [Il Forno]

Here is the latest update:

• The theme of the cooking day is soups. I started with a bit more specific idea but it’s better if we just keep it as general as possible. Anything goes: your favourite soup, a personal creation, a recipe you always wanted to try but never managed to… whatever tickles your imagination.
• It would be nice if you could post about your “experiments” next Sunday (8th February) and if you could put somewhere into the post the line “Is my blog burning?” to make it easier to look for those who took part on Google and such. I’ll put up a list of all those who took part.

Have fun cooking! [Il Forno]

I do not know what I am going to make, but I am happy to be a part of this. So, let us recap. The event is Sunday, February 8, 2004. The thing to do is to make some soup, then write about it in your blog under the title “Is my blog burning?” Got all that? See you Sunday!

Breakfast this morning was a glass of juice. I could hardly believe my eyes, but the scale read 155 pounds this morning. That was my target weight. Now I have to concentrate on getting in shape, instead of losing weight. To celebrate, I did 14 sit ups. Pathetic.

Lunch was a grilled Italian sausage with sautéed peppers and onions. In case anyone is wondering, Penn State closed today because of today’s ice storm, so I have gotten to spend a leisurely day of blogging.

Dinner was a salad, a slice of whole wheat raisin bread, and two glasses of Bolla Merlot.

This is awesome! I just stumbled across this. Amazon has “thousands” of menus on their site from restaurants in six large American cities. They say they are planning to expand it to all cities in the United States.

For your convenience, we’ve added this free service featuring thousands of restaurant menus in the following cities:
Boston,
Chicago,
New York,
San Francisco,
Seattle and
Washington, D.C. You can view menus online, search for menu items, read customer reviews, and make reservations by phone. [Amazon]

They have the menu for Old Glory, a barbecue place in Georgetown, that Gretchen and I had lunch in the last time we were there. We really enjoyed it. As I recall, they also have some tasty fermented malt beverages.

Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, over at the Tastings column in the Wall Street Journal have announced Open That Bottle Night 5 (OTBN5). For those of you who are unfamiliar with the event, it is an opportunity (excuse) to get that bottle of wine you have been saving for a “special occasion” out of your fridge and finally drink it. The night is Saturday, February 28 — not too far away — so mark you calendar and make some plans to open that bottle.

Gretchen and I meant to do this last year but we missed the date. We ended up having our wine with a nice meal, just not as a part of the OTBN event. In fact, it convinced us that there isn’t any reason to save a wine for a “special occasion” because any event — say opening a bottle of wine with a nice meal at home — can be a special occasion. We learned our lesson so well that I will actually have to buy something for this year’s event. I think I’ll go for something unusual. Does anyone know anything about “Yellow Tail?” I think it is an Australian winery.

Now’s the time. Open That Bottle Night takes place this year on Saturday, Feb. 28, in homes and restaurants all over the world. Do it! Make a special meal and open that bottle. Here are some tips so you can make the most of Open That Bottle Night 5:

1. Stand the wine up (away from light and heat, of course) for a few days before you plan to open it — say, on Wednesday, Feb. 25. This will allow the sediment, if there is some, to sink to the bottom.
2. Both reds and whites are better closer to “cellar temperature” of around 55 degrees than at room temperature. Don’t overchill the white, and think about putting the red in the refrigerator for an hour or two if you’ve been keeping it in a 70-degree house.
3. With an old bottle, the cork may break easily. The best opener for a cork like that is the one with two prongs, but it requires some skill. You have three weeks to practice using one. Be prepared for the possibility that the cork will fall apart with a regular corkscrew. If that happens, have a carafe and a coffee filter handy. Just pour enough through the coffee filter to catch the cork.
4. Otherwise, do not decant. We’re assuming these are old and fragile wines. Air could quickly dispel what’s left of them.
5. Have a backup wine ready for your special meal, in case your old wine really has gone bad.
6. Serve dinner. Then open the wine and immediately take a sip. If it’s truly bad — we mean vinegar — you will know it right away. But even if the wine doesn’t taste good at first, don’t rush to the sink to pour it out. Give it a chance. If it isn’t completely gone, our guess is that it will be wonderful, in its own way, and reward you off and on during the night. Start eating, and slowly sip the wine. Over the years, we’ve heard from scores of OTBN celebrants who have told us about wines that tasted yucky at first, then became delicious. Is it the wine, or the warmth of the gathering as the night goes on? Does it matter?
7. Talk about the person who gave you the wine, or the circumstances under which you received it. This makes the wine resonate in a very sweet and personal way.
8. Enjoy the wine for what it is, not what it might be or might once have been.
9. Save one last glass in the bottle.
10. At the very end of the meal, after the dishes are done, pour the remainder of the wine into your glasses (you might pour it through the coffee filter if there’s lots of sediment, though, personally, we often like the gutsy taste of the wine with the sediment). Then drink up, and enjoy those very last moments of a special night.

And, of course, No. 11: Drop us a note at wine@wsj.com about your evening. If we include your name in our follow-up column, we’ll send you an autographed copy of our new book, “Wine for Every Day and Every Occasion: Red, White and Bubbly to Celebrate the Joy of Living,” when it is published in October by HarperCollins. [WSJ]

Breakfast was a piece of toasted whole wheat raisin bread with strawberry jam.

Over lunch, I went with some people from the office here over to the faculty and athletic weight room at Rec Hall to a “Meet the Machines” session. Michelle Rockower, Strength & Conditioning Assistant, Penn State Athletics, walked us through a typical workout, showing us how to work each of the machines and answering questions. A very nice session. Thanks, Michelle. I am thinking that Tuesdays and Thursdays during lunch would be a good time to go work out. I have conflicting meetings right after lunch on some Wednesdays and Fridays are the group lunch day. I had a bag of Middleswarth Kitchen Fresh Bar-B-Q Flavored Potato Chips after I got back.

Gretchen and I made a pizza tonight. With a little help from our friends, we tried a few new things. We used bread flour — it turns out that Giant does carry King Arthur bread flour. We made sure the dough wasn’t too slack. We put olive oil on the dough before adding the sauce. And we used parchment paper under the pizza. We chickened out and baked it on our stone for 15 minutes at 420°F — the hottest the paper is rated for — but I think we will try it at 450°F next time. The paper was fine. We used a French bread dough recipe, browned up a little sausage, and defrosted some red peppers we froze this past summer and we ended up with a really nice looking, tasty pizza. While the dough was rising, we started with a few chips and salsa, and we served it all up with two glasses of Bolla Merlot.

Breakfast was a bowl of cold cereal with a sliced banana and soy milk. I weighed in at 156 pounds. Lunch was an orange — I went and ate the last orange — and a four mile walk. Dinner was mashed potato, ham and bean soup and two slices of whole wheat raisin bread.

• 12.353 Gallons
• $1.619/Gallon
• $20.00
• 246.5 Miles
• 20.0 Miles/Gallon
• 8¢/Mile
• 13 Days