Kitchen Guy

Recipe: Cajun Potato Medley

Posted by Chef Jim on April 16, 2010  |  Comments Off

Here’s what you need:

6 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup onion — diced
1/2 cup green bell pepper — diced
1/4 cup celery — diced
3 large russet potatoes — cut into wedges
5 tablespoons Cajun seasoning
8 ounces Andouille sausage — crumbled and cooked
2 cups Monterey jack cheese — shredded
1/2 cup tomatoes — diced
8 ounces sour cream
Hot sauce — to taste

Here’s how to make it:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Heat a tablespoon of oil in saute pan over medium heat. Add onlion, bell pepper and celery. Cook until just soft, approximately 5 minutes. Add sausage and continue sauteing until cooked through.

Arrange potato wedges on a sheet tray and drizle with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake until crispy, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Dump baked fries into a large bowl and toss with Cajun seasong. Return to sheet tray and top with onion, pepper and celery mixture, cheese and tomatoes.

Place under broiler to melt chees, then divide onto plates and serve with sour cream and hot sauce.

Recipe: Twice Baked Potatoes

Posted by Chef Jim on April 15, 2010  |  Comments Off

Here’s what you need:
4 large baking potatoes, cleaned
1/2 envelope onion soup mix
3 Tbsp. butter
½ cup cream or evaporated milk
1/3 cup sour cream
1/2 cup Cheddar cheese
grated paprika for garnish

Here’s how to make it:

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Bake potatoes for 1 hour. Cool to the touch. Cut a thin slice from the top of each potato and scoop out the insides into a bowl. Be careful and try not to break the skin. Mash the potatoes, then add the onion soup mix, butter, cream (or evaporated milk) and sour cream.

Top with the Cheddar cheese and sprinkle with paprika.

At this point, you can freeze the potatoes, but make sure they are wrapped well. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for 30 to 35 minutes until hot throughout.

Recipe: Potato Souffle

Posted by Chef Jim on April 15, 2010  |  Comments Off

Here’s what you need:

6 russet potatoes
8 ounces cream cheese whipped with chives
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup butter, unsalted (melted)
2 eggs , beaten

Here’s how to make it:

Preheat oven to 400 and lightly grease ramekins or a 2-quart soufflé or baking dish.

Peel potatoes and quarter. In a large saucepan, cover potatoes with salted cold water by 1 inch and simmer until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain potatoes and while still warm force through a ricer or a food mill. Beat in remaining ingredients with salt and pepper to taste until combined well.

Transfer potato mixture to ramekins or baking dish and bake 40 to 45 minutes or until top is pale golden.

Recipe: Potato Croquettes

Posted by Chef Jim on April 15, 2010  |  Comments Off

Here’s what you need:

1 large russet potato
1 tablespoon butter, unsalted
1 pinch salt
1 pinch nutmeg
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 large egg
vegetable oil, for deep frying

Here’s how to make it:

Bake the potato in a preheated 500 degree oven for 50 minutes, until it is soft. Halve the potato and scoop out the the flesh with a spoon. Force the scooped potato through a ricer into a large bowl.

In a saucepan, combine 3 tablespoons water, the butter, salt and nutmeg. Bring the mixture to a boil and stir in the flour all at once. Reduce the heat to medium and beat the mixture vigorously with a wooden spoon for 3 minutes or until the paste pulls away from the sides of the pan and forms a ball. Remove from the heat and add the egg, beating the mixture until it is smooth and shiny.

Add the potatoes and beat the mixture until it is combined well.

Heat oil in a frying pan. Transfer the potato mixture to a pastry bag fitted with a star tip, or place in a zip lock bag and clip one corner. Pipe the mixture into the hot oil, cutting them at 2-112 to 3 inches. Fry the croquettes, turning them with a slotted spoon for about 3 minutes until they are crisp and golden. Transfer to paper towels and sprinkle with coarse salt.

Blog Topic: One Potato, Two Potato

Posted by Chef Jim on September 20, 2009  |  Comments Off

Whenever I’ve mentioned French fries in this blog, I’ve written mostly about the condiments to serve with them. Now it’s time to get specific about how to make the perfect French fry.

You really don’t need a deep fryer set-up like the ones you see in restaurants. You can do this in your home kitchen, but the one tool you will need if you don’t currently have one is a candy thermometer – one that is manufactured so that it can measure the temperature of the fat. These usually have a clip mechanism so that they can be attached to the side of a pot to keep the bulb immersed as it measures the temperature of the oil (or candy).

It’s also important to choose the right kind of potato for frying and in my book there is none better than the russet because it has a high starch content that will help you attain a crunchy exterior and a tender interior.

This next step applies to any kind of frying or sautéing: you need uniform pieces. This ensures even cooking and that all of those pieces of food finish cooking at the same time. So if you don’t have a French fry cutter, do your best to cut the potato evenly. For shoestring fries, it’s the technique of julienne. For regular size fries, it’s the technique of batonette.

Give your potatoes a couple of good rinses after letting them soak in water for a while. This step accomplishes two things: first, it helps take away some of the starch that can impart a gummy texture to your fries as well as remove a kind of barrier so that excess moisture can escape in the form of steam. And second, this will help the raw potatoes from turning brown.

Great French fries are fried twice. The first frying is at a low temperature – a sort of blanching process – at 300 degrees. You’ll want to see the potatoes turn a pale golden before removing them to a rack so that excess grease can drip away from the potatoes. I arrange a regular cooling rack on top of a paper towel lined baking tray. I do not dump the fries onto the paper towel either in the first fry or the second.

While the fries are draining from their first swim in the oil, raise the temperature on the stove so that the thermometer registers 350. It’s during this second frying session that the potatoes will turn a darker brown and crisp up.

Once again, do not drain them on paper towels or a brown paper bag. Use that rack on top of a paper towel lined tray again.

And while the fries are still hot, that’s when to season them with salt (and pepper if you choose). Seasoning will stick better to the fries because there is still a film of hot oil on them. Once they’ve drained and cooled some, the seasoning won’t hold.

Follow these instructions and I promise perfect French fries every time. But something’s still missing.

What do you do with the oil you used?

The fact is that oil can be used several times if it is filtered and stored correctly. This is especially true of oils that have higher smoke points, like peanut and saffron oil. Eventually (like maybe the third or fourth time), you’ll have to dispose of it.

To filter your frying oil, use a regular metal strainer (to catch any large pieces of food), then a coffee filter or piece of cheesecloth (triple thickness) that lines a funnel (for the smaller pieces that got through the strainer), and pour it through this multi-piece filter into a colored glass bottle (like an empty wine bottle) or a clean coffee can. Make sure that whatever vessel you use can be sealed. Oil doesn’t like light or air. The air can make it go rancid and the light can accelerate chemical decomposition.

When you go to reuse this oil, make sure you add some fresh oil to it.

Check with your municipal waste disposal authority for recommended disposal methods.