Category Archives: Kitchen Tools

New Year’s Resolution – Finish What You Start: Bleu Cheese Mashed and Potato Pancakes

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whole foods yukon gold potatoes

Light Fluffy and Bleu Cheesy

Some people have a hard time finishing things. I, myself, have added ‘finish the books I start’ to my list of New Year’s Resolutions. It just happens – maybe you grew bored of the thing you’ve started or maybe you think it’s taking too long to get to the good parts of 50 Shades of Grey – whatever the reason, certain tasks just aren’t completed.

It’s hard to believe that this could happen with something as delectable as mashed potatoes. But it does. You made too much of the stuff. You didn’t know that some of your dinner guests are strict carnivores or veggie-free. They don’t eat side dishes. They didn’t show. Or, God forbid, they just don’t like potatoes!

Regardless of how it happened, you might find yourself left with a bowlful of cold, rapidly aging mashed potatoes in your fridge following such a party.

If you’re like most Americans…You’ve probably had a mashed potato or two in the past four weeks. One way to avoid having leftover mashed potatoes is to doctor them up a bit – make something unexpected out of the expected.

Bleu Cheese Mashed Potatoes (Serves 8)

Ingredients:

  • 4 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes – washed and quartered…no need to peel
  • 1/2 Cup of Breakstone’s Sour Cream at room temperature
  • 1/2 Cup of heavy whipping cream
  • 6 TBSP of butter
  • 8 oz of crumbled bleu cheese
  • Salt and Pepper

1. Place the potatoes in a large stock pot and cover with water – enough water so that the water is at least two inches higher than the potatoes

Note: If, like most of us…You want to get ahead and cut the potatoes early…Just keep them in a large stock pot covered with ice water – this will keep them from turning an icky brown color

2. Bring the pot of potato filled water to a boil

Whole Foods yukon Gold potatoes

Bringing to a boil

3. Reduce to a simmer and cook until potatoes are fork tender – about 15 minutes

4. In a separate saucepan, heat the cream and butter

bleu cheese mashed potatoes

Heating the Cream and Butter

5. Drain the potatoes and then place them back into the still hot stock pot. This helps to steam the extra water out of the potatoes so you don’t get watery mashed potatoes

6. Using a masher, ricer or fork, mash the potatoes to your own desired consistency – I like ’em pretty smooth

Williams-Sonoma Potato Masher

This one’s from WS

Potato Ricer

From Wolfgang Puck

7. While mashing, ricing or forking, add the warmed milk/butter and whip in

8. Add in the sour cream and bleu cheese and mix until well combined

9. Add salt and pepper to taste

10. Serve immediately OR (thank you, Rachael Ray) you can put the mashed bleu cheese potato mixture in a separate bowl, cover and place over a bowl of simmering water on the stove top and keep warm for up to an hour or more. Shut the front door!

Now….In spite of how fab and different this potato dish was…it’s the next day and your lame non-mashed potato eating friends couldn’t finish this tasty side dish. Sure, you could toss the extra mashed potatoes…But in the spirit of the New Year and finishing what you start…Get creative and make…

Potato Pancakes (serves 4)

Ingredients:

  • Whatever left over mashed potatoes you have, but at least 2 1/2 cups with ratio of other ingredients below
  • 1/3 Cup of Breakstone’s Sour Cream
  • 1/4 Cup of Bisquick Baking Mix
  • 1 Egg
  • 1 TSP of sugar – you can leave this out, but it really helps to crisp up the edges of the pancakes
  • Butter for frying

1. Bring the mashed potatoes, Sour Cream and egg to room temperature

2. To the bowl of leftover mashed potatoes, add the sour cream, egg, sugar and Bisquick and mix to well combined.

bleu cheese potato pancakes

Just eyeball the ingredient amounts

NOTE: eyeball the consistency – you want it somewhat thick – not as thin as pancakes. Depending upon how much of the mashed potatoes you have left over, you may need to add a little more baking mix or another egg.

mashed potato left over pancakes

Not totally smooth, you want to taste the potatoes

3. Heat the butter in a large skillet over med/high heat – you can use vegetable oil/canola oil as well…just not olive oil

4. Drop pancake-y sized dollops of the mixture into the hot skillet and fry until lightly golden brown on one side

bleu cheese mash left over

Browning side one

5. Flip the pancakes and fry the second side

mash potato pancakes

See the crispy edges…that’s the sugar at work

6. Serve warm as a fab day two side dish….Or for breakfast – but, I wouldn’t put syrup on these…Just a little butter, maybe a chive or two would be great.

Some things prove harder to finish than others. But, you can get creative. For me, maybe that means finishing the books I start by watching the movie. Don’t judge, the end result is the same. To finish off your mashed potatoes, try whipping up a day two side dish of potato pancakes.

Magic Pancakes: Made With Love

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pancake bisquick breakfast

Picture Perfect Pancake

When for a brief time I lived outside of the city, there was a chicken dish I made all the time – very simple, easy and because I could use the frozen Perdue chicken breasts…always available in my freezer. I referred to this very basic but delicious dish simply as ‘The Chicken’. Like ‘Hey, what’d you have for dinner last night?’…’The Chicken’.

Someone once asked me why when I made ‘The chicken’ it tasted so much better than when he made ‘The Chicken’. And, I always told him the same thing: because I make it with love.

Cooking isn’t as simple as just following the directions. I’m not saying it’s hard. I am saying that you can always taste the difference when something is made by someone who loved making it or loved the idea of eating it.

The ‘Love Ingredient’ may not always be tangible but it is always detectable. Love heats the bread in the bread basket. Love makes the perfectly runny poached egg. Love cares enough to whip up real whipped cream.

And, sometimes, the love is in the extra ingredients and care in creation. When it comes to pancakes, I like them crispy, fluffy, light and creamy. Hard to achieve this using just a simple mix…Or, God Forbid – a prefab batter…

So, I do a little love doctoring to make them magic, to create the ideal pancake. Not a lot of work…just a little bit of love.

Magic Pancakes: Made with Love (Serves 2 – 4)

Ingredients:

Perfect Pancakes

Magic Pancakes: Mise En Place

  • 1 Cup Bisquick Baking Mix
  • 1/2 Cup milk – Yes, skim or 2% or whole milk are all fine.
  • 1 TSP Sugar (Crispy Love Creator)
  • 1/3 Cup Sour Cream (Creamy Love Creator)
  • 1 Egg Yolk
  • 1 Egg White – Whipped to stiff peaks (Fluffy Love Creator)
  • Grade A Pure Maple Syrup
  • Butter

1. In a mixing bowl, combine the Bisquick, Milk, Egg Yolk, Sour Cream and Sugar with a whisk

light and fluffy crispy pancakes

Pancake Batter To Be Combined

cuisinart hand held mixer silver

Magic Mixer

2. In a separate bowl, whip the egg white to stiff peaks. Love separates the egg and whips the egg whites. You can do this by hand…but, it’s a little more love than you might have. I like to use my Cuisinart hand mixer.

3. Fold the whipped egg white into the Bisquick/Milk/Egg/Sour Cream/Sugar batter. Fold it in carefully so as to not deflate the fluffiness

light and fluffy pancakes

Don’t Over Mix!

4. Heat a skillet over medium and melt a just enough butter to ensure the pancake won’t stick. But, you don’t want a visible layer of butter.

5. Pour the batter into the heated skillet in 3 inch circles…Or, into a Mickey Mouse mold or freehand the shape of a car

walt disney world pancake mold

Pancake Fun Shape

bisquick pancakes

Freehand Pancake

6. Cook until the edges are dry and bubbles start to form on the top then flip

mickey mouse pancakes

Mousy-Cake

7. Cook another :30 seconds. Once the pancake fluffs up and is dry on the edges, it’s ready

8. Serve a stack with heated syrup and a little more butter. Love uses real maple syrup and heats it up.

pancakes light fluffy crispy

Heated Syrup and Just a little butter make it better…

With Christmas just around the corner, you may be having guests of all ages who would enjoy a carefully prepared pancake. Here’s just one way to show them you care: Make your pancakes with a little love.

A Vegetable Peel Receptacle Miracle!

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Russet Potatoes Pre-Peel

Chances are, if you’ve had any potato dish in my apartment that requires the potatoes to be peeled, you’ve eaten something that may or may not have fallen into the kitchen garbage can.

Some of these might not have been in the trash

Relax. Here’s what was happening…

I used to have a disposal…And, while I was told explicitly that the disposal was for scraps of food only…I often peeled vegetables right into the sink and then whirred the peels away in the disposal. Horrors right?

BTW, I also sent egg shells down there. And, while I might deny this…there may have been one incident when I broke a glass into the disposal and sent the shards into the spinning blades and away forever. Listen, I googled this before choosing between putting my bare hand into the blades vs keeping my fingers safe and just turning the disposal switch and I did find someone online to support turning the switch.

So, when I moved and no longer had a disposal, I had to readjust my approach to vegetable peeling. I tried peeling into the sink onto a paper towel – but that seemed a little messy and peels inevitably ended up on the drain. The use of the paper towel as receptacle wasn’t working to protect peels from causing a clog.

Small SimpleHuman Trash Can

I resorted to peeling vegetables directly into the trash. A few challenges arose. I have one of those super smart trash cans – you know the ones that lure you in at Bed Bath & Beyond because they’re

a. so prominently displayed

and

b. so pretty.

And, since my kitchen is NYC tiny, I have a small SimpleHuman semi-oval one. It’s only about 17 inches tall and I’m like a ton taller than that. So I have to bend pretty far down to create the right projectile for the veggie peels. Plus, my smart trash can isn’t smart enough to remain open while I’m peeling. I have to keep one foot on the lid opening pedal while peeling. It’s sort of a balancing act. SimpleHuman might want to create a ‘remain open’ option for exactly this type of thing. I’ll take a fee on that idea, thanks.

I’m also a little klutzy, to be honest. I can manage holding on to a carrot or a celery stalk when peeling directly into the trash. But, potatoes are slippery. Yes, to answer your next question, I’ve tried to peel toward myself as opposed to away – and that doesn’t work for me.

Were these in the trash?

And, sometimes, while thrusting the peeler against the potato, my hand has slipped and the half peeled potato has flown into the trash.

Before you get all crazy, I’m sure that I washed the potato before cooking it and serving it to you. Even in a perfect peel, you need to wash the peeled potato before serving. I know that.

But the other day while making the pot roast, I found a solution. So simple, the fact that I hadn’t thought of it before makes me the simple human in this scenario!

I took one of the many brown bags I have from Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods and propped it atop the SimpleHuman lid. Then, I slit the left and right sides about 8 inches down, creating a flap in front. I folded that flap down and created a perfect vegetable peel receptacle at a much better height.

Perfectly Positioned Veggie Peel Receptacle

I know you’re thinking, it’s a vegetable peel receptacle miracle! And, for me, it really is.

The paper bag solution, unfortunately doesn’t make me any less of a klutz. But, you all can now rest a little easier knowing that the potatoes I’m serving have only at worst been flung into a brown bag of vegetable peels.

Spatula! I have two words for you…

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Some people come into your life for a very brief time, but leave you with stories that last forever.

A guy I met a long time ago was a doctor in Memphis, TN. At that time he was doing a rotation in the ER at a hospital down there. While he was a southerner, this particular ER was in a rough neighborhood and provided exposure to people and circumstances he hadn’t experienced during his preppy, private school upbringing on the right side of town.

There was, for example, the woman in the delivery room who upon hearing the doctors mention the placenta, decided that Placenta would be a lovely name for her newborn daughter.

Our doctor friend had a lot of stories….But, perhaps my favorite of his encounters took place not in the hospital, but at a nearby grocery store. While shopping for dinner, my southern doctor friend overheard a mother yelling at her ill behaved daughter. She said, and this is a quote: ‘Spatula! I have two words for you: Be Have!’ We were never sure which was more amusing, the daughter being named ‘Spatula’ or the fact that behave was two words…

Since hearing this story, I can’t look at or grab for a spatula without hearing ‘Spatula! I have two words for you…’ in my head. And, it got me to thinking about how many spatulas I really needed when I downsized from the house to the apartment.

Here’s what I’ve found…I need three. Yep, three spatulas. I need this one from Williams-Sonoma

Silicone Slotted Spatula

Actually, I need two of those. I could live with one..but since most of what I make whether it be breakfast, lunch, dinner or dessert, requires a spatula, one is always dirty. In a smaller space it’s important to clean as you go. Still, if you are cooking frequently, it’s almost impossible to always have a clean spatula available.

I like this spatula because the handle is long, the silicone paddle won’t mar your non-stick pots, pans etc and, mostly, because it comes in many different colors.

And, I need a fish spatula. The fish spatula is good for a lot more than just fish. Its slim design makes it ideal for flipping all sorts of delicate foods – I use mine when I make eggs over easy, for example.

This is the one I bought at Williams-Sonoma:

WMF Profi Plus Fish Turner

That’s it. Just three spatulas. And, yes, you could get away with two, but I don’t recommend trying it.

I really don’t know where my southern doctor friend ended up but the stories of two girls named Placenta and Spatula will stay with me forever.