We don’t make many recipes here, but this one is too good to pass
up.
I love potatoes. All kinds of potatoes, boiled, baked, mashed, roasted, roasted, toasted, fried, grilled, twice baked, with skins on, skinless, cream, scalloped, potato pancakes, potato soup, tots and balls, heated, cold, even raw with a little salt. So when I tried grilled Roman potatoes
,
30 years ago, at the Crab Cooker in Newport Beach I had to ask. “How are these made?”
However, just to warn you that after 30 years of tweaking and playing, there is not much left of the original recipe. This is where it all started with crab cooking. Boil, puree, bake and then roast. In the maceration stage they add Roman cheese, of course, and here’s what I thought was the secret ingredient, they put their dill pickle tartar sauce. I looked high and low for the dill pickle tartar sauce. Dill pickle seasoning. No one has heard of it. Do you think they were pulling my leg? I couldn’t find it anywhere. So that’s as far as I got with the original Crab Cooker recipe. Instead, I used sweet pickle seasoning with extra mayonnaise and Parmesan cheese instead of Romano.
Due to the high volume in the crab kitchen, they have mashed potato trays and trays that they keep hot in the oven and throw on the grill to get that mesquite touch right before serving it. They are always delicious! It makes my mouth water just writing about it. I never made it to the baking or roasting stage either. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, except that I don’t want Crab Cooker suing me for trade secret violations.
This is what his recipe became. I use new potatoes freshly harvested from the garden. Yes, that’s not always going to happen. I had about, count them, 23 small to medium potatoes this year and ten people for dinner.
Ten people =10 pounds of potatoes. Buy what you need.
Cut into quarters
Boil in chicken broth and save the broth for the sauce
Puree
This year I added homemade Italian
dressing including, oil vinegar, garlic, salt pepper and Old Bay seasoning, (I use this throughout) Wish Bone Italian Dressing
is fine.
About half a cup of homemade mayonnaise (this is too easy to do and a shameless promotion of a video I made). o Best Foods Mayo is also fine
Added a little leftover Philly cheese (optional, of course)
Salt milk
and pepper to taste
. Grated fresh Parmesan cheese
and not just any Parmesan. We are not here. I was watching a cooking show. The lady described this type of Parmesan as a cheese that if you had to choose a cheese to stay stranded on a desert island with it would be Parmesan. Note spelling. The authentic Parmesan cheese ends in an O.
The only true Parmesan cheese is authentic Parmigiano Reggiano from Italy. It takes about 8 gallons of milk to make one pound of Parmigiano Reggiano! This cheese is high in protein and vitamins and is also praised for its calcium. You don’t have to be an expert cheesemaker to recognize the real Parmigiano Reggiano, the marks are pressed all over the side of the cheese wheels. According to the ancient laws of Rome, this cheese can only be produced in a very limited area of Italy. This is one of the key reasons why this cheese cannot be copied.
Trader Joes sells for $13 a pound and I honestly can’t live without it. It’s to die for.
Then, if I’m feeling particularly playful, I’ll add a tablespoon of sweet seasoning just for fun and for the sake of the old days
.
Because we’re on the road on Thanksgiving, I make the potatoes the night before and put them in a 9×13″ baking dish so I can put it in the oven to heat it when the turkey comes out. These are so good that you don’t need sauce.
But if you must have sauce, save the broth from the potatoes and add it to the turkey drops. First, add 5 or 6 tablespoons of flour to the drips. Heat and stir until the flour has absorbed all the drops and then slowly add the broth, stirring all the time. At the end add milk or half and half to make it really creamy. Oh my God, this is a little piece of heaven. The salsa recipe is from my sis Michelle, a dear friend of Lake Arrowhead. It never piles up, it’s always perfect.
Now, in
case you need to feel guilty about all the calories in this dish, let me reassure myself with the nutritional benefits of potatoes
.
Potatoes contain all 22 amino acids to form complete proteins after easy digestion. It makes protein absorption easier than the digestive effort of breaking down the complete proteins in meat and dairy products.
Potatoes are a high source of potassium, even more so than bananas, and are rich in other minerals. They are also rich in vitamin C and B6. More importantly, Agricultural Research Service plant geneticist Roy Navarre has identified 60 different types of phytochemicals in the skins and flesh of a wide variety of potatoes. If you need more convincing, click here and learn how potatoes can save your life. It’s all right.
Food is one of the great joys of life. Playing, inventing, experimenting, writing, reading, tasting, food is a perverse pleasure. And although parents always tell you never to play with your food, I give you permission to break this rule and have fun with your food.
Happy Turkey to all!
The Blackwell’s
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