potatoes - Kate Degelau-Pierce

Tomatillo-beef stew

It’s tomatillo season at my local farmer’s market, so when the latest Milk Street magazine had a *super* easy tomatillo stew recipe, we jumped on it. You can eat it both as a stew, but also as fillings for tacos, as you see in the picture above. Both are good options.

2.5 lbs boneless beef chuck, trimmed & cut into 2″ chunks
1 yellow onion, diced
5 medium garlic cloves, smashed & peeled
2 jalapeños, 1 stemmed, seeded, roughly chopped, 1 stemmed & sliced into rounds
3 bay leaves
1t dried oregano
0.5t ground cumin
salt & pepper
1lb Yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1.5″ chunks
12oz tomatillos, husked, cored, and roughly chopped
pumpkin seeds, toasted, for serving
roughly chopped cilantro, for serving

Heat the oven to 325F. In a dutch oven. toss together beef, onion, garlic, chopped jalapeño, bay, oregano, cumin, 1.5t salt, and 1t pepper. Cover, transfer to oven and cook for two hours.
Remove pot from oven, stir in potatoes and tomatillos. Cover, return to oven and cook until potatoes are tender and a knife inserted into the beef meets no resistance, another 1-1.5 hours.
Remove and discard the bay, taste, and season with further salt & pepper. Serve sprinkled with pumpkin seeds, sliced jalapeño, and cilantro.

Salad Niçoise is yummy

I ate a LOT of salad niçoise in Europe, both in Switzerland and France. It seems to be having something of a moment (plus, it also feels very summery to me, salad for dinner). I love the veggie-protein mix, and it’s easy to make vegetarian. When there was a skeleton recipe in the latest Bon Appetit, it seemed like a godsend.

Any Way Niçoise
6-8 servings; Switch this up to suit your preferences, but try to always include a mix of cooked and raw veggies for the best textures.

0.75c extra-virgin olive oil
0.25c fresh lemon juice (about 1 lemon, in my world)
2T dijon mustard
1t honey
1t each salt + pepper
6 large eggs
1lb green beans, trimmed; asparagus, trimmed; and/or small waxy potatoes, halved or quartered
4c halved or sliced radishes, cucumbers, fennel, and/or tomatoes
3c shredded rotisserie chicken, oil packed tuna, cooked salmon or steak, cooked lentils, or canned white beans or chickpeas
olives, capers, peperoncini, pickles, or other pickled-briny ingredients

Whisk oil, lemon juice, mustard, honey, pepper and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Bring a medium pot of water to boil. Add eggs and cook for seven minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer eggs to a bowl of ice water (keep pot over high heat). Peel eggs after ~5 minutes.

Meanwhile add green beans, asparagus, or potatoes to the same pot of boiling water and cook until just tender (cook each vegetable separately, in sequence), 2-4 minutes for green beans & asparagus, 10-15 minutes for potatoes. Transfer to bowl of ice water; let sit until cold, about 3 minutes. Remove, gently pat dry.

To serve, slice eggs in half & arrange on platter with cooked & raw veggies and protein. Top with pickled-briny ingredients, sprinkle with salt, and drizzle dressing over the top.

(You can cook the eggs and veggies up to 2 days ahead of time.)

Roasted potatoes & asparagus

Roasted asparagus and potatoes alongside some chicken with a dijon mustard cream sauce that my husband made. Delicious!

I bought a bunch of asparagus at the farmers market a couple of weeks ago. I like asparagus more than anyone else in the house does, so I usually end up eating most of it. But just pan-roasting it (my quick-and-easy go-to) can get old. So sometimes I roast it along with potatoes. They combine well together, and it’s a low-effort side dish you can let cook while preparing something else more complicated.

Roasted Potatoes & Asparagus for 1-2 people

4oz of small waxy potatoes, quartered or otherwise cut into 1″ dice
3-4 asparagus stalks, cut into 1.5″ long pieces
olive oil
salt
1-2 cloves sliced garlic (optional)

Heat oven to 425F. Mix potatoes, 1T olive oil, and a generous pinch of salt in a bowl to coat potatoes with oil in a small bowl. Spread onto small cookie sheet. Cover with aluminum foil. Put in oven, roast for 20 minutes.

While potatoes are roasting, put asparagus pieces into same bowl (add a bit more olive oil if needed) to coat them with olive oil. Remove potatoes from oven, remove aluminum foil, add asparagus, mixing the potatoes & asparagus together with a spatula. Roast for 15 minutes.

Remove from oven, mix, add garlic slices if using. Roast for 5 more minutes. Serve warm and enjoy!

Yes, pasta + potatoes. It’s delicious.

I looked askance at this recipe for a couple of minutes – I mean, pasta and potatoes in the same dish? That’s a lot of carbs. But then my husband suggested it and, let’s face it, carbs are DELICIOUS. So we tried it out.*

Pasta with potatoes, gorgonzola, and fried sage

12oz fingerling potatoes, cut into 0.5″ pieces
12oz pasta (the recipe calls for twisty pasta, but when you’re gluten-free you make do with what you can find)
3T olive oil
0.25c fresh sage leaves
2T white balsamic vinegar (yes, we just used the regular stuff)
3T salted butter
3T chopped fresh chives
3oz gorgonzola (or other creamy blue cheese)

Mix potatoes, 2qt water, and 2T salt. Bring to a boil, cook over high until potatoes are tender, about 5 minutes. Transfer potatoes to colander with slotted spoon. Return water to boil and cook pasta.
Meanwhile, heat olive oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. add sage and cook until crisp, about 1 minute. Remove cooked sage with slotted spoon. Return the pan to medium-high heat and add potatoes and 0.5t both salt & pepper. Cook until potatoes are golden, ~5 minutes. Off heat, add in balsamic vinegar.
Drain pasta, saving 0.75c of water. Add pasta to skillet with potatoes, placing over medium-high heat. Add butter and cooking water, toss until creamy. Stir in chives. Sprinkle with gorgonzola, crush sage over the top. Serve.

* Apropos of nothing: the photo on the cover for the Milk Street Magazine that this recipe is in? Looks like it’s out of a 1970s cookbook. A roast with peppers and a hard-boiled egg inside? It might be delicious, but I can’t even with the picture of it. I shudder a little bit inside every time I see it.