The boxty is a traditional Irish potato pancake. (Joshua Tibbetts)
I've been seeing Boxty Cakes on brunch menus recently. It's an Irish potato pancake, basically hash browns with a pancake batter binder added to make them hold together. They're great.
I worked in an Irish fine dining restaurant back in the late 1990s. Yeah, that was a thing, and it was a challenge. People weren't ready for that yet. So to see Boxty and Irish food hit the mainstream now makes it all feel worth it in retrospect.
A food processor makes quick work of grating the potatoes to make boxy potato pancakes. (Joshua Tibbetts)
Potato pancakes, as a fine dining experience? I'll give you a moment to wrap your head around that. Yes, even an Irish potato recipe can be a profound and transformative experience, when done well. And that's always the rub, isn't it? When done properly.
The potato is a miracle, disguised as a food. It is really a cornerstone of American food. There's nothing appealing about a potato when you pull it out of the ground. It's lumpy and covered in dirt. No exciting colors or aromas. Even the texture is difficult in it's raw plant form. I wonder who first thought "Oh yeah, I want to eat that!"
When you look at the modern history of food trends, nothing shook up culinary traditions as much as connecting the Old World to the Americas. Western Hemisphere foods like potatoes, tomatoes, corn and peppers shook foundational cuisines around the world. Eastern Hemisphere foods like flour, beef, pork and cheese irrevocably changed American food traditions.
Potatoes are such an unassuming food. They have very little character on their own, but they are a fantastic vehicle to carry other ideas. The culinary chameleon. You can change their flavor or texture in seemingly infinite variations. They're not the destination, but rather the journey that gets you where you want to go. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to write an entire cookbook on potatoes.
Before they had potatoes, Europeans ate a greater variety of root vegetables than they do now. Turnips, beets, parsnips, rutabagas, that's what went into the stew. Vegetable fritters developed, with eggs and flour used to hold them together while the shredded vegetables fried in a pan. Frittatas, quiche and even omelets are all variations on this original fritter design. Then along comes the potato.
Irish boxty cakes and Jewish latkes are incredibly similar variants of the egg and vegetable fritter. I originally wanted to do a double recipe, to compare and contrast them. But potato preparation gets complicated in a hurry, so I decided to make this one a two-part episode. We'll do boxty this month, and latkes next month.
After boiling half the potatoes until soft, pass them through a ricer or mash them with a fork. (Joshua Tibbetts)
Boxty are made from potatoes, milk and flour, but it's a potatoes-two-ways preparation. Half the potatoes are grated like hash browns, and the other half are mashed to make up part of the binder that holds it all together.
We want starchy potatoes for boxty, brown Russets. That high starch content is both why we love them, and why they are tricky. As soon as that starch is exposed to air, it wants to oxidize. It turns brownish gray and the flavor goes off. There a lot of methods for dealing with this, like grating the potatoes directly into water or cooking the potatoes before shredding them. But the best trick I've ever found for making boxty or latkes is squeezing the juices out of them. Yep, we are going to juice potatoes.
If you squeeze the juices out immediately after grating and save that juice, in a few minutes it will settle. The brown oxidized water rises and the potato starch settles to the bottom of the bowl. You can easily pour that water off and then reincorporate that starch back into your pancake batter, which will help caramelize the cakes in the pan when you're frying them up. that's the brown we want.
Use cheesecloth to squeeze the liquid out of the grated potatoes for your boxty. This helps prevent the potato from turning brownish gray as the starch oxidizes. (Joshua Tibbetts)
I love using traditional tools and doing things by hand, from scratch as much as possible. But for anything in the hash brown family, I use the shredding disc in a food processor. It makes longer shreds with sharper corners, which makes for a more solid structure, less opportunities to melt into a gooey, gummy mess on the edges. If you don't have a food processor, the large holes on a box grater will work. Just remember to grate directly into a bowl of water. That browning oxidation starts to happen as soon as the exposed flesh hits the air.
Capture the liquid squeezed out of the grated potatoes. Let it sit and then pour of the liquid from the starch that settles at the bottom. That can be incorporated back into the potato mixture. (Joshua Tibbetts)
Boxty keep really well in the fridge. Honestly, I feel like they are better after sitting overnight in the fridge. The flavors get a chance to marry together, and cooled potatoes get more surface action in the pan, getting a nice crispy crust on them. Who doesn't love a crunchy potato? So it's a good recipe to prepare a larger batch. Then you can just pull them out and fry them up in a little butter the next couples days. They are traditionally eaten at lunch or dinner, but make an excellent quick breakfast.
If you want get funky with it, substitute any solid vegetable for the shredded potato strings. Carrots, zucchini, beets, rutabaga, whatever strikes your fancy. You still will want russets for the mashed potato part, they help hold it together. Non-potato vegetables don't need to get their juices squeezed out. A tablespoon of cornstarch hydrated in the same amount of water can be added to make up for the potato starch that you'd get if you were squeezing.
Chef Tibbs, also known as Joshua “Tibbs” Tibbetts, is a Cedar Rapids native who has been a professional chef for more than 30 years.
If you want, you can substitute any solid vegetable for the shredded potato strings in boxty. Carrots, zucchini, beets, rutabagas work well with the recipe. (Joshua Tibbetts)
Boxty Cakes
1/2 pound russet potatoes, washed with the skin on
1/2 pound russet potatoes, peeled, diced and covered in water
1 pint (2 cups) whole milk or buttermilk
1/2 pound (1 3/4 cups) flour
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 cup minced scallions
Two large squares of cheesecloth
Real butter or neutral cooking oil for frying.
Put the diced potatoes in a saucepan, cover with water, and bring to a simmer on the stove top. Cook potatoes until they mash easily with a fork. When potatoes are soft, pass them through a ricer or mash them with a fork. Cover them with the milk.
While they are cooking, line a bowl with two or three layers of cheesecloth.
Grate your unpeeled potatoes directly into a bowl with just a little cool water. Or if using the grating disc of a food processor, grate smaller amounts of potatoes in batches and quickly transfer them to a bowl of water before they begin to brown.
Transfer the potatoes and water into the cheesecloth lined bowl. Pick up the corners of the cheesecloth and pull them together at the top to make a bag. Twist the potatoes in the cheesecloth bag until they form a ball, then keep twisting until you have squeezed all of the juices out into the bowl. Don't throw those juices away just yet, we will want those soon.
Add the drained and squeezed potatoes to the milk right away so they don't brown again.
Let the squeezed potato juice rest on the counter for a few minutes to let the starch settle and solidify in the bottom of the bowl. Try not to stir or disturb it too much, just let it be.
When the water turns very brown, gently pour the liquid off the top. The starch will be a sticky mass in the bottom of the bowl. Pour a little of the milk from the potato bowl into the starch and mix it in with a spoon to loosen the starch up. Add that back to the potatoes and milk in the mixing bowl. Add your salt and flour. (I like to hold back a little on the flour and see how it's mixing up, adding more later if needed.)
We are looking for a fairly stiff batter. Not as smooth as regular pancake batter, but not as stiff as mashed potatoes. I like to cover it with plastic film and rest it in the fridge for an hour at this point, to let that flour really hydrate.
After it rests, pull it out and fold in the scallions. Heat up a cast iron pan on the stove top to medium-low heat. Give it a light film of oil and then start frying the Boxty. I like 1/2 cup sized cakes, but the size and thickness is definitely a personal preference. Ladle the batter in and gently cook on both sides. We'll see some browning here, but this step is mainly getting them to cook through. It's OK to flip them a few times.
It's a good idea to start with a small one and then taste it right away, to see if it has enough salt in it.
When they solidify and are cooked through, transfer them to a baking sheet lined with paper towels. Let them cool on the counter for half an hour, then chill them on the sheet in the fridge. Once chilled, they can be transferred to a container or zip-lock bag.
When you want to eat them, just heat up some butter in a cast iron pan and fry them until they get hot, brown and crusty.
Source: Joshua Tibbetts
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