Fried Yukon Gold Potato Chips

This isn't revolutionary, by any means, but it's thrilling: last night, we made our own potato chips. Ever since last week, when I made those scrumptious scallion cakes, I've been chomping at the bit to get frying. It's exhilarating, frying food: not only does it make a glorious mess, the result is addictive. I couldn't stop thinking about those scallion cakes -- their crunchy edges, their soft middles, their bold flavor... see, now I want some this instant! But the key to those little buggers is that they are fried: you could fry a shoe and it wouldn't taste half-bad. But when you fry something that already tastes good -- say, Yukon Gold Potatoes -- the result is nearly always to die for. Oh, I know, it's bad for you. Very, very bad. But once in awhile? It's ok -- especially since I don't usually eat fried food when I go out. That's sort of a lie, but we don't even stock potato chips in our apartment anymore. And I haven't eaten McDonald's in months -- I suppose this isn't something that I should be too proud of, but I live in America. There are always at least three McDonald's within walking distance, no matter where I am. I can see one from my office window, for crying out loud: fried food is everywhere. At least I'm making these potatoes myself, so I have some kind of control over the whole thing. We dried the chips pretty thoroughly and didn't salt them too heavily, which are two things that you could rarely ever say about fried food you get in a restaurant, fast food or otherwise.
So, to satisfy my craving for both eating and making fried food, we sliced up two round Yukon Gold potatoes and got to frying yesterday as a nice peppered roast broiled in the oven. It's fairly easy to fry things: all you need is a semi-deep frying pan, a set of tongs, and oil. We used Crisco vegetable oil, which is made from soybeans. Soybean oil has a very high smoke point* -- of about 440º -- which makes it ideal for deep-frying. The concept of smoke points is an essential one to master, especially if you frequently use fats while cooking. It refers to the point at which the fat (usually oil or butter) begins to smoke, which indicates that it is beginning to break down and is no longer good to consume. Essentially, when a fat reaches its smoking point, it burns and becomes unusable. Therefore, a higher smoke point allows one to heat the oil to a temperature that ensures quick, easy, and successful frying. Soybean oil is also wonderful to fry with because it has a mild taste and virtually no discernible flavor, allowing you to fry more delicate foods without fearing that their unique taste will be lost in the process. This is especially true with something like potato chips, which I like to cut extremely thin: they'll still taste like potatoes if you fry them in a mild oil, even if they're skinnier than a sheet of paper.

Fried Yukon Gold Potato Chips
Speaking of cutting the potatoes, D and I tried a new method yesterday, and it was fairly successful. Since we didn't want to stand in the kitchen all day, we decided to only fry two Yukon Gold potatoes, on the large side -- this whole debacle was a test, really, of our frying prowess, especially since I didn't let D participate very much when I made the scallion cakes. We each took a potato and tried separate methods. I did a standard knife-chop while D put our new box-grater to the test: it has three razor-like cuts along one side, sort of like a low-end vertical mandoline. Well, not exactly, but that's the closest thing I can imagine. If you own a box-grater, you'll know what I'm talking about. Anyhow, since this was a new kitchen item, D couldn't resist gliding a potato over it to see exactly how it would slice. It worked fairly well, although the potato was a bit large and kept getting caught on the second blade, and the slices weren't very uniform looking. Some of them were a bit raggedy for my tastes, but that didn't really effect the outcome, so it was fine. I would recommend using a real mandoline or just chopping by hand, though -- it seemed like more trouble than it was worth, especially given the results.
After chopping the potatoes, we poured about 1/2 to 3/4 cups of soybean oil into a frying pan over medium heat. We let the oil sit on the burner until it was wavy and shimmering, then we added about seven slices of potatoes to the oil. They began frying immediately, bubbling and jumping about recklessly. About 2 minutes in, we flipped them over with the tongs and allowed them to cook until both sides were beautifully golden -- about five minutes, total (2 minutes on the first side and 3 on the second.) Since the potatoes are essentially dunked and bathed in the hot oil, there's no need to watch them obsessively to make sure that both sides brown evenly -- the one flip should ensure a pretty even coloring. When they looked crispy, we removed them, one at a time, from the oil and allowed the excess to drip back into the pan. Then, we transferred them to a plate on two paper towels, sprinkled a tiny bit of salt over them, and placed three more towels on top of the potatoes. I patted them dry while D added the next batch to the oil. It took about 30 minutes to complete the entire batch (we got lazy at the end, a bit, and added many more than 7 to the oil) but the labor was well worth it. It was the perfect amount of chips for two people, and I found myself hankering for more. But I'm good -- I had a banana instead. See? Eating fried food doesn't totally ruin you! Especially if you follow it with fruit.
Wow: I just had a thought: fried fruit. Everybody wins!

*For more information on smoke points of other fats, visit this article at Cooking for Engineers, which is one of my favorite cooking websites. Check out the handy conversion window in the top right corner!

Scallion Cakes

I know, I know -- Chinese New Year has come and gone, already, but my office is having a Chinese New Year celebration today. It involves a lot of homemade food, a large group of people crammed into a very small kitchen, and is the perfect opportunity for me to try something new in the kitchen. By the time I got around to thinking about what to make, the good stuff was taken: soba noodles, almond cookies, pot stickers... I wanted to bake something, preferably sweet, but it seems like everyone was leaning that direction. So in the spirit of culinary adventure, I decided to make scallion cakes. Scallion cakes are round bits of dough sprinkled with oil, salt, and scallions then rolled into a bun, flattened, and fried. Far from baking cookies, but perhaps a bit more adventurous -- and I'm always game for kitchen chaos.
I was nervous about the frying part, and about the whole venture entirely, so I whipped up a half-batch over the weekend as a test. They turned out ok, but they were too big -- very doughy in the center and burned on the outside -- and didn't have enough scallions or oil in them, in my opinion. So I made one and a half recipes worth for the office and made them much smaller and flatter, adding a hefty amount of scallions to each cake rather than the paltry 1 teaspoon called for in the recipe. I think it was a success, although I ran out of scallions at the end and was left with a bit of extra dough. At least it's only flour mixed with water and I wasn't throwing away much -- just one recipe's amount of dough would have been too small, so I suppose all I really needed was another scallion or two to make it right. I used a total of fifteen scallions, a whopping 5 tablespoons of sesame oil, and an additional (brace yourselves) cup of vegetable oil to fry them in. Obviously all of the frying oil isn't consumed, but it's still quite a monstrous amount of oil to put in a pan. Like I said, this was my first stint truly frying something, and I must say it was a pretty successful venture. I'm already planning my next fry: latkes.

Scallion Cakes
This is a recipe for about ten small scallion cakes -- they're better small, if you want my honest opinion -- but you could also make four or five large cakes, as the recipe recommends. If you roll the dough out very thin, though, I think they end up tasting better because of the way they are rolled and fried, so you're better off erring on the side of having more rather than having bulkier cakes.
Begin by combining 2 cups of all-purpose flour with 3/4 teaspoon of sugar. I believe that the sugar helps the dough brown more evenly as it fries, but I'm not sure -- most of the recipes I found don't actually contain sugar, but this dough was pretty stellar, so I didn't want to mess with it. I toyed with the idea of adding salt to the dough, but decided against it: the salt might make the scallions soggier, I reasoned. I'm not sure if this is logical, but there's enough salt in this recipe already, so it's worth skipping it in the dough.
Stir 2/3 a cup boiling water into the flour mixture and mix just until the flour absorbs all of the water. Gradually -- the key here is gradually -- stir in enough cold water (1/4 to 1/3 a cup) until the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl and form a ball. The dough should not be sticky; if it is, you added too much water. This can be remedied by adding a bit more flour until the dough smooths out and is no longer sticky.
You want to keep all surfaces that the dough will come in contact with, including your hands, well-floured throughout this escapade. After the dough has begun to come together, remove it from the bowl and knead for a few minutes on a lightly floured surface until it becomes smooth and elastic. You can add more flour at this stage, if necessary. Cover the dough with a slightly damp cloth and let rest for an hour. Chop up your scallions at this point: about fifteen stalks total, less if you desire more doughy cakes. You want to slice them very thinly, along the bias. Use some of the white part of the scallion as well as the entirety of the green portion.After the hour has passed, re-dust your surface and your hands with more flour and knead the dough until it is smooth. Place the dough back under the damp towel and remove about 1/10 of the dough -- no more than about two tablespoons worth -- and shape into a smooth ball. Using a floured rolling pin, roll the ball into an extremely flat round. Lightly brush the round with a good amount of sesame oil, until the entire surface is evenly coated, and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Cover the surface with minced scallions -- about 1 to 1-1/2 tablespoons total.
Tightly roll the rounds into a fat rope and coil the rope into a small bun. Make sure to pinch the end of the rope into the roll to seal it together. Cover with a damp cloth and allow it to rest for 15 to 20 minutes. Repeat these steps until all of your dough and scallions are gone -- the scallions may go first, which is what happened to me, but you can use less scallions per cake if necessary.
While you wait for the dough to rest, heat up about 2/3 to 1 cup of vegetable oil in a large skillet or a wok, if you have one. The oil should be wiggling but not smoking when it is hot enough to fry. After the dough has rested, re-dust the surface and your rolling pin with more flour and roll out one roll into a flat round. The scallions will begin to poke through, and this indicates that you should stop rolling: the less covered by dough the scallions are, the more likely they are to burn. They still taste great, but aesthetically they're not as pleasing. If you coiled the dough properly, the scallions should make a nifty spiral shape within the round. Don't flatten the dough too much: the pockets of air contained within the coil make for more air in the dough, which translates to a puffier fried cake. So watch it with that rolling pin -- easy does it.
Now it's time to fry the cake! Fry each round one at a time in the oil, carefully turning about two to four minutes in, when the bottom has turned golden brown. You might need to poke the center down to make sure that the round cooks evenly, but don't press too hard or the dough will flatten out and lose its nice puffy quality. Also, as you're frying, periodically take the cake out of the oil and dump any excess that has pooled on the top back into the pan. It gets chilly on top and the cake won't fry as evenly with a cold pool of oil on top of it. I used tongs to flip the dough, and since I don't own a splatter screen. Bad! Bad! I had one in my hand this weekend at the store and put it back on the shelf, thinking: "I don't want to invest three dollars in this frying business, I'm only going to use it once." Shame on me: I want to fry everything now. It's addictive, both the process and the actual food. When the cake has evenly browned on both sides, remove from the oil and shake a bit to get rid of any excess oil. Place on a bed of paper towels and sprinkle the top with a pinch of salt; then, place two paper towels on top and press lightly to remove even more of the frying oil. Allow it to cool between the towels as you fry the remainder of the cakes.
These are best served hot, but since they're for an office party, I brought them cold and cut them in half so that they were more bite-sized and plentiful. I personally love the taste of cold fried food, especially Chinese food, because it tastes like leftover takeout, but I'm not sure my office-mates will agree. I'm crossing my fingers, because I ate a quarter-slice this morning and it was terrific. If no one else agrees? I must be crazy. They're just as good hot as they are cold, if you ask me.
Wish me luck! I love to cook for other people, but I fear the aftermath: will they like it? Will everyone in the office now hate me because my scallion cakes weren't perfectly round, and also some of them are a bit burned around the edges? Hopefully not: this was my first time frying anything, and amidst the oil splatters, narrowly-thwarted burns, and slippery floor (oil gets everywhere when you fry) emerged some decent -- in my opinion -- scallion cakes.
(Delicious!)

Roasted Salsa

Inspired by a recent episode of America's Test Kitchen, D and I ventured into the land of hot peppers this past weekend. The objective? Roasted salsa. We had seen an episode where they made some delicious looking huevos rancheros, but we didn't want to spend four hours in the kitchen making refried beans and salsa from scratch. Besides, I'm not really interested in eggs on my tortillas: just give me the rancheros without the huevos and I'm a happy camper.
We had been eying the hot peppers in our local grocery store for quite some time, but the most adventurous pepper we'd tried was the green jalapeño: not too spicy, not too exotic, and not a real culinary adventure. So we got a few jalapeños to start with for this salsa, along with a bunch of serrano peppers and two large yellow Hungarian wax peppers. I must admit that we didn't really know what we were doing: we just grabbed some peppers, steering clear of the ones we knew were super hot, like the habenero peppers, which looked amazing but also kind of scary. I like hot food, but... we wanted to go easy this time around.
We bought some fresh roma tomatoes and a new bag of small yellow onions. A brand new head of garlic, too, and we were ready to make some salsa. I kept thinking of the Seinfeld episode "The Pitch" with the salsa talk: "Don't you know the difference between seltzer and salsa?? You have the seltzer after the salsa! Salsa is now the number one condiment in America!" -- or it was, at least, in 1992. I would think that it would be ketchup, but D asserts that salsa, indeed, is most likely number one in the condiment race.

Roasted Salsa
Preheat the oven to 350º and begin preparing the vegetables. Slice all the peppers in half, lengthwise, and remove the seeds and ribs. You probably want to wear gloves for this part: hot peppers can burn your skin, especially if you're overly sensitive or you get the juices under your nails. Another word of warning: even if you have gloves on, do not touch your face. The last thing you need is serrano juice in your eye. We used four jalapeño peppers, four serrano peppers, and two Hungarian wax peppers (also known as medium sized hot banana peppers.) For extra heat, I would recommend keeping some of the jalapeño seeds in: it's the mildest of the bunch but the seeds will still give you a good kick. It's unnecessary to leave them in, though, unless you're into that kind of thing.
Core six roma (plum) tomatoes and slice lengthwise in half. You can keep the seeds and juices in: we're going to blend this salsa in the end, and the seeds incorporate easily. In fact, they provide some extra cooking liquid, so removing them would probably be a mistake.
Remove the outer layer of a medium-sized yellow onion and slice in half. Keep the core on the onion -- just use a paring knife to remove the outer layer of the core -- and slice into chunks, lengthwise. The core will keep the pieces from falling apart entirely. Remove the skin from two cloves of garlic.
Throw all the vegetables in a medium-sized bowl and add a few dashes of ground coriander, one dash of cayenne pepper, salt and ground black pepper, and about 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil. Stir to coat the vegetables evenly with the spices and oil. Arrange on a baking sheet -- with a lip around the edge -- or in a large Pyrex pan and put in the oven. Cook at 350º for about one hour, until the skins of the tomatoes begin to blacken and everything looks roasted and tasty.
After the vegetables are roasted, remove them from the oven. At this point, we discarded the serranos -- the hottest peppers in the salsa -- because we didn't think that we wanted the salsa to be too hot. We were right: even without the addition of the serrano, the salsa was extremely spicy and had a great kick to it. Since they all roasted together and got saucy in the pan, the juices from the serrano flavored the rest of the vegetables wonderfully and actually including them in the final salsa wasn't necessary.
We put the onions and peppers in the blender first and pulsed it with the juice from half a lime (about one tablespoon is in a half a lime, by the way) for just a second before adding the tomatoes and about 2 tablespoons of chopped cilantro. Onions and peppers are more fibrous than tomatoes and thus need a bit more blending to become smooth. We didn't it to turn into soup, so we just pulsed the salsa for a few seconds before it was ready to serve. This was a perfect combination of peppers for us -- just spicy enough, but not a real kick in the teeth to eat. It has a really fresh taste, too, especially with the cilantro added at the end. You don't want to roast the cilantro, by the way -- it will just diminish its flavor and the fresh taste.
We served this salsa with El Ranchero Tortilla Chips. Called the "best chips in the Midwest"-- by Gapers Block, no less -- and affectionately referred to as "the good chips," these are locally made deep-fried pockets of wonderful. They can withstand the heartiest dips and are perfectly crunchy without being too hard. And you can not beat the price: $1.99 for a 14-oz bag of these is nothing compared to the other brands available at the store, which are too expensive and riddled with artificial flavors and too much salt. Another thing: you can buy El Ranchero chips with no salt, which is a huge plus. I hate consuming too much sodium, so no salt chips are a big deal to me. I wish we had some more salsa at home... I'd advise making a double batch of this stuff. It went fast.

White Bean Dip with Pita Chips

I know I've trashed the Food Network before on this blog -- mostly Rachel Ray -- and I apologize for that. I really do like the Food Network; I just don't like Rachel Ray. I know she's popular, and she has her place, even in my house: I've watched her show a few times, and it's enjoyable. But she doesn't make the type of food that I want to make in my kitchen, and I think that whole 30-minute thing is kind of false advertising.
Anyhow, while Ray isn't really my cup of tea, I'm a big fan of Giada De Laurentis. I don't know how she stays so skinny while eating all that stuff, but she's such a soothing presence in the kitchen. She never shouts, never whines, and never almost cuts herself because she's busy telling a crazy story about her cousin's friend's dog's girlfriend. I can imagine actually cooking with Giada, which is why I like her show. And I'm Italian, too, so the food speaks to me. I know her cuisine isn't exactly classic Italian food, but it's fun to watch her prepare it, and she introduced me to the cannellini bean. For that I am forever grateful. I last mentioned these beans in the Butternut Squash Soup recipe, which was my first foray into using these beans in a context other than this dip. They really are extremely creamy beans, which makes them an excellent binder in a mostly vegetable-based soup, but they also work well for a dip like this because of that silky texture.
This dip is the first recipe that I ever made from her Everyday Italian: 125 Simple and Delicious Recipes book, which I bought with a gift certificate that I didn't know what to do with. I'm slightly embarrassed that I own this book -- I already know how to make the perfect red sauce, thank you, and I don't know that I need to be taught the basics on Italian food, which is what this book is supposedly for, but most of the recipes really are fantastic. This one is for a white bean dip, which she claims is the Italian version of hummus. She also gives instructions for making pita chips, but I've never tried those -- I just serve with tortilla chips and everybody has always been happy with that. This dip really flew off the plate the last time I served it at a gathering -- it's creamy, fairly healthy, and extremely tasty. The recipe requires a food processor, which I don't own (as you probably know by now) so we made it in the blender. It didn't work as well as it should have with the small amount of oil in the recipe, so we had to add more. I'd advise just making it in a processor if you can, because that will make a less oily dip. But, if necessary, a blender can be used.

White Bean Dip with Pita Chips
Begin making the pita chips, because they take about 20 minutes or so to prepare and bake. While they're baking, make the dip, and everything should be ready to eat all at once. Preheat the oven to 400º and split 4 pita pockets in half, so you have two skinny rounds. Cut each round into 8 wedges. Brush each side with olive oil -- you'll use about 2 tablespoons total -- and arrange on a baking sheet. Sprinkle the tops with a mixture made from 1 teaspoon dried oregano, 1 teaspoon ground pepper, and 1 teaspoon of salt.
Bake these in the oven for 8 minutes. Flip each chip and bake for another 8 minutes, until they are golden and crisped.
While the pita chips are baking, combine in the food processor 1 15-ounce can of cannellini beans (be sure to rinse them thoroughly and drain) with 1/4 cup (loosely packed) fresh flat parsley leaves, 1 clove of garlic, and 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice (the juice from about half a lemon should suffice.) Season with approximately 1/2 a teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon ground pepper.
Pulse until the mixture is finely chopped, then gradually blend in 1/3 a cup of olive oil, until the dip is creamy. Season with more ground pepper and serve with the warm pita chips (or with tortilla chips, if you prefer.)
We'll be eating this during the Superbowl; I hope you will be, too.

Easy Guacamole

This is a recipe that I made up. It's probably not real guacamole, and it's not very spicy, but it really hits the spot on a cold day. Especially when there's a game on.
I must note that I'm not a big sports person -- I didn't play them as a child, went to a college that didn't have a football team, and would be hard-pressed to name a positive experience relating to phys-ed in high school. Still, though, living in Chicago has sparked an interest in both football and baseball in me, an interest that is superficial at best. I trace it to the food. Hot dogs, chicken wings, nachos -- naughty, naughty food that's not even prepared well. And yet... it tastes so great. Hooray for processed cheese!
Anyhow, my artificial interest in the Chicago Bears somehow paid off, since we're going to the Superbowl this year. Superbowls were always a big thing when I was growing up: we didn't have a television set in our house, but there was one that went unplugged in the basement for the majority of the year. Superbowl Sunday, though, that TV came out, along with a red-checkered picnic blanket, and we would pig out on wings and nachos on the floor for hours. What fond memories I have of that, even though our team at the time (The Buffalo Bills) never won a Superbowl. At least we made it three times, right?
Anyhow, yesterday we made some guacamole, which is a deviation from our usual Sunday game tradition, which involves copious amounts of chicken wings and celery. I was all winged out from last week, though, as was he, and we decided that a guacamole detour was just what the doctor ordered.
We served it with some local tortilla chips, which are really great because they make a no salt version. If I'm dipping, I don't need salt on my chips.

Easy Guacamole!
I start with the fillers in this recipe, because the avocados tend to brown when they're out in the open for too long without their skins. Dice 4 good-sized vine tomatoes, 1 small onion, and 1 small clove of garlic.
Add 5 peeled and pitted avocados.
Mash with a fork until the avocados are fairly smushed. A few chunks are OK, though, since they add a nice texture to the dip.
Add about 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro. Grind in some pepper, a few dashes of salt, and a healthy dose of cayenne pepper to taste.
Put the avocado pits back in the guacamole and cover with lime juice (about 1/2 a lime should do -- save the other half for the leftovers). The lime juice goes a long way in preventing browning.
Cover the bowl with some saran wrap or tinfoil (if you're out of saran wrap, as we were -- whoops!) and let the dip sit in the fridge for at least an hour.
Serve with tortilla chips after stirring to incorporate the lime juice (and removing the pits from the dip). You may want to save the pits, though, to put back in any leftovers you may have. Along with the lime juice, the pits will keep the guacamole from becoming brown. It's OK to eat brown avocados, but it's just not as pleasant to look at.
We had so much left over that we used it as a topping for hamburgers. That was also delicious.
Sometime later this week (in preparation for the Superbowl!) I'll give my patented wings recipe, which has fans all over the globe panting for more. It really is that good.

This post was edited on 2/1/07 to add a link to the Authentic Chicken Wings recipe.