Planting Potatoes
Giclee Print
Leighton,...
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      La Belle Cuisine

This Month's Feature:

Potato Lovers Unite!

Fine Cuisine with Art Infusion

"To cook is to create. And to create well...
is an act of integrity, and faith."

"Pray for peace, and grace, and spiritual food,
For wisdom and guidance, for all these are good.
But don't forget the potatoes."
~ John Tyler Pettee

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Harvesting, Digging
Potato "Home Guard"
Photographic Print
Howes, Michael
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Potatoes
Art Print
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Old Woman Peeling Potatoes
Giclee Print
Langley, Walter
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Peeling Potatoes
Giclee Print
Walbourn, Ernest
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Did you know? Have you heard???

February is National Potato Lover's Month! Discovered in 3,000 B.C., the potato is one of nature's most versatile vegetables. Potatoes are fat-free, cholesterol-free, high in vitamin C, high in potassium, and are a good source of fiber. So forget about those no-carb diets! Potatoes can liven up the menu when mashed, fried, baked, whipped, boiled, or prepared in just about any way imaginable. Celebrate the month of the potato by beefing up your kitchen gadget collection and adding delicate flavor to your meals.
~ Rhonda Langdon, Kitchen Editor, amazon.com

Twice-Baked Garlic Potatoes
"Women of Great Taste"
The Jr. League of Wichita, Kansas

My Wichita relatives told me not so long ago that they are "quite
disappointed" that I have not included "one of our favorite recipes
in the entire world" on my web site. Mea culpa. There is only one
acceptable way to do penance for this grave omission...

1 head garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
8 baking potatoes
1/2 cup butter
Milk
Two 3oz-packages softened cream cheese
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
1 teaspoon salt
[and black pepper to taste, if you like]
2 cups (8oz.) grated cheddar cheese
Paprika

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Cut off and discard top of garlic.
Place garlic on piece of foil, drizzle with olive oil and wrap
tightly. Bake potatoes and garlic for 1 hour. Cut potatoes in half
lengthwise, scoop out into a bowl and reserve shells. Unwrap garlic
and squeeze cloves into potatoes. Mash potatoes and garlic with
butter and enough milk to moisten. Blend in cream cheese, parsley,
onions and salt.  Spoon mixture back into potato shells. Sprinkle
with cheese and paprika. Bake until cheese melts, 25 minutes.

Baked Potatoes on a Bed of Sea Salt
"Just for Julia"
Daniel Boulud

 4 large Idaho potatoes, about 14 ounces each,
washed and dried
1 cup coarse sea salt
1 ounce white truffle (about 1 or 2 firm
white truffles, clean of dirt) or
2 ounces black truffle (about 2 or 3
firm truffles, clean of dirt),
sliced fine with a truffle slicer or
adjustable vegetable slicer
Salt and pepper to taste

 Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Spread the coarse salt evenly on the bottom of a roasting pan large enough to hold the potatoes. Place the potatoes over the salt and bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until very easy to pierce with a small knife. Every 15 minutes, give potatoes a 1/4 turn to allow them to
cook evenly and pick up the flavor of the sea salt. When done, remove potatoes from the oven, brush any sea salt off the skin, and let cool for 5 minutes. The potatoes can be baked half an hour before serving and kept warm. Keep the salt to decorate the serving plates later on.
Remove a 1/2-inch high cap all along the length of each potato (using the flattest part of the potato as the cap). Scoop out the potato flesh from each cap into a bowl and discard the caps.  Carefully scoop the potato flesh out
of each potato bottom, leaving a 1/4-inch-thick shell. Place the flesh in a bowl and set the potato shells aside. Add 4 tablespoon butter to the potato flesh, along with salt, pepper, and 6 to 8 very thin white truffle shavings
or twice as much of black truffle. Crush coarsely with a large fork and
taste for seasoning. Refill each potato evenly with the potato flesh and
truffle mix. Reheat the potatoes for 3 to 4 minutes in the oven or for 45 seconds in the microwave.
Melt 1 tablespoon of butter with a pinch of salt and pepper. Arrange a
bed of coarse sea salt on 4 serving plates. Place the potatoes, one per
plate, over the salt, covering the surface of each with the slices of truffle (press lightly on the truffle slices to secure in the potato flesh). Sprinkle
the melted butter evenly over the top. Note: Do not waste any truffle
(gold sounds cheap next to truffles!)  Use every scrap of truffle in or
on the potato. Serves 4.

 
Featured Archive Recipes:
Fingerling Potatoes with Goat Cheese Fondue
Garlic-Layered Potatoes
Goat Cheese Mashed Potato Gratin
JR's Gratin Dauphinois
Mashed Potatoes, Creamy, with
Caramelized Onions (Wolfgang Puck)
Mashed Potato Dip
Mashed Potatoes with Four Variations
New Potatoes Wrapped in Prosciutto with
Sweet Pepper Soubise
Potage Parmentier
Potato Dumplings (Kartoffel Kloesse)
Potatoes Baked with Chèvre and Thyme
Potatoes Basque
Potatoes Cooked in the Coals
Potato Gratin Forestier (Chef Daniel Boulud)
Potato Gratin with Mustard and Cheddar Cheese
Potato Kugel Klein
Potato, Leek, Gruyere and
Oyster Mushroom Gratin
Potato Pancakes (Latkes)
Potato Salad, Let Me Count the Ways...
Potato Skins Stuffed with Leeks
and Three Cheeses
Potato Soup Baden-Baden
Scalloped Potatoes, Maine-Style
Scalloped Potatoes and Tomatoes
"Upper Crust" Potato Gratin
White Cheddar and Red-Skinned Potato Gratin

"Comfort food: quirky, quaint, quixotic. Personal patterns of consolation,
 encoded on our taste buds past all forgetting, as unmistakable as greasy
fingerprints. When the miseries strike, and you’re down in the dumps,
food transformed by love and memory becomes therapy... When hearts
are heavy, they need gravitational and emotional equilibrium."
(from Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy)