I can't argue with potatoes and cheese.
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| A Book of Selected Recipes, Mrs. George O. Thurn, 1934 |
| Gilt-Edged Potatoes Amounts to taste: Cooked, peeled potatoes Shredded cheddar, colby jack, or any yellow cheese Salt Heat oven to 350°. Grease a sheet pan. Put the potatoes through a ricer or a grinder. Spread in a layer on the pan, taking care not to compress them. Leave them nice and fluffy. Sprinkle lightly with cheese, and (if desired) with salt. Bake until cheese is melted and slightly browned, about 30 minutes. A Book of Selected Recipes, Mrs. George O. Thurn, 1934
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It's gotten cold again, which means we're no longer insane to bake potatoes in an extra-hot oven for over two hours!
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| I tried to make the butter stand up like a stegosaurus spine, but it melted too fast. |
British-style jacket potatoes only happen when it's cold out, which makes them a rare treat in this climate. I was more excited about the potatoes than the pot roast. However, they don't refrigerate well. When you reheat them in the microwave, they're just like any other microwave-baked potato. You lose the crispy-crackly skin and the almost unrealistically fluffy interior that you had when the potato came out of the oven. Look at that beautiful, almost caramelized layer of potato that lies just beneath the skin when you peel them!
While I do still pop the occasional potato in the microwave for a low-effort snack, these potatoes which were so perfect the first time seem like they deserve better. Fortunately, Mrs. George O. Thurn has a way to hopefully keep these spuds as magical as they were the first time. It involves one of my favorite kitchen devices: a meat grinder!
I would love to say that you can use a cheese shredder since more of us have one of those than a potato ricer or a meat grinder. But despite my most determined attempts, cheese shredders are useless on baked potatoes.
Apparently Mrs. George O Thurn could direct her readers to get out a potato ricer without her entire audience telling her she was out of touch and that no one had one of those things at home. Maybe instant mashed potatoes rendered the spud ricer obsolete to everyone who didn't have passionate opinions about mashed potatoes.
I've noticed that recipes meant to creatively alter leftovers pervade cookbooks right until everyone got a microwave. After that, we abruptly stopped putting effort into making last night's dinner exciting again. That makes gilt-edged potatoes a true relic from a bygone culinary era. You rarely see "Your family won't recognize those leftovers!" in the note above a recipe published in the last thirty years.
I love how Mrs. George O Thurn just says to use "yellow cheese." Also, it occurs to me: we already have the potatoes, so does that make the cheese the gilding? If calling the cheesy spuds "gilt-edged" is Mrs. George O Thurn's way of saying cheese is as good as gold, we at A Book of Cookrye heartily endorse the message.
In full disclosure, this doesn't look particularly presentational when you drop a spatula-load of spuds on a plate. However, cheesy potatoes are so delicious that the presentation doesn't matter at all.
The potatoes didn't get as crisp as I expected, but I don't care. This is delicious. Also, leftover gilt-edged potatoes are better in the microwave than the leftover baked potatoes you started with.
As a final postscript, I told my grandmother that we were using an extravagance of oven heat to make baked potatoes. When I told her how we cut crosses in the tops and then bake them in an extra-hot oven for two hours, she said her mother used to do potatoes just like that! It's so neat to accidentally land on what would have been a family recipe had anyone written it down.
Unrecognizable leftovers takes on a different meaning in the era of microwaves. My grandmother would let leftovers sit out for a few hours before putting them in the refrigerator only to microwave them for the next meal. After several days of this, zucchini turns grey and squishy in a very unappetizing way. This is why I know that splotches of cheese will preserve the color of the food underneath them. Maybe encasing leftovers in cheese would work like encasing them in jello.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's why so many unappetizing casseroles have cheese on top- to extend the shelf life in the refrigerator! Is this the same relative who asked whether you preferred to boil your vegetables for 30 or 40 minutes?
DeleteYes, it's the same person.
DeleteThose do look good! Maybe I'll try it next time my significant other decides to take home some baked potatoes from a visit to his parents' house. I hate the taste of reheated baked potatoes, but the cheese might help cover it up.
ReplyDeleteI also suspect some of the reason we see so few recipes for leftovers now is that cooking is now more optional (as people can eat fast food and/or frozen dinners, graze rather than eating meals, etc.) than it used to be, so the cookbooks are more often for people who cook as a hobby or a way to show off. There are way fewer people now who are impressed by skill with revitalizing leftovers, so the recipes mostly insist on fresh, high-quality ingredients and pretend that that's the only way to do things.
They are pretty good!
DeleteYou know, that's an interesting point. And going off of that, a lot of cookbook writers treated them like an unpleasant reality that we have to acknowledge before we can move on to better things. Maybe after we all got microwaves, the writers were like "Well, that's not our problem anymore!"
This reminds me a little bit of put-back potatoes, or twice-cooked potatoes, or twice-stuffed potatoes, or whatever one calls them in your neck o' the woods. Just without trying to fit the mashed potatoes back in their skins.
ReplyDeleteOh we've done twice-baked potatoes a lot! I like how well they stretch the meat budget.
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