Russet Potato

A robust and filling variation on classic home fries, this pretty vegetable dish gets color and crunch from the asparagus. It pairs especially well with Crispy Crab Cakes (page 198) and Scrambled Eggs (page 75), though potato lovers may decide to eat this as a main course. This is a great way to fit vegetables into a brunch without its being too healthy.

What would bacon and eggs be without a side of home fries? These “homers” are too good to be called simply a “side.” Many Bubby’s customers prefer to eat them in great quantities with an accompaniment of bacon or sausage.

Blizzard food at its best. This buttery crusted pie, filled with rib-sticking pork, will fortify you for any winter's night.

Sea urchin, or uni in Japanese, is a favorite delicacy back home, one that can be enjoyed raw or mixed as a dressing for seafood. I love the creamy, rich texture and sweet flavor of sea urchin combined with the lemony butter sauce of this gnocchi dish. You can prepare the gnocchi ahead of time, if you’d like. Just toss it with 1 tablespoon olive oil and refrigerate for up to 5 days or freeze for up to 1 month.

Since this soup is the liquid version of a baked potato, calories and all, you can use low-fat milk with no detrimental effect on flavor, if it gives you any comfort. But don’t do anything silly, like use low-fat cheese, which melts poorly and tastes worse. It’s important to add the cheese a little at a time, so it incorporates and doesn’t become an oily mess.

The Savannah River is one of Georgia’s longest and largest rivers and defines most of the boundary between Georgia and South Carolina. I’ve seen photos of my grandfather and his brother with catfish almost as big as a man that they caught in the Savannah River. Wild catfish that live in rivers, lakes, and ponds are bottom dwellers, and the flesh picks up a distinctively earthy flavor. For years, there were catfish in our pond even though the pond was solely stocked with bass and bream. Dede explained to me when I was young that the catfish eggs would be transported on the wings and feet of the water birds. So, it was something special when we would catch them. We’d catch these monsters, and they terrified me, with their flat black mouths and whiskers popping as they flailed on the shore. The whiskers are scary, but they are not what hurts. Dede had a few special tools in his tackle box to deal with catfish. The fish have sharp spines on their fins, and he would fearlessly grab them behind the head and clip off the fins with pliers. Catfish also differ in that they don’t have scales. But their skin is tough and they have to be skinned before they are eaten. He’d hammer a nail through their head into the tree and, using the same pliers, peel the skin off the fish like taking off a sock from your foot. If you are not catching your own, make a point to buy American farm-raised catfish, which are fed a diet of high-protein pellets made from soybean meal, corn, and rice that give the flesh a consistent, sweet, mild flavor. You just don’t know what you are getting if you buy imported fish.

At first glance, Anne Willan, the proper, Cambridge-educated grande dame of cuisine, would seem to have little in common with a Mafia don. Looks can be deceiving: those “in the know” are well aware of the “La Varenne Way.” The La Varenne Way of recipe testing has evolved with Anne’s experience of more than thirty-five years as a teacher, cookbook author, and food writer. As the director of École de Cuisine La Varenne, the cooking school that she founded in Burgundy in 1975, with the encouragement and support of the grand doyenne herself, Julia Child, Willan has shaped and influenced countless professional and amateur cooks all over the world, myself included. La Varenne alumni are called, tongue-in-cheek, the “La Varenne Mafia.” No secret society, the list of capos reads like a Who’s Who of the culinary world. The invaluable training I acquired in France working with Anne opened countless doors and a world of possibilities. Anne is one of the hardest-working individuals I know, and her drive for perfection has long been an inspiration. This rich gratin, typical of simple country French cooking, was inspired by a version I learned while at La Varenne.

Russet (also called Idaho) potatoes are not usually recommended for potato salad. They can become waterlogged when boiled and fall apart easily. Their high-starch, low-moisture content makes them inclined to absorb too much dressing. But that is the beauty of this dish. This is the archetypical summer potato salad that has been served on paper plates across the country for generations. When Mama prepares this salad, she lets the potatoes cool just enough, but not completely. The cubes break down slightly and the salad is a blend of larger pieces of potato with a little bit of creamy mash. This is one of my sister’s favorite dishes, a comforting classic that echoes with childhood memories whenever Mama makes it, so she always makes a big batch. The recipe halves beautifully.

This recipe departs from the traditional pastry crust potpie, using instead a layer of herb and garlic mashed potatoes. The topping is so delicious it can just as easily be served alone as a side dish. If you want to be true to your slow cooker and use it for both steps, the potatoes need to be made first and set aside, or, if you’re lucky enough to have two slow cookers, at the same time as the filling. They can, however, be made just as easily on a stovetop.

The earliest American recipes for chowder called for fish rather than clams or shellfish and were prepared by layering the fish, salt pork, and biscuits (all shipboard staples) in a pot and cooking them for hours over a fire. This recipe calls for canned clams simply because those are the most easily accessible, but you can cook and use fresh clams as well.

Tillamook cheddar cheese is made by a farmer-owned cooperative in Tillamook County, Oregon, that was founded in 1909 by dairy farmers to establish quality control over their product. Today the Tillamook co-op ownership is 150 families strong. And the Portland-based Oregon Brewers Guild, which boasts that Oregon is home to more microbreweries per person than just about anyplace on earth, currently has forty-one small, independent brewing members scattered throughout the state. I can think of fewer toothsome marriages than that of a good, sharp cheddar and a full-flavored beer.

Ham with redeye gravy is a southern classic. A cuppa coffee is used to deglaze the pan, and the resulting slurry is poured over the ham slices. I’d bet my buttons that somebody has thrown coffee into the stew for added flavor!

Located in California’s San Joaquin Valley, the town of Gilroy is home to the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival. As the artichoke is celebrated in Castroville, so is garlic in Gilroy. Although garlic soups can be found in many countries (made with chicken broth and red wine in southern France and with saffron and sherry in Spain, to name a couple), the following is a simple California recipe that I have enjoyed for years. This makes a great lunch, served with a crusty loaf of bread, a good red wine, and a salad.

This comforting soup is delicately spiced with classic flavors and ingredients of the Southwest.

Moussaka is a quintessential Greek dish, and one that every American knows. Usually a delicious dish of layered eggplant, ground beef or lamb, tomatoes, onions, and, best of all, a thick custard topping, moussaka is one of my personal favorites. This version calls for only vegetables, a not-uncommon variation found in rural Greece. It does well in the slow cooker, but may be just a bit juicier than if baked in an open casserole dish in the oven.

Few countries do potatoes and cheese as well as France and Switzerland. Raclette, scalloped potatoes, pommes de terre dauphinoises, whipped, or whatever, a couple hundred years of potatoes and cheese and a knack for cooking have made them experts at the many comforting ways these two inexpensive, favorite ingredients can be combined. The Auvergne is a region in south-central France known, among other things, for its popular blue cheese called Bleu d’Auvergne.

Potatoes and chiles are “New World” stuff, and yet, as it turns out, they have nourished millions of people around the world since they were brought to the “Old World” by European explorers just a few hundred years ago. Here is a simple dish combining the Old World and New World ingredients, stewed together in the pot—in this case, the slow cooker. Unlike conventional scalloped potatoes baked in a gratin pan, where “design” matters, I recommend gently stirring these potatoes once or twice during their cooking time to evenly distribute the good stuff and ensure even cooking.

The eggs in this recipe emerge intact, similar to poached eggs. Hearty whole-grain bread or bread with sunflower or other seeds will add texture to this dish.

For rarer meat, chop the potatoes, carrots, and cauliflower into smaller pieces, as they will cook more quickly that way and become tender before the meat is cooked through. Try this recipe with steak tenderloin or a turkey tenderloin if you don’t want lamb. Use boneless lamb fillets in this meal as bones just take up precious real estate in your pot. Trim the meat well of fat. Sun-dried tomatoes come either packed in oil or dry. Either is fine to use here.

Corned beef and cabbage is a meal traditionally eaten by Irish Americans in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day in March. Corned refers to the large salt crystals (corns) rubbed into the meat to preserve it. The corned beef has enough spices to flavor this recipe, but if you feel the need for more spice, include the sea salt and pepper. For more gravy, simply add more broth to the recipe. I use lunch-meat-style corned beef in a thick slice from the deli in this recipe simply because it’s hard to find a package of raw, seasoned corned beef that’s less than two pounds. However, you can certainly use raw corned beef if you prefer.