Potato Salad, Deconstructed and Brought to Greece

Posted on by Laura Geraty – By

As you’d expect from a group of Millennials, Instagram is where we get at least half of our cooking inspiration. While we rarely follow links to recipes, photos alone serve as a jumping off point for all types of culinary adventures. A recent post of a deconstructed potato salad arranged on a bed of herby yogurt by Jill Ferguson from @feedtheswimmers led to daydreams of a Greek-style version—creamy yet crisp twice-baked fingerling potatoes served on a bed of cucumber- and garlic-studded tzatziki topped with a host of the usual Greek salad players.

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Eggplant Braised with Cherry Tomatoes and Garlic

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For those who love to cook, there is possibly no outing quite as enjoyable as a trip to the farmers’ market. Getting to see what’s at its peak and speak with the people who grew it feels like a privilege in comparison to shopping at the grocery store.

I like to go without a plan, grab whatever looks best and then spend my walk home daydreaming about what I can make. While I have a terrible memory when it comes to things like names, my brain has a crystal clear index of every recipe I’ve ever read, most of the ingredients within it and where I can find it. It also catalogs all food images from places like Instagram and food magazines.

This week, when I scored the most beautiful, deeply purple eggplants with taut, shiny skin and cherry tomatoes so sweet I could have popped an entire pint as if they were berries, I was reminded of a picture I’d seen on Canal House’s Instagram feed.

These days, I prefer to cook from pictures rather than recipes. The former allows for creativity and spontaneity, while the latter is time consuming (re-referring to the written word) and/or disappointing (I usually know how to produce the flavors I prefer). As the famous Italian chef Lidia Bastianich said in a recent interview, “Release yourself from the recipe!”

So, with that in mind, I hit my kitchen to make a braised eggplant dish sweet with cherry tomatoes, rich with olive oil, and spicy with garlic and red pepper flakes. Chris and I sat down to dinner with the dutch oven between us, a fresh ball of burrata cheese, sliced crosswise and drizzled with our best Italian extra virgin olive oil, and pan-fried and garlic-rubbed peasant bread to serve as a bed for it all. I also made a shaved fennel and arugula salad showered with plenty of lemon juice and more olive oil because I always like to have something bright to cut through something so rich.

This is the rustic fair that dreams are made of.

EGGPLANT BRAISED WITH CHERRY TOMATOES AND GARLIC

Ingredients
2 small to medium eggplant
4 cloved garlic, thinly sliced
¼ tsp red chile flakes
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 pints cherry tomatoes, left whole
Several handfuls of basil, torn
1 ball burrata or a couple of balls of fresh mozzarella (optional)
Grilled or pan-fried and bread rubbed with garlic (peasant loaf, ciabatta, or any other bread you like)
Salt and pepper

Directions
Prep the eggplant: Peel long strips down the eggplant from stem to end, leaving them with a zebra print. Next, make a partial slit lengthwise down the center of the eggplant but try not to cut all the way through. This is just so the flavorful broth has an easier time penetrating the eggplant. Season them lightly with salt and freshly ground pepper, massaging them into the eggplant a bit.

Preheat a braising pot over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Once hot, pan fry the eggplants, turning them every two minutes until they are well-browned on all sides. Remove them to a plate.

Add remaining two tablespoons olive oil and add 4 thinly sliced garlic cloves and a generous pinch of red pepper flakes. Once garlic is very lightly golden, add in the 2 pint whole cherry tomatoes, a generous pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper, and stir to combine. Place top on braising pot and let it do its thing over medium-low heat.

After about 20 minutes, most of the cherry tomatoes will have popped open, producing a juicy liquid. Taste it and correct seasoning with more salt if necessary. Carefully add the eggplant into the juicy tomatoes, slit side up and ladle a little of the braising liquid inside the eggplant. Add a sprig of basil, pushing it into the liquid, cover and continue to braise for 20 minutes. At this point, the eggplant will be meltingly tender and flavorful.

To serve, remove the sprig of basil and add a fresh shower of leaves over the braise. Present the whole pot on the table with several spoons to dig in, grilled garlic-rubbed bread and burrata or sliced fresh mozzarella. Enjoy!

Serves 4 (Any leftovers can be smashed into a delicious pasta sauce for later in the week!)

Jerusalem Artichokes

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Jerusalem Artichoke bulbs

A trip to the Union Square farmer’s market with Laura last week made clear that we have a way to go before spring produce makes its grand appearance. Root vegetables galore. Nary a pea, ramp or asparagus stalk in sight. This is the time to experiment with what we’ve had available for a while but have overlooked. Behold the Jerusalem artichoke!

Arial view of plated Roasted potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes

My singular experience with Jerusalem artichokes happened early springtime during college, a day I will never forget. I was taking an urban gardening course and my “classroom” was a private plot on the Lower East Side. It was still freezing. We were sifting through the melting ice with picks to attempt to wake up the unyielding dirt beneath the melting snow. Almost immediately, we began to unearth tons of little bulbous roots. My professor explained that they were called sunchokes, or Jerusalem artichokes, and that while they were edible and delicious, they were known to dominate gardens and were often seen as a nuisance.

Clean Jerusalem Artichokes

Back to the present. As Laura and I perused the Union Square stalls, we encountered those same irregularly shaped spuds and decided to purchase them in a moment of curiosity. We took them home with us, along with the many other small brown bags filled with root vegetable goodies, and set to searching for ways to best prepare them. In the end, we came to the consensus to simply roast them in a mix of fingerling potatoes along with some EVOO, salt and pepper to best bring out the integrity of the ingredient.

Potatoes and Jerusalem Artichokes to Roast

The result was beyond our expectations. A delicate, earthy, almost sweet flavor coupled with a just-crisp exterior and smooth, creamy interior. We finished the root vegetable mix with some bright lemon juice and zest and a scattering of parsley leaves as we nearly always do. In this moment we were reminded that simplicity almost always equals perfection when you’re working with the best produce.

Plated Roasted potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes by a window

Hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

Note: It’s a good idea to mix sunchokes with another root vegetable because consuming too much can be difficult on some people’s tummies. This has earned them quite a reputation. No one in the WWE crew has ever felt a thing though so don’t be afraid to try them!

Simple Roasted Jerusalem Artichokes and Fingerling Potatoes

Ingredients:

¾ lb Jerusalem artichokes/sunchokes, scrubbed clean, then cut into 1 inch wedges

¾ lb fingerling potatoes, scrubbed cleaned, then halved or quartered

A few tablespoons olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

½ cup parsley leaves

1/2 lemon, juice and zest

Method:

Preheat oven to 425. Toss sunchokes and potatoes together with the olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Roast for 30-40 minutes, flipping once or twice, to ensure even browning. Allow to cool on sheet tray for 5-10 minutes. This allows the vegetables to stay nice and crisp. Finish with the zest and juice of ½ lemon and a scattering of parsley leaves. Enjoy!

Roasted Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes with a healthy char

Video: Crispy-Skinned Sea Bass, Roasted Cauliflower and Parsley Knife Pesto

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I put this video together last fall with my new, but already deeply cherished friend Meredith Carlin. Meredith heads up the original programming production team for ulive (it’s a rabbit hole of addictiveness…consider yourself warned), so I was beyond lucky to have her guiding me along the process.

It was my first time on camera and, wow, I did not know just how hard it would be. Respect for anyone who has made a career doing it. There is a steep learning curve but I’m already excited to put together another.

For now, I hope this inspires you to get out to your farmer’s market and then into your kitchens. You’re more likely to find asparagus or mushrooms than cauliflower this time of year, but use this technique as your template and vary your veggies according. Let me know how it goes!

xo L

Crispy-Skinned Sea Bass, Roasted Cauliflower and Parsley Knife Pesto

Serves 2, with BIG servings of cauliflower

Ingredients

For cauliflower

  • 1 medium-large head cauliflower (any variety works but try romanesco, cheddar or another specialty variety if it’s available)
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • For parsley knife pesto
  • ¼ cup toasted almonds
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 1 cup packed parsley
  • Zest of 1 lemon, divided
  • Juice of ½ lemon, saved for the end
  • Salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil to taste

For sea bass

  • 2 sea bass or trout fillets (If it’s whole, have your fish guy cut it into fillets for you)
  • 1-2 tablespoons Wondra
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 tablespoon neutral tasting, high heat oil like grapeseed, vegetable or canola oil

Directions

To make the cauliflower:

  1. Preheat the oven to 425-degrees F.
  2. Meanwhile, break the cauliflower into small florets. The largest should be no bigger than a golf ball. Don’t let any cauliflower crumbs go to waste because these will get extra crispy and delicious.
  3. Divide the florets and crumbs between two sheet pans.
  4. Drizzle each pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil and about ¼ teaspoon each salt and pepper. Use your hands to massage the oil, salt and pepper into the cauliflower. You want every nook and cranny to be well-seasoned.
  5. Roast cauliflower in top and bottom third of preheated oven for 30 minutes until very golden brown, tossing the cauliflower and swapping the placement of the pans halfway through.
  6. Let cool on roasting sheets while making knife pesto and crispy sea bass.

To make the knife pesto:

  1. Pile all pesto ingredients – ¼ cup toasted nuts, 1 minced garlic clove, 1 cup packed parsley, and zest of ½ lemon – onto a cutting board. Using a chef’s knife, chop it down together until it is cohesive pesto, but still chunky enough that you can see it contains almonds and parsley. There really is no right or wrong here though, so make it how you think you might like to eat it.
  2. Reserve while making the crispy sea bass.

To make sea bass (or trout) and assemble dish:

  1. Pat fillets very well with paper towels to get them as dry as possible. Using the back of your cleaned chef knife, scrape the skin side of the fillet to remove any excess moisture, wiping your knife with a paper towel after each swipe. This is almost like squeegeeing your fish.
  2. Now that the fish is extra dry, sprinkle it lightly on both sides with salt and pepper. It isn’t a thick piece of fish, so season lightly!
  3. Dust the skin-side of your  fillets heavily with Wondra. Over the sink so you don’t make a mess, blow off any excess Wondra flour.
  4. Place your prepped fish aside while you ready your equipment and finish assembling the roasted cauliflower and parsley knife pesto.
  5. Heat a heavy-bottomed skillet, preferably cast iron over medium-high heat for a few minutes to get it good and hot.
  6. Meanwhile, combine the cauliflower and knife pesto. You can do this on one of the cooled sheet pans to save yourself from needing to clean a separate bowl. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper if necessary. Feel free to add a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil if it seems dry.
  7. Once fish skillet is hot, add 1 tablespoon of neutral flavored oil and it heat up until it is nearly smoking, about a minute. At this time, add your  fillets, skin side down, pushing down on each  so that the skin makes full contact with the hot pan. (If you don’t do this, it will buckle and not get as crisp.)
  8. Cook for 3 minutes, all the while pushing down gently with your spatula.
  9. After 3 minutes, flip the fillets and turn off the heat and let the fish finish cooking for 20-30 seconds in the pan’s residual heat.
  10. To plate, place one fillet on each of two serving plates and pile high with the roasted cauliflower and knife pesto. Finish by zesting the second half of the lemon between the two and give them both a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

Enjoy!