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Best Ever Homemade French Fries

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Best Ever French Fries

Every once in a while, I come across a recipe for a homemade version of a dish that I’ve previously classified as “will-never-be-made-as-well-at-home” that blows my mind. It’s the culinary equivalent of an explorer uncovering an ancient temple, a researcher finding stunning results, an eager learner having their first philosophical epiphany. I’ve felt this on a number of things I’ve shared with you here: yogurt, fresh mozzarella, handmade pasta, beef jerky… all products that, a few years ago, I never would have considered being possible.

Such was my opinion with french fries. I always heard other people talk about making them, but I was firmly convinced that they couldn’t possibly be as good as fries I could get from my local burger joint. I’d learned that the best fries are cooked twice: once to actually cook the potato so the inside of the fry is light and smooth, and again to give that light-and-smoothness a crisp outer shell. There was no way I could be bothered to hand-cut my own fries, purchase large quantities of oil, possibly a deep-frier, and then cook TWICE a side dish that I could have exactly perfect in 10 minutes from a dozen restaurants near by.

Folks, I have never been so wrong.

Potatoes and oil

This method, which I’ve repeated already and plan to again, is SO easy and SO satisfying. No special equipment is required beyond what I’ll wager you already have in your kitchen. The ingredients are simple and few. And let me repeat: it is breathtakingly easy.

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Whole Wheat English Muffins

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Whole Wheat English Muffins

I don’t eat a lot of sandwich bread. Brad can finish off a loaf of bread in three or four days, even faster if he’s trying to eat at home. I, on the other hand, have a tough time getting through even half a loaf before it takes a turn for the moldy.

I’ve always tended to prefer my breads in other forms. Tortillas, bagels, biscuits, cornbreads, and baguettes are much more likely to appeal to me than a loaf of sandwich bread. And more recently, English muffins.

Homemade English Muffins

Considering that I love finding ways to replace my store-bought staples with homemade versions, I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I really haven’t spent a lot of time focusing on breads. I do have some go-to recipes for quite a few quick breads, but not many that I cook on a regular basis (the dramatic exception being my favorite, favorite cornbread, which ends up on my menu quite frequently).  So when I ran across a recipe for this, my current bread-of-choice, I decided it was time.

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Money Where Your Mouth Is: March-May 2012

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Soooooo.

I’ve done a really bang-up job of giving a monthly update on my food budget, haven’t I? I started in January, updated in February, and then… got busy. And it’s not that I haven’t posted other things. I have! I really wanted to tell you about this. And these. And my progress on this. Firsts of months came, and I thought, I should write a budget post, and then before I knew it, Fifteenths came by and it was no longer relevant.

If you’re new here, to ring in the new year I started meticulously tracking my food expenses, both for groceries and for restaurants, to get a sense of just how much of my money was going to local food sources rather than corporate, distant ones. Despite my lack of updates, I have managed to continue this tracking. You can check out my first post on the subject to see how I distinguish one type of purchase from another.

So without further ado, here’s a three-month update.

On the Grocery Dollars front, I’m making some interesting progress. Interestingly, the purple wedge (the one I’m trying to get rid of) has only reduced a little since January, about 3%. The convenience of a 24-hour store SO close to my apartment is, I confess, challenging to overcome sometimes. And oddly, there are some items I simply cannot find at the co-op. Brad’s preferred pickle relish. Instant tapioca. Our favorite sandwich bread. But look at the blue and red! Up from about a third to over HALF! Not surprisingly, I’ve got a lot more produce out of my garden in the spring months than I did in January, and the variety of food available at the farmer’s market has increased as well. Exciting!

And to the restaurants…

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Strawberry Rhubarb & Goat Cheese Toasts

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Fancy breakfast

There are some foods that have always been magic to me. Tortillas, croissants, tortellini, cream puffs… those dreamy little bites that all seem borderline impossible for a person in a home kitchen to make. Incidentally, jam also mystified me. Perhaps it was really the canning part that seemed so out of reach, for until a couple years ago, I never canned my own.

I’ve learned, however, that jam is actually quite simple to make, and it doesn’t necessarily require large batches and canning. It seems you can boil together almost any fruit and have jam in a matter of minutes, ready to serve warm or to store in the fridge for many days.

This treat is a celebration of quick jam, a blend of two early harbingers of spring: strawberry and rhubarb.

Pretty little berries

While bundled stalks of rhubarb have graced the tables of the farmers market since early February, strawberries have only recently returned to the scene. Last week, a few pints of these precious red fruits have appeared between towers of broccoli and leafy greens, and just like every year, I could hardly wait to get my hands on some.

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Almond Chicken

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Pan of dinner
Frequently, when I go to my parents’ house, the organizing spirit seizes me with an iron grip and won’t be satisfied until I’ve emptied out the pantry, sorted every package and box and can of food, and replaced them again. It’s usually a comical affair as my mom and I chuckle at the ridiculous artifacts of gift baskets and deep discounts we find lurking at the back of the cupboard. And upon returning home, I tend to find myself inspired to root through my own pantry to create meals with odds and ends I already have on hand.

Almond Chicken

This dish came out of one such rooting. An excess of white rice, leftover almonds from my holiday toffee-making, a can of water chestnuts, and chicken and peas from the freezer, seemingly disparate parts, became something great together as this Almond Chicken. With the addition of a green onion and a bit of sherry and soy sauce, it’s a quick meal that requires only a few minutes of stir-frying and a fluffy bed of rice.

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Carrot Oatmeal Cookies with Cream Cheese Glaze

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It’s June! And this first day of June is many things!

1. The first day of June, which is exciting enough on its own
2. The first day of National Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Month
3. The first day of National Accordion Awareness Month (who knew we even had that? Consider yourself aware.)
3. Mah birthday!

I’m spending the day doing what any sensible girl would do. Reading on the balcony, possibly getting a pedicure, re-organizing my spices in tiny matching jars (!!!!!!), taking a stab at cooking crème brûlée, seeing a movie with friends… it’s a lovely day off! Full of little birthday presents to myself.

My birthday present to you, however, are these cookies.

Last year around this time, we talked about carrot cake. I was never a particularly big fan in the past, but I now frequently find myself craving those tender bites of spice-filled, textured cake topped with a healthy dollop of tangy icing. Plus, the carrots in my garden are now bursting from the soil (okay not bursting, they actually require rather a lot of coaxing to come out of the ground), and my experiment with a curious variety put carrot cake on the top of my list to make.

Aren’t these neat? I wish I had taken pictures of them straight out of the earth, their brilliant fuschia dims slightly within minutes: they are easily the most intriguing vegetable I’d planted so far. And what fun would it be to use purple carrots for carrot cake?

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Pomegranate Salsa

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Pomegranate is one of my all-time favorite fruits of winter. It is something I buy as a special treat, one of the rare produce items I do not (and as far as I know, cannot) buy locally. So once a year, I buys a few of these beautiful fruits and savor each and every kernel.

To see whole, pomegranates do not look particularly appealing. They are ruddy and lumpy and have a somewhat awkward outie-belly-button looking thing at the top. They’re hard to peel and bruising on the outside can easily damage the inside. As with most good things, however, if you can get past the outward appearance and the time-consuming peeling, the fruit cracks open to reveal a stunning display.

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Roasted Red Pepper Pasta

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Roasted Red Pepper Pasta

There aren’t enough sauces, ingredients, shapes, cheeses, or styles in the world to burn out my love for pasta. If anything, it seems my taste for the stuff has only expanded since I started this blog; my childhood pasta preferences were limited exclusively to spaghetti with butter and parmesan cheese, and now I favor short, thick pasta dressed in zesty, flavorful sauces. There’s really nothing like writing a food blog to force me into trying new things. And as much as I want to make some of my favorites over and over again, then I’d have nothing new to tell you about! (However, if you haven’t already tried the Penne alla Vodka, you should really make it your top priority.)

Well, maybe your second priority. Because I’m pretty darn happy with this one, too.

All the bits and pieces

Roasted red peppers are pretty easy to come by at the grocery store. Yes, I know that fresh red bell peppers are EVERYWHERE at this time of year (at least in North Carolina), but for a quick and filling weeknight dinner, I went with these. Plus I already had them in my pantry and it was time to use them up.

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3 Years

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Blogoversary Flowers
I have enormous respect for the power of marking a year, whether it’s a birthday, New Years, an anniversary, or a blogoversary. Anniversaries of any kind give us the chance to stop and think about how we’ve spent our time in the last revolution around the sun and what we plan to do in the next one. April 22 marked my three-year anniversary of this blog, and it sort of sneaked up on me. It turns out that I haven’t logged in to this site in over a month, due primarily to a significant case of writer’s block. And photographer’s block. And kitcheneer’s block.

The truth is I have struggled over the last few months. Despite the fact that I work fewer hours, have more days off, and enjoy a kitchen filled with natural light, I’ve found myself groaning over the notion of cooking even familiar meals and not in the least bit interested in climbing atop a step stool angling for a shot. The muse that once perched on my shoulder whispering words, recipes, and stories into my eager ears seems to have folded her arms and sealed her lips. I’ve become increasingly frustrated that I can’t seem to get back into the productive rhythm to which I had grown so accustomed in North Carolina and have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why. Did I really manage to pack up everything I owned but forget to bring with me my inspiration, my drive for sharing this locavore’s story? Is it still sitting on the counter in my dimly-lit kitchen, or perhaps hiding in the grass next to my ever-fertile community garden plot?

Or did it survive the move after all, frozen but intact despite this deeply unpleasant winter, but is simply too nervous to peek its head out for fear of another frost?

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Roasted Tiny Potatoes

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Perfect little roasters

For most people in the US of A, myself included, french fries are the primary way that we consume potatoes. Sure, we eat mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving and heaped atop shepherd’s pies, and certainly a fair number of potatoes turn into potato chips. But mostly, we eat fries. I even figured out how to make my own a few months ago, and boy oh boy are they delicious.

But I’d like to propose that we overthrow King French Fry from its mighty throne over potatoes everywhere. I don’t want to kick ’em out, just bring them back down on an equal plane with other potatoes.

And in the vacuum, let’s make THESE instead.

Tiny Roasted Potatoes

Despite the fact that I grew up enjoying new potatoes from my grandparents’ garden every summer, I had never once before this spring considered buying a batch of teeny little potatoes to make at home. My dad was in town to visit so I decided to try out a recipe I’d been eying in the beautiful Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. The author herself (eeeee! I met her!) said that her Flat Roasted Chicken with Tiny Potatoes seems to be one of the more popular among her readers, so with an excellent excuse like company in the house, I gave it a shot. The chicken was delicious, but it was the potatoes that stole my heart.

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