Easy fix: Bay-smoked potatoes

Cookbook author Rozanne Gold flies a bit under the wire. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve mentioned her cookbooks, especially her first one, "Cooking 1-2-3: 500 Fabulous Three-Ingredient Recipes," to be met with a blank stare. Her recipes are simple but sophisticated. That first book is designed for people who like to cook but may not have time to drive all over town searching out a kazillion ingredients.

Her latest is “Radically Simple: Brilliant Flavors With Breathtaking Ease” (Rodale, 339 pps., $35.) It borrows just one recipe from her earlier tome, namely bay-smoked potatoes, which I’ve been making for years now. 

Handy that I happen to have a big bay tree in a pot outside the kitchen door. I realize, though, that I’ve been making it all this time with bay laurel (Laurus nobilis), instead of California bay, which is more aromatic. And that she uses dried leaves rather than fresh (probably because it’s unlikely anybody can find fresh leaves on the East Coast, where she lives). 

It works either way, with the bay giving the new potatoes a haunting smoky, herbal perfume. The texture is creamy, no further garnish needed. Just stick the pan in the oven an hour or so before you want to eat.

Here’s Gold’s recipe, reworded slightly to save space.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Wash and scrub 1½ pounds very small white new potatoes; dry well. Do not peel. Toss with 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil and 2 teaspoons kosher salt. Distribute the bay leaves in a heavy ovenproof covered sauté pan. Arrange the potatoes on top of the bay leaves in a single layer. Cover tightly with foil or a cover. Bake for 55 minutes to 1 hour, until the potatoes are soft and wrinkled. Transfer the potatoes and bay leaves to a platter. Serves 4.

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-- S. Irene Virbila
Twitter.com/sirenevirbila

Photos: Bay-smoked potatoes. Credit: S. Irene Virbila/Los Angeles Times.

 

3 food events you should know about: Breadbar's dessert workshop; Potato Week at Larchmont Grill; Rock Sugar ingredient scavenger hunt

'Festive Desserts Without Fear': Robert Wemischner, author of "The Dessert Architect," is hosting a hands-on class on Sunday, Nov. 14., to teach participants the art of creating desserts. The workshop will show you how to prepare: pears in caramel with vanilla ice cream, cranberry pistachio tart and "chocolate fantasy" served with fruits of the season. (We're just not sure where the fear ever came in.) Seating is limited; reservations recommended. $70. 5 to 8 p.m.  

BreadBar West Third 8718 W. 3rd Street, Los Angeles, (310)-205-0124, www.breadbar.net.

An homage to the potato’s possibilities: From Monday, Nov. 8, to Sunday, Nov. 14., Larchmont Grill's tuber initiative is centered on a three-course potato menu for lunch or dinner. Aiming to reveal potatoes' limitless possibilities, the selection includes a sweet onion and purple potato tart and a sweet potato cheesecake for dessert. (A week of potatoes, great; just don't go overboard.)  

5750 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (323)-464-4277, http://www.larchmontgrill.com.

Shop with a chef: Catering to foodies that love Asian food but don't know where to get quality Asian ingredients, chef Mohan Ismail of Rock Sugar Pan Asian Kitchen will lead a small group on a shopping tour that begins at the Los Angeles fish market downtown. The hunt continues at 99 Ranch in Van Nuys, after which guests will return to the Century City restaurant to observe Ismail demo some of his specialties such as steamed bass with crispy organic tofu and mango sticky rice. Saturday, Nov. 13, 8:30 a.m. (meet at Rock Sugar) to 2 p.m. $150 per person.

10250 Santa Monica Blvd., Century City, (310)-552-9988, www.rocksugarpanasiankitchen.com.

-- Max Diamond

Photo credit: Glen Koenig/Los Angeles Times

Hot potato! Here's our favorite potato salad recipe

 

What's the difference between a potato salad that's so-so and one that's stellar?

It's all in the details. Above, L.A. Times Food Editor Russ Parsons shows you the tricks of the trade, and walks you through his favorite version: Potato salad with celery and red onions.

PLUS: How to cook the perfect steak, and a super-duper easy way to roast corn on the cob.

Putting a wrinkle in the way you cook potatoes

You probably think you already know every way to cook a potato. Baked. Roasted. Steamed. Microwaved. Fried. And my favorite, twice-fried.

Well, how about wrinkly?

Check out this article by Janet Mendel, who suggests a different way of carbo loading:

In the Spanish Canary Islands they are called papas arrugadas, or wrinkly potatoes. Cooking in heavily salted water wrinkles the skins and leaves them with a light crusting of salt. The result is a concentrated potato flavor enlivened by a gentle seasoning that seems to go all the way through. They are delicious served with baked or grilled fish and Canary Island mojo sauces.

Mendel also shows you how to put it together in a meal with her recipes for samcocho -- baked fish with mint -- served alongside wrinkly potatoes and red-and-green sauces to accompany, mojo verde and mojo colorado.

-- Rene Lynch
On Twitter @renelynch

Photo credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

Hungry Girl, PopChips stage a potato chip intervention

 

When I was assigned to do a story about the Hungry Girl phenomenon, I had no idea it would help me break a long-standing potato chip addiction. Hungry Girl is Lisa Lillien, a Valley girl and former cable TV executive who parlayed her passion for calorie counting into a multimillion-dollar business and a role as Internet taste maker. (Her newest recipe book, "Hungry Girl: 200 Under 200," has hit the No. 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list.)

I spent the day with Lillien and a handful of her team members at their Woodland Hills "office" -- it's really a unit in a posh apartment complex, chosen for a spacious kitchen that accommodates recipe testing. If you read her daily e-mail blast you won't be surprised to hear that a day in the candy-colored Hungry Girl headquarters feels like one big slumber party. That's because much of their "work"-day is literally spent dreaming up yummy low-cal recipes, crafting them and testing and re-testing them until they're good to go. (On the day I was there, they were working on their fourth try at perfecting peanut butter oatmeal "softies." Not quite cookies, they're not quite muffins either, hence the name.)

Lillien considers it her personal mission to find more healthful -- or at least lower-in-calorie -- substitutes for the foods that people crave most. She asked me about my weakness. Potato chips, the saltier the better, I told her. She told me I should try PopChips. I'd never heard of them, and I jotted it down in my notebook just to be polite. On my way out the door that day, Lillien handed me a bag of PopChips -- turns out they are a staple in the Hungry Girl kitchen. 

Schnitzel mania!

 

I guess everyone really does love schnitzel. When I wrote that in my California Cook column this week, I was half-joking. But considering the responses I got from cutlet-hungry readers, I guess the laughs are on me.

The first note I got was from Berlin: Taska Harnischfeger wrote: “I just wanted to let you know that in Germany, as opposed to Austria, your version of the schnitzel [made with pork rather than veal] is standard. If you are at an Austrian restaurant, and you order "Vienna Schnitzel" (Wiener Schnitzel), you will get veal, but most restaurants in Germany offer "Schnitzel, Vienna style" (Schnitzel, Wiener Art), or just plain schnitzel, which is pork. I personally like the pork version better.”

A couple of readers bemoaned the lack of good German restaurants in Southern California since Knoll’s Black Forest Inn closed. “My parents were German and my mother made the dish often,” wrote Ronald Ross of Los Angeles. “During the last 10 years, I have been very sad to see almost all German and for that matter most Continental-style restaurants disappear, the last one being Knolls Black Forest. There used to be many such as the Swiss Cafe, Scandia, the Gourmet, etc.”

A couple more wrote with recommendations:

Bye bye, delivery guy -- we've turned our kitchen into a pizza parlor

We turned today's Food section over to one of our favorite foods: pizza. We've got everything you ever wanted to know, or needed to know, about pizza.

Seriously.

You probably think you cannot make good pizza at home because you lack a pizza oven. Well, think again. Times test kitchen manager Noelle Carter shows you how to line your oven with fireproof bricks*** so you can achieve that trademark crispy crust. (You can also watch her do it in the video.) All good pizzas start with homemade dough, so we've got a recipe for that as well as recipes for pizza Margherita (and a no-cook sauce) and potato pizza. We've also got a look at variations on that theme.

But let's say you're not the cook-at-home type, or you want your pizza, and you want it RIGHT NOW. Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila takes you on a tour of the best gourmet pizza spots in town and here's a list you'll definitely want to bookmark, as well as a locator map. (And by the way, did you ever wonder how we got from regular old-fashioned pizza to gourmet pizza? Check out this cool pizza chronology flash graphic.)

What's that? You say that you can't get good pizza west of Manhattan? Then check this out. And then check out this list of places were you can buy it by the slice.

Finally, here's a photo gallery look at testing out pizzas in The Times' test kitchen, from start to finish, and here's a recommended wine to wash down that slice of 'za.

(***Note that we said fireproof bricks. If you use the regular ol' bricks you've got piled up in the yard, they could explode. And that's not a good pizza topping.)

-- Rene Lynch

Sampler Platter: Corned beef, soda bread, Shamrock Shakes and potatoes

Did you know that few people in Ireland eat corned beef on St. Patrick's Day? It doesn't matter. We do.

• Meet the kings of corned beef in Detroit. Detroit Free Press
• No more Shamrock Shakes in Canada. National Post
• But you can make your own Shamrock Shake cupcakes. Pennies on a Platter
• Guinness petitions to make March 17 a national holiday. The Michigan Journal
• In addition to corned beef, there's nothing Irish about soda bread. MSNBC
• Winner eats almost 17 sandwiches in 10 minutes at a corned beef contest. Count On News 2
• Top 10 great restaurant potato dishes. Baltimore Sun

-- Elina Shatkin

Photo: Competitive eater Pat Bertoletti, winner of the first-ever Stroehmann Sandwich Slamm, on Monday in New York City (Credit: Mario Tama /Getty Images). Potatoes au gratin by Daniel Boulud (Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times). Irish Stew (Anacleto Rapping / Los Angeles Times). Lemon-Lime blueberry soda bread. (Credit: Los Angeles Times).