Tis The Season For Potato Side Dishes

Try to imagine the holidays without potatoes: No mashed or sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving. No oven roasted potatoes or potato casserole on Christmas. Hanukkah without those crispy potato latkes. Without potatoes, the festive months of late fall and winter would not only be less flavorful but colder and less comforting. Whether they be crispy or creamy, potatoes make the perfect base for a holiday season dish. Here are some special potato side dish recipes brought to you by some of the world’s finest chefs: Smashed Potatoes (Francis Mallmann) One professional-quality potato dish you can make, for a delicious contrast of both crunchy and tender, is Francis’ Smashed Potatoes. The recipe for this wonderful dish begins with the boiling of two potatoes in cold water, in a cast iron pan, until they are tender. Once the boiling is complete and the potatoes are out of the pan, the next step, Francis instructs us, is to press down on the potatoes with both hands until they’re smushed into a single flattened potato (“See how beautiful it looks?” Francis says in the video as he admires the smashed potatoes.) In his demonstration, Francis scoops up the smashed potatoes with a giant spatula and takes them to his plancha, a round flattop grill. He grills the potatoes very slowly, inside the pan and with clarified butter, for an hour. “Now, you may say: ‘I live in a flat in New York or in Hong Kong – how the hell am I going to cook these things at home?!’” Francis says. His answer is a cast-iron pan, which will also produce, he says, a beautiful thick crunchy crust and a tender interior. When you’re making it, be sure to flip the potato over and cook it for about 30 minutes until it’s golden brown before serving it hot. Kwame’s GBD Potatoes (Kwame Onwuachi) The ‘GBD’ in Kwame Onwuachi’s GBD Potatoes dish stand for Golden Brown Delicious, and who wouldn’t want a golden, brown, and delicious side dish – invented by one of the world’s most creative chefs – at their holiday dinner? The GBD potatoes accompany Kwame’s curry dish along with steamed white rice, but would pair just as well with most of your holiday entrees. Kwame’s GBD potatoes are made by dicing a potato and boiling the potatoes in a pan, with salt, until they’re tender. Next you’ll want to drain the potatoes in a colander, put them on a baking sheet, and then cool them in the refrigerator. While heating oil in a frying pan, gently smash the potatoes and then fry them on 350 degrees until golden brown. Put them on a roasting rack or paper towel lined plate or tray and season them with salt. The potatoes, which are to be coated in a green seasoning aeoli, will be crispy and unbelievably tasty. Asma’s Sweet Potato If you want to be bold with your flavors and really do something different with your sweet potato dish, follow Asma Khan’s delicious recipe for her Shakarkandi, or sweet potato salad. A “fabulous” and “quite unusual” way to make sweet potatoes, Asma tells us, this salad combines sweet, sour, savory, and bitter elements together to really wow the palate. After scrubbing the sweet potatoes clean, place them – with their skin – on the coal embers of a barbecue (Or in an oven, if that’s what you are working with.) Turn the potatoes around as they cook, to ensure they’re cooking evenly, until they’re soft. (Once you can poke a sharp knife into the center of the sweet potato, they’re ready.) In the oven, you’ll want to cook the sweet potato on high heat for about a half-hour, until soft. Once the sweet potato has cooled, remove its skin, cut it into cubes, place all the sweet potatoes into a bowl, and add green chilies, cumin seeds, chili powder, Himalayan rock salt, and lemon juice. Before serving, top your sweet potato salad with chopped cilantro leaves. Patagonian Potato Galette (Francis Mallmann) Another delicious potato-based side dish that is a great match for the holiday dinner table is Francis’ Patagonian Potato Galette. According to this recipe, Francis cuts his potato into extremely thin slices, brings them to the plancha and – cooking them in butter – he arranges overlapping potato slices into a circular shape, enclosing it in the middle with more potatoes. The potatoes will stick together as they cook; critical to this dish’s success, Francis explains, is to be patient and not flip the potato over until it has formed a crust. Alternatively, you can cook a potato galette on a cast iron pan over a medium flame. Nancy’s Roasted Potatoes (Nancy Silverton) A side of oven roasted potatoes provides a tasty and satisfying comfort food to the plate of most holiday meals. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a better roasted potatoes recipe than the one authored by chef Nancy Silverton: her Roasted Potatoes with Bagna Cauta. To make it, Nancy pre-heats her oven to 500 degrees and cuts three pounds of potatoes in half, lengthwise. In a single layer, she puts the potatoes in a large pan before covering them with extra virgin olive oil and butter along with garlic cloves, fresh rosemary, and sage. Next, she adds salt and puts the potatoes on a medium-low flame, on which the potatoes should simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. The potatoes should cook slowly, on the stove until they’re almost completely cooked, but before they are done, Nancy roasts them in the oven until a knife can be inserted into the potato’s flesh with little resistance. Nancy turns off the heat and has the potatoes steep in the butter-oil mixture for 10 minutes, after which she pours the mixture on a baking sheet, to which she adds salt. The potatoes are transferred from the butter-oil mixture to the baking sheet; sage, fresh rosemary, and garlic are scattered on top. Finally, Nancy roasts the potatoes until their edges are brown and then serves them on a platter, cut side up. She adds the roasted garlic and crumbles the sage and charred rosemary on top.