Can’t stop, won’t stop (eating potatoes)Tell me if you’ve heard this song before. You have one animated conversation with a colleague about, say, a new cordless vacuum, and the next day, you’re inundated with advertisements for it. There it is on Instagram and, huh, splashed at the top of your favorite newsletter. It’s an uncanny experience that can largely be explained by the data industrial complex, a nuisance of so much life lived online. But I can’t explain exactly how or why I was served an advertisement on Pinterest the other night for a single russet potato. Yes, I had been talking ’tatoes a couple of weeks earlier — specifically about a baked potato bar that has surfaced at our office cafeteria with some regularity, to great personal fanfare — but I swear to you I had not searched for potato recipes nor had I bought groceries online. Still, the ad worked. I may not have gone to the store advertising the potato, but I have since been on a potato tear, baking them in batches and toting them to work, along with containers of various toppings to ensure that my desk is, in a way, a baked potato bar. I like to stuff mine with sour cream, butter, Cheddar, scallions and chives, sometimes dill, and more salt and pepper than you think they need. They need it! But Eric Kim’s aglio e olio baked potatoes are waiting in the wings, “Parmesan-festooned” spuds, as he writes, dolloped with an unexpected garlicky mayonnaise that evokes potato salad. I don’t own a microwave, but if I did, I might pop Eric’s preferred smaller potatoes, red or gold, onto the turntable if I were in a rush. And if I tire of the baked potato — a sizable if — it will then be time for Hetty Lui McKinnon’s new tomato lentil stew with crispy potato. Here, russet potatoes are both form (a lovely shingled topping) and function (an edible lid that helps steam the filling until tender). To the showering of dill I might add chives or thinly sliced scallions, as I do with my baked spuds. I’ve had a real hankering for potato soup of all sorts. Hetty’s five-star coconut curry with potatoes and greens beckons, a chowder-y, aromatic and vegan dish that leans on Yukon golds and your favorite vegetarian Thai curry paste (any color!) for big flavor with little effort. Yukon golds are equally hearty in Sarah DiGregorio’s slow-cooker cauliflower, potato and white bean soup, a recipe with a baked-potato ethos that converts well to the stovetop if you, like me, have a small kitchen and an allergy to countertop appliances. Here’s Katie, a reader, with her take: “Sautéed onions and garlic first, then added potatoes, then wine, then broth and herbs. Added rosemary and thyme. Roasted the cauliflower in the oven at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, then added it and cooked 30 minutes more. Added the beans when I added the cauliflower. Was absolutely outstanding.” Thank you for your service, Katie. In Melissa Clark’s five-star seared broccoli and potato soup, any kind of potato will add a little body; use what you have. And Noor Murad’s shorbat adas bil hamod, a tangy lentil and greens soup with hunks of red potato, will satisfy when the craving for a lighter and brighter meal strikes. This vegan, vegetable-packed dish leans on lots of lemon and Lebanese seven-spice powder — a blend that includes cinnamon, cloves, black pepper and allspice, among others — for its oomph. Pick some up at a Middle Eastern grocery, mix your own baharat or simply use cinnamon and coriander, as Noor offers. Even one mention of cinnamon has me considering the baked sweet potato, stuffed with hot honey and goat cheese, maple-tahini crème fraîche or tahini butter. Though boiled and then seared sounds just as satisfying, if not quicker, as in Pete Wells’s new recipe for seared sweet potatoes with chermoula, topped with crispy chickpeas for protein and a bit more fiber. I wonder if I’ll see an ad for a sweet potato now. Or, worse, a microwave or slow cooker.
Aglio e Olio Baked Potatoes
Shorbat Adas bil Hamod (Lentil Soup With Greens)
Seared Sweet Potatoes With ChermoulaOne More Thing!In case you did not believe me: the potato ad in question.
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