Monday, February 2, 2009

Olsen Farms' Potatoes





Thousands of potato varieties exist that it's difficult to imagine trying them all. These colorful hodgepodge of taters came again, from Olsen Farms.
Their potatoes are dryland-produced and known for their superior flavor and lively colors. Though they have over 20 varieties to choose from, we smiled upon Viking Purples, Purple Majesties, All Blues, Mountain Roses, and Red Ladies. With names like those, how could you not feel to be in good company in the kitchen? We certainly did.
The preparation of these potatoes played a role in our grass-fed Rib-eye steak and beet puree dish (featured below).

Potato Players:
- Viking Purple Potatoes, Purple Majesties, All Blues, Mountain Roses, Red Ladies

Blanched Potato Recipe:
1. Blanch potatoes in salted water. To blanch, plunge the taters into a pot of boiling water and let cook for 10-15 minutes.
2. Remove potatoes from boiling water. Then plunge potatoes into an ice water bath or run under cold water to halt the cooking process.*
3. Peel potatoes by turning each tater evenly so that they have 7 equal sides.
4. For this potato recipe (which we paired with grass-fed Beef Rib-eye and organic Beets), we finished our potatoes with Lavender Rosemary salt.

* Blanching helps to loosen the skin, making it easier to peel potatoes. Blanching can also help enhance the flavor of some vegetables such as broccoli (by releasing bitter acids stored naturally in the food). Blanching is also reportedly used to enhance the color of some particularly green vegetables by releasing trapped gases of the food that obscure the greenness of their chlorophyll.

No comments:

Post a Comment