{"id":1436,"date":"2014-02-18T09:42:01","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T14:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2014-08-24T18:33:26","modified_gmt":"2014-08-24T22:33:26","slug":"potato-bravo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/2014\/02\/potato-bravo.html","title":{"rendered":"Potato Bravo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"YukonGold\"<\/a>Potatoes soak up words exactly as they soak up butter. Mash them in, stir them in, whip them in, makes no difference, they disappear. Descended into a silken maelstr\u00f6m, language dissolves, and no amount or quality of writing can resist the potato’s absorptive, neutralizing nature. Thoughtful or ardent spud poems are doomed in advance.<\/p>\n

Moby Dick was really the Great White Potato.<\/p>\n

My strategy here is to keep everything away from the brink because a single, recent kitchen victory — stirring potatoes — needn’t go far. The only better ones I remember were in 1982, at Jo\u00ebl\u00a0Robuchon’s brand-new\u00a0Jamin in the 16th arrondissement: pommes pur\u00e9e. (That makes me sound so smart, but my seat at table resulted from the confluence of a good friend and great luck.) The hot cloud Jamin placed in front of me had leapt from dirt to heaven without once stopping in between.<\/p>\n

My religion allows, in fact, requires, that we are each capable of our own heaven. It’s a tenet — and paradox — of my criticism, too, but I see that the universal potato-maw is getting ready to swallow me up, so back to small business.<\/p>\n

Here’s what happened the other night, on a fake holiday that starts with “V.”<\/p>\n

Found some just-gathered dry scallops and decided to match their naughty smoothness with potatoes. Mashed or whipped? Those are quite different propositions, and I remembered a detailed study about why that was so, so I found and reread<\/a>\u00a0it.<\/p>\n

Fascinating. Can’t find the ricer; maybe I’ll do some nice rice.<\/p>\n

But Yukon Golds were waiting in a cool corner, so I chose five mediums, washed and peeled, then sliced them into cubes and pyramids, something between 1 inch and 2. Rinsed off the starch juice in a colander, put the chunks in a pot, covered with cold water, brought to a boil, threw in some salt, stirred, waited 15 minutes as they bubbled, drew out one piece on knife point, chewed, gave them another 5, and when I saw that there was still some resistance but the flesh was ready to collapse (a truly human moment many of us recognize), drained them.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I had cut a third of a stick of sweet butter into a few pieces and placed them in a Pyrex measuring cup into which I had poured about 1 cup of heavy cream. Then I melted the butter into the cream in the microwave; took a minute or so.<\/p>\n

Put the potatoes back into the still-hot empty saucepan, added a third of the mixed-together warm, buttered cream, and took a wooden spoon and stirred, gently breaking up the pieces while incorporating the fat as if I were making potato mayo. Then another dripped third as I’m stirring — slow and steady, nothing like beating or whipping.<\/p>\n

All of a sudden, the mass develops a pillowy form and obscene shine. It does not collapse or turn to mucilage.<\/p>\n

\"Eat<\/a>

Eat them all, because cold, leftover potatoes, however good, are never better.<\/p><\/div>\n

The last third consolidates the transformation.<\/p>\n

Would you taste it now? Aroma beckons.<\/p>\n

Do you think it needs salt or white pepper?<\/p>\n

Final relief; words fail.\u00a0Paris can be anywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When is a recipe not a recipe? When a potato calls the shots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[107,437,434,439,438,148,109,436,435],"class_list":{"0":"post-1436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"tag-cooking","9":"tag-joel-robuchon-jamin","10":"tag-mashed-potatoes","11":"tag-moby-dick","12":"tag-pommes-puree","13":"tag-potato","14":"tag-recipe","15":"tag-spud","16":"tag-whipped-potatoes","17":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/outthere\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}