"The Macy's Culinary Council Thanksgiving & Holiday Cookbook" - Blue Cheese Potatoes au Gratin - Christmas Day

Date I made this recipe:  Christmas Day, 2017

The Macy’s Culinary Council Thanksgiving & Holiday Cookbook

Published by Macy’s in commemoration of the 85^th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

ISBN:  978-0-9779890-5-8; copyright 2011

Recipe:  Blue Cheese Potatoes au Gratin – p. 23

Let me just cut to the chase:  These are some of the best potatoes I have ever eaten! 

There.  Now that I have your attention, let me just say that it took me long enough (six years) to cook from this cookbook, but it was well worth the wait. 

The recipes in this book were all contributed by chefs who were members of Macy’s Culinary Council:  Rick Bayless; Michelle Bernstein; Cat Cora; Tom Douglas; Todd English; Marc Forgione; Emeril Lagasse; Wolfgang Puck; Marcus Samuelsson; Tim Scott; Nancy Silverton; Ming Tsai and Takashi Yagihashi. 

If you are into cookbooks and cooking like me, you probably know most of these names.  Maybe you have their cookbooks.  I have met personally Cat Cora and Marcus Samuelsson, and have eaten also at Marcu’s Red Rooster restaurant in Harlem.  If you’re like me, you gush a little.  These people are all kick-ass chefs who know their way around a kitchen, but yet were happy to share their skills and expert observations with Macy’s shoppers.  I like that.

My husband and I didn’t really observe Thanksgiving Day this year because we still had leftovers from the pre-Thanksgiving family dinner we had the week before.  Initially, I was thinking of making a belated T-Day dinner and earmarked several T-Day recipes in the book, but then as I am wont to do, I changed things up and went in another direction.  The other direction was a beef brisket (not in this cookbook) accompanied by these Blue Cheese Potatoes au Gratin and a Roasted Beet Salad (also from this cookbook, page 111).

I have to say that the brisket was okay, the beet salad was very good, but these ‘taters were just amazing.  As these things go though, they almost didn’t happen.  When we went grocery shopping on Christmas Eve, I was pretty convinced that I had enough blue cheese for the recipe.  Turned out I didn’t, and then it turned out that Andy inadvertently munched his way through some of what I had on hand during his daily “cheese and crackers hour.”

You know how people look when they’re caught eating let’s say ice cream straight out of the container?  This is what Andy looked like when I “caught” him eating the cheese!

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?  I told you that I was using that in the potatoes!”  He claims that the cheese stock was already depleted before he touched it, but I don’t know about that.  I do know that I wish I had taken a photo of him stuffing a cheese-laden cracker into this mouth because it was pretty funny and also evidence of his near-crime!

This left me then low on cheese and low on choices.  We had other cheese in our refrigerator, but some were too hard, some were the wrong flavor profile, and some were similarly textured, like feta, but just not right.  This left me with goat cheese and you know what folks, when I used it in this recipe, I discovered I inadvertently (and out of necessity) hit the jackpot.  The texture of blue cheese is not exactly the same as goat cheese, but they blended well together, and the dish was delicious. 

What I really loved though, was that you simmer the potatoes in the cream before baking them in the oven.  This lets the flavor infuse, and also pre-cooks the potatoes so your potatoes come out soft and creamy.

This recipe was submitted by Eugene Flynn, owner of Amanda’s restaurant in Hoboken, NJ, who caters a pre-parade event for parade staffers and their families.  I just looked at his restaurant menu and he serves these potatoes with a sixteen-ounce grilled Angus Sirloin and I am so going there and getting that when we return to NJ this summer.  Road trip!

This cookbook is divided into holidays – Thanksgiving and “Holiday”– and each chef contributes a menu as follows:

Thanksgiving

• Parade Party:  Emeril Lagasse
• Left Coast Thanksgiving: Tom Douglas
• New Classic Thanksgiving:  Marc Forgione
• A Southern Thanksgiving:  Cat Cora
• Leftovers for Lunch:  Nancy Silverton

Holiday

• Friends and Family Cookie Exchange
• Holiday Brunch:  Wolfgang Puck
• Holiday Open House: Tim Scott
• Christmas at Home:  Rick Bayless
• Feast of the Seven Fishes:  Todd English
• An American Julbord:  Marcus Samuelsson
• Dumpling Party: Ming Tsai
• Hanukkah Dinner:  Michelle Bernstein
• New Year’s Eve Party:  Takashi Yagihashi

 Almost every recipe is accompanied by mouth-watering photos which I always love and some chef commentary to boot.  Honestly, there were few recipes from this book I didn’t want to make and had to work hard to limit it to two and only two.

Even though I made these potatoes (and beet salad) for Christmas, they are the perfect accompaniment for any meal, especially a roast or a meatloaf, so knock yourself out.  Just keep your eye on both your husband and your cheese supply!

Blue Cheese Potatoes au Gratin – Serves 8 to 10

2 tablespoons butter

1 quart heavy cream

3 pounds Idaho russet potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/8 inch thick (preferably on a mandoline)

2 teaspoons kosher salt

5 ounces Maytag blue cheese, crumbled

Kosher salt

Ground white pepper

Preheat the oven to 350F.  Butter a 9- by 12-inch baking dish.

Pour the cream into a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat and slowly bring to a boil, watching carefully so the cream does not boil over.  As soon as the cream reaches a boil, add the sliced potatoes and salt and stir to combine.  Bring the mixture back to a simmer (stirring often so the potatoes don’t stick to the bottom) and cook until the mixture has thickened, and the potatoes are almost fully cooked, about 10 minutes.  Remove from the heat.

Layer one-third of the potatoes in the bottom of the prepared baking dish.  Sprinkle one-third of the blue cheese evenly over the potatoes and season with a little salt and white pepper.  Repeat the layers twice, ending with the blue cheese.  Pour any cream left in the pan over the potatoes, and cover the dish loosely with foil.

Bake until the potatoes are cooked through, about 45 minutes.  Remove the foil and continue to bake until the top is browned and lightly crusted, about 15 minutes more.  Let rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Ann’s Note:  As noted above, I ran out of blue cheese and so added goat cheese and loved the results.  I think you too can play with the cheeses you use so long as you get something similar in texture and taste. 

"My Mother's Secret Recipe File - More than 125 Treasured Recipes From The Mothers Of Our Great Chefs - Sweet 'n' Smoky Chicken - Mother's Day 2017

Date I made this recipe:  May 14, 2017 – Mother's Day

Mom's Secret Recipe File – More than 125 Treasured Recipes from the Mothers of Our Great Chefs, edited by Chris Styler ("A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book is being donated to the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children")

Published by Hyperion

ISBN:  1-4013-+0754-X; © 2004

Recipe:  Sweet 'n' Smoky Chicken – p. 207 (submitted by chicken magnate, Jim Perdue)

Ann's Note:  I had another recipe on deck for Mother's Day, a Caramel Cake from the cookbook/essay  In My Mother's Kitchen.  Alas, while on my third attempt to make caramel for the caramel sauce, I burned my left hand something fierce and one week later, have not been back in the kitchen at all.  Since I am still in pain (burn is infected), I shall turn my back on the recipe but will talk about the book at the end of the blog.

All right then, this Mother's Day, I had a couple of options in front of me and so finally decided upon the chicken recipe that was really good and a caramel cake that sounded good but is still unmade because of my kitchen accident.  I must say, this will forever be a memorable Mother's Day for me for all the wrong reasons!

Let's focus on the positive and talk about the cookbook Mom's Secret Recipe File.  There is a lot to like in this cookbook and I was challenged to select just one recipe.  Thirty three "celebrity" chefs submitted recipes for this endeavor to aid the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children (how apt for Mother's Day), and they include:  Lidia Matticchio Bastianich; Jaques Pepin; Marcus Samuellson; Anthony Bourdain and Nieglla Lawson.  What the Table of Contents didn't include, and which irked, was a list of recipes submitted by all these glorious personnel.  I hate that.  It's a small thing, but would it have killed someone – anyone – to put a name and then some bullet-point mentions of the recipes at the front of the book?  Rhetorical question, no need to answer!

Here were some of the recipes up for consideration:

• The Perfect Chocolate Dessert – p. 24-25 from Barbara Kafka
• Spinach and Sun-dried Tomato Strata – p. 67-68 from (editor) Chris Styler
• Spoon Bread with Smithfield Ham and Cheddar Cheese – p. 122 from Chris Schlessinger
• Mushroom-Barley Soup – p. 177 from Mollie Katzen
• Poppy Seed Cake with Lemon Glaze – p. 251-252 from Susan Feniger

 Don't these all sound delicious?  Seeing as how I had just cooked from Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen for Earth Day, I eliminated that recipe.  I would have loved to have made the "Poppy Seed Cake with Lemon Glaze "recipe as that was my wedding cake, but this was Mother's Day not Ann and Anniversary's Day (May 18^th) so that was out.

So there I was debating about the merits of one of these over the others when I looked through the book again and well, the answer was so obvious to me that I can't even believe I overlooked it the first time:  Sweet 'N' Smoky Chicken.

The backstory:  When my mom turned 80, I made her a homemade birthday card (mini scrapbook) of things that made me think of her and one section was called something like "Jobs my mother could have had."  Included in that was the job of an FDA meat inspector because my mother's fear of germs, especially salmonella from chicken, made her scrub the crap out her kitchen lest we all fall victim to such a terrible illness.  In no way, shape, or form, was my mother going to be responsible for her children's food illnesses, no sir!

And this is why if you came over to our house when she made chicken, you'd see her scrubbing away on her cutting board (a wooden cutting board no less) with Comet cleaner afterwards, followed by a ton of dish soap and hot water until she was assured that whatever might be lurking or fixin' to lurk was dead and gone.  I used to tease her about it to no end until I started cooking and lets just say the apple does not fall from the tree.

Given her rigorous efforts to ensure nothing wicked this way came during prep, it should come as no surprise to learn that if raw chicken was the enemy, undercooked chicken was kitchen Armageddon!  If she cooked the chicken, it sometimes bordered on overdone, something that irked my father to no end.  Dad was a wildlife research biologist and a very practical scientist, whose efforts to try to persuade my mom that "It's fine," failed and failed miserably as did "Some gut bacteria is good." 

When my father cooked the chicken, which he did on a tiny Hibachi grill using his own (and fabulous) BBQ sauce, my mother was all over him with her nagging:  "Are you sure it's cooked?  Well did you check?  Well check it again?"  (Note:  This was often before microwaves saved the day.)

Finally my dad had enough and so he wrote on a Post-it that remained on the refrigerator until the day they both died, "Don't overcook the chicken!" 

And this is how this phrase became the running joke in our household.  Let me just say that it didn't end there though as she moved on to steak and hamburger.  My dad (and I) love a rare steak and I mean rare and I also appreciate a rare burger which really, if you think about it, it steak tartare with a little char.  My mother, fearing total contamination, made my father broil her steak or burger to medium if not medium well and wow, that was a source of contention!

"Ah, come on, honey, you're ruining the meat!," dad would bellow.  "I am not."  "It'll be fine, you won't die."  "Well, I might!" (You should know that whereas my dad often sounded like Star Wars character, Chewbacca when he bellowed, my mother had the daintiest of voices sort of like Minnie Mouse, making the whole exchange even funnier.)

And on and on and on they went but it was adorable.  I am happy to report that my dad usually got his way when it came to his steak (a beautiful sirloin that my mom would "special order" – on sale, always on sale – from the butcher) but had to give it all up when it came to the chicken which is as it should be.

This chicken recipe was delicious, but what really sold the deal was the very last instruction to use a meat thermometer to check the temperature (180°F in the thickest part of the thigh) which was bloody brilliant even though today's chefs and home cooks say "Of course."  Back in the day when my family's chicken-cooking efforts were at an all-time high (60's and 70's), nobody thought to use a meat thermometer and we sure didn't have the internet to fill us on advisable temperatures nor a microwave to cook it further, so it was pretty much eyeball the sucker and hope for the best!

The other day I talked to my brother about the hilarity of all this and we both marveled that nobody in my family ever got sick from undercooked steak or chicken.  Not once because really, with my mother, would the germs even dare?  Nope! 

Here then, is a very good chicken recipe that was "perfectly cooked" and would no doubt have made my mom (and dad) happy this Mother's Day!

Sweet 'n' Smoky Chicken – makes 4 servings

1 large onion, sliced

1 whole Perdue fresh young chicken (about 4 pounds), cut into serving pieces, or 4 pounds of your preferred chicken part (Ann's Note:  I used two chicken breasts for half this recipe.)

2 teaspoons hickory-smoked salt (Ann's Note:  you can make this at home by mixing liquid smoke with sea salt and then letting it dry.  I used 1 teaspoon of sea salt and then a few drops of liquid smoke.)

¼ teaspoon pepper

½ cup ketchup

½ cup maple syrup

¼ cup red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons prepared mustard

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Scatter the onion slices over the bottom of a shallow baking pan.  Place the chicken in a single layer, skin side up, on top of the onion.  Sprinkle with the salt and pepper.  Stir the ketchup, maple syrup, vinegar, and mustard together in a small bowl and pour over chicken.  Bake, uncovered, until a meat thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the thigh registers 180°F.  (Ann's note:  if you are using chicken breasts, insert the thermometer in the thickest part of the breast.)

And now a word about the book I didn't use and the recipe I didn't make.  In My Mother's Kitchen is an essay with recipes.  The book's subtitle is "Writers on Love, Cooking, and Family," and while the essays were great, the recipes were scarce.  I  counted 12 but I'm not sure it's correct as there is no way to cross check; neither the Table of Contents or the Index listed the recipe names.

I had been wanting to make a caramel cake for some time and thought it would go well with the chicken.  In theory, this is correct, in practice, this is now a cake that I will never bake because of my burn.  And not that I want to lecture you on kitchen safety, but one week after the incident, my hand still hurts like hell.  It was such a stupid – nearly comical – event but one with lasting ramifications!  So if you decided you want to attempt caramel for this cake at home, please be careful out there.

Should you want to see the recipe for yourself, here's the information:

In My Mother's Kitchen – Writers on Love, Cooking, and Family – With contributions from Ruth Reichel, M F. K. Fisher, Maya Angelou, Julie Sahni, Joyce White, and Nigel Slater.

Published by Chamberlain Brothers

ISBN: 1-59609-209-2; © 2006

Recipe (that I didn't make):  Maya Angelou's Caramel Cake – p. 22-23, included in her essay titled "The Assurance of Caramel Cake."

Alternatively, it's also included in Hallelujah! The Welcome Table by Maya Angelou.  I have not cooked from her book(s) yet (I have two) although they are always " on my list."