Classy Mashed Potatoes
2008.11.30As we begin our short journey, I’ll shed a little light into my background. It’s 1996; we’re in highschool. It’s AP Chemistry (which was regular chemistry taught earlier) and the teacher (a one J.J. Iverson - one of the best Chemistry 101 instructors on the planet) was going around the room asking students what kind of potatoes they liked before the bell. There were a lot of fries, a tot or two, and a few baked.
I considered each answer from my mouth: hot fast-food grease on salty fries. Or the crisped shells of tater tots with cold, tangy ketchup. Or the crumbling, flaking baked potato with melted butter. But where was the smooth texture? The texture that said, “I took the time to care about this preparation?” Anyone can throw a potato into the oven or fryer. The fry or the baker are both dead ends. You have to add sauces to them to dress them up and take them anywhere. Where was the expression of Love in the dish?
And to that end, what is a more universal expression of the potato? I could have chosen scalloped, with it’s dairy fat goodness and ability to meld a variety of ingredients. I almost chose twice-baked for those very same reasons. Yet, I had several thoughts within those few seconds before he got to me. The minimalist tendencies kicked-in: you don’t need skins, they can be bitter and clunky in the mouth. You don’t need bacon, it’s greasy and too sweet; it detracts from whatever the main dish is anyway. I was left with dairy and potatoes. There was only one answer left.
When it came my turn, I, a little too-fervently blurted, “I’m a mashed man!”
And there was laughter and a successful anecdote was born.
Let me now share with you another success. The New York Times ran a version of this Potato Mousseline recipe in their New York print edition November 19, 2008 on page D7. The author of that article wrote a beautifully terse sentence or two of how this dish wash compiled. If only I could remember it! To paraphrase: “…riced potatoes, browned butter and reduced cream…” Reduced cream!?!? Taking the thickest goodness and making thicker? Wasting all that time running the spuds through a ricer only for texture?? Now that is how it’s done! That is a whole new level. It nearly broke my brain.
The French way with cream is mostly technique, but it yields such great textures and richness. A far cry from my watery, vegan, olive oil spuds that taste like paste. That NYTimes description got the gears turning. So when I found myself at the stove top on Thanksgiving day, I culled various aspects of my lifetime affair with mashed potatoes and their varied preparations. The first was from the chef at Bev’s on the River, Sioux City, IA.
Chef Rick Beaulieu (actually a nice guy trying to raise his daughters) advised me along time ago that one of the secrets they teach in culinary school is to never user black pepper in a mashed potatoes. It’s fine if junior wants to douse his order with that crap from the table shaker, but no chef would inflict those dirty-looking, spicy flecks into their whipped mashed potatoes. Instead, Chef Beaulieu recommended white pepper. Acrid, dusty, white pepper. It has it’s place, just not in my mashed potatoes.
Allright, lesson learned: no pepper. But what to season them with? Surely the nuttiness of two tablespoons of browned butter is too subtle even for me to pick-up on. Drawing from another favorite preparation, I added two cloves of roasted garlic to the mash. Nuttiness? Check. Flavor? Check. Dissolve with virtually no impact on texture? Check. Reduced cream? Not enough time to make it separately, but it’s added after the butter and garlic.
So I have the basic recipe under control, and the rest of the meal previously set in motion is happening around me, too. I’m in the flow. Now here comes the synthesis.
As I mash the potatoes into the buttery cream “sauce,” I look around for more flavor options. Roasted garlic is as far as I want to go in the onion-y sulfur flavor direction. I’d like to stay away from acid if at all possible. No lemon (an oft-used vegan salt substitute). Potatoes are notoriously dry, which is why we are adding the cream. Did we get enough butter? If you have to ask, then probably not. Instead of risking ruining the browned butter by re-introducing raw butter, I decided to draw upon the vegan experience at the French Meadow bakery under Chef John Grumbles. (No, he wasn’t disagreeable or muttering. He was the happiest bastard–always espousing the joys and whys of pure vegetarianism.) But his mashed potatoes were gawd-awful: olive oil and starch water with salt, pepper, and roasted garlic. Flavor: 6.5 of 10, texture: 0. There are lessons to be learned from veganism, but abandoning milkfat is not one of them.
I broke into my stash of expensive oils and drizzled some extremely clean XXX virgin olive oil into the mix. ooooh, aaaah. That was nice. That was good. We’re getting somewhere. Oil. An herbal dimension I previously overlooked!
And to enhance all of them we need salt. A lot of salt to take on the potatoes, and the cream and bring-out the nuttiness. But not too much.
The texture and mouthfeel was there, but was this it? Or was something else missing? Was I approaching this too conservatively? Not enough garlic or butter? No, the salty and “nutty” flavors were there as a base note. The garlic was totally dissolved and contributing throughout the flavor profile without being noticed. This perfect implementation of roasted garlic is in the top ten I’ve ever done. (See, the garlic is roasted with olive oil, so the oil is infused with garlic and vice versa. Until they become a new substance where they are neither their original components, but only a thick garlicky oil paste.) This allows other oils and fats to reference the dissolved garlic in the potatoes and create a total flavor. And then it hit me.
In the back of the cupboard, there was a dark skinny bottle of a rich oil I’ve barely used. This could work! I remembered in a fancy finger-food cookbook, the chef used truffle oil to scent some potato chips. If that aroma went together with the overcooked potato chip, then surely it could push the herbal quality from the olive oil and roasted garlic a lot further along.
I tried a drop in a scoop of potatoes. WOW It was strong, like game. Yet it was not unpleasant. It has very little recognition on the American palate. By referencing the herbal oil and garlic qualities, it found its way into the flavor. It was that hint of “something extra” in the back of the throat that pushed the browned butter and cream to the next level. (Nutmeg could do the same, but I had already used that in the creamed corn.) I could use say five drops, max, for the entire pot and come away with a totally-complete flavor profile with an entirely smooth mouthfeel. With restraint, I can say that I have found my secret ingredient: white truffle oil.
So there you have it: stand-up, top-shelf, classy mashed potatoes.
- 6 med potatoes, peeled, chopped & boiled, whipped
- 4 tablespoons of butter, browned
- 1.5 cups cream, simmered-down a bit
- 3 med-small cloves roasted garlic
- 4-5 drops white truffle oil
Patience, memory and persistence paid off.