the simple potato

Its only the third week of the year and A is already worried that we are falling behind on our resolutions. What started out as her anxiety about winter malaise ended up as a weekend filled with projects (homemade granola, bagel chips, dried kiwis, and our first attempt at no-knead bread) wedged in between outings (wine tastings, feeding our market cravings at Hillsdale, and trying new salts at the Meadow). She was definitely in one of her epicurean Laura Ingalls Wilder moods, when she wants to make everything from scratch and live off the grid, but still take advantage of all the city has to offer.

To ease back into the work week after a hectic weekend, a simple meal was in order. What simpler than the potato? While I've never enjoyed baked potatoes (that crispy skin is their only redeeming quality, don't try to convince me otherwise), can you think of a dish in which potatoes aren't delicious? They may very well be the hog of the vegetable world - versatile, satisfying, eminently tasty. Whether roasted with a little sea salt, french-fried, mashed, scalloped, twice-baked (now, those are a different story), added to a stew, stuffed in pierogi, or formed into gnocchi, the potato can fill so many roles quite gracefully.

Given the potato's easy appeal, the UN Food and Agriculture Office has declared 2008 to be the Year of the Potato, in an effort to draw attention to world hunger and issues confronting farmers. (Incidentally, it's also the year of the Rat [mine!]). Their site includes interesting reports on topics such as how Andean farmers are preserving tuber biodiversity to how potatoes can serve as an agricultural tool for women's empowerment. Even better, it provides me with more trivia for my already trivial mind (Europeans consume 96 kilos per capita annually!) and a project for growing potatoes in a large bucket. Since A and I want to expand our container gardening this year, I think this may well have made it onto our list of projects.

About a year ago, we came across two fantastic variations of a potato galette in an issue of Gourmet. This basic potato cake is layered with contrasting ingredients and crisped in a skillet, making a very beautiful and filling dish that would adapt well to all sorts of seasonal combinations. Morels and ramps with new potatoes in Spring, beets and their greens in the Fall, a little apple sliced in could be nice, as well. With what we had available, we knocked out a version based on a timbale recipe I'd recently seen that paired the potatoes with fennel and bosc pears. The fourme d'ambert is far too runny of a blue to be layered inside without making the whole thing stick to the pan, so crumble the cheese over the finished galette and broil briefly to melt, or just serve the hunks of it alongside the galette wedges. (If you'd like to vary the recipe and layer cheese inside the galette, good, firm cheeses like cheddar or fontina should hold up.)
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Potato, Fennel, and Pear Galette with Fourme d'Ambert cheese

1 1/2 lbs. potatoes (we used red creamers for this, but deep blue potatoes worked great for the kale version we'd previously made)
6 tablespoons butter
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1 medium fennel bulb, halved and cored
1 ripe bosc pear
1/4 lb wedge of fourme d'ambert
kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper

Begin by slicing the fennel 1/8 of an inch thick. Melt two tablespoons of the butter in a cast-iron skilled over medium heat. When it begins to smell fragrant, toss in the fennel and garlic slices and saute, stirring occasionally. When the fennel is just beginning to turn translucent, season to taste with some salt and black pepper. Continue cooking until the fennel has softened and its edges have just begun to brown. Remove from heat, transferring the fennel to a bowl and wipe out skillet.

While the fennel is cooking, thinly slice your potatoes about 1/16 of an inch. A mandoline will make short work of this and keep the thickness consistent. Heat another two tablespoons of the butter in the skillet over moderate heat and, as it melts, halve, core and thinly slice the pear. There is little need to worry about browning because you will quickly assemble the galette in the pan.

Brush the melted butter around the skillet and, with any excess, brush a sheet of aluminum foil that is slightly larger than the skillet you are using. On the stove, quickly begin layering about half of the potato slices in the bottom of the hot skillet, working inwards from the pan's edge in a spiral, overlapping each previous slice. Sprinkle with cracked pepper and kosher salt. Layer the pears in the same fashion on top of the potatoes, then cover with the cooked fennel, spreading it thinly into a single layer. With the remaining potatoes, cover the fennel with a final layer of overlapping slices. Brush with olive oil or a bit of melted butter and season with pepper and salt. Place the foil butter-side-down on the potatoes and weight down the galette by placing a heavy pot that just fits inside the skillet on the foil, pressing slightly.

Cook 10-15 minutes until the bottom layer of potatoes have crisped. Remove the pot and foil from the skillet and set aside. Holding a sheet pan tightly over the skillet, flip both over together, inverting the galette onto the sheet. Take a second baking sheet and place it over the galette on the first baking sheet. Hold both tightly together and invert the galette again. Brush the potatoes with a bit of olive oil or melted butter, cover with the skillet and invert once more into the pan. Return to moderate heat and cover with the foil and stockpot for another 10-15 minutes.

If you'd like to melt the cheese into the potatoes and really open up its aroma, preheat the oven to broil, remove the foil and stockpot and crumble the fourme d'ambert over the top of the galette. Place the skillet in the oven and broil lightly, watching that it doesn't brown too much. Otherwise, just go ahead and cut healthy wedges of the galette and serve alongside slices of the fourme d'ambert.