From Seed Potatoes to Cheese Potatoes
From garden to table, with a delicious potato recipe for two
It’s potato harvest time in the North Carolina mountains. Already nostalgic for spring and summer, I’m remembering us tilling the garden, planting seed potatoes, hilling up the rows, hoping they weathered all the rain, and then digging and drying the harvest.
But to go back to April. The ground’s not frozen and it hasn’t rained for awhile. Out comes the tiller!
In the past we have ordered potatoes from Maine. But it’s been hard to know when to expect delivery and we’ve had problems with blight. So this year Sam decided to go local and buy them from Harris Ace Hardware on Main Street in Brevard. Perfect!
In May, within two days of planting, cut seed potatoes with a clean knife into 2” pieces with at least one eye in each.
With a hoe dig a trench in the tilled garden, piling the dirt along the edges. Drop in the potato pieces about 12” apart and cover them about 6” deep. As they grow over the next couple of months, you’re going to hill them up twice, pulling dirt around them to cover their roots. Don’t be in a hurry for the harvest! You have plenty of time to find a good recipe.
It’s late August. The potatoes are dry and some are in a cardboard box in the kitchen. The following recipe is from one of my favorite cookbooks, The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook by America’s Test Kitchen. I like their feature, “Why this recipe works”. For Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes they say,
… We wanted an easy version [of casserole potatoes] sized for two. To speed things up, we simmered the potatoes in chicken broth and cream in a skillet until they were nearly tender, then moved the skillet to the oven, where they needed just 15 minutes to brown and cool through. …
I put the recipe on a card.
The authors also say,
Do not use pre-shredded cheese, which contains added starch that will interfere with the sauce. Do not substitute extra-sharp or sharp cheddar for the mild cheddar. Prepare and assemble all of the ingredients before slicing the potatoes or the potatoes will begin to turn brown.
I think that milk will work as well as heavy cream. I used half-and-half and that was fine. Also, if your chicken broth is salted, I would reduce the added salt to 1/4 teaspoon.
I assembled the ingredients.
Turn on the oven while simmering the potatoes.
In writing this post, I’ve thought of a book on our garden shelf, Crockett’s Victory Garden. James Crockett writes,
There is no mystery about gardening, just the wondrous fact that seed time and harvest occur each year, generation after generation, wherever the soil is tilled. If gardeners do their part they can confidently expect the miracle to continue as it has through all time.
Victory gardens date back to World War I. If I had thought about it last spring, that’s what we could have called our garden this election year, our 2022 Victory Garden. But it’s not too late. Here’s to victory for democracy in America!
Sorry dear, That's not thyme. That's rosemary..♥️
Yum!