A few days ago, my sister-in-law dropped off about 10 lbs of potatoes (from her 100 lbs) at my door. I was eager to accept the free food but soon realized that my one son, who absolutely refuses to enjoy even one bite of a potato in any form except fried little sticks, would probably be hitting up his friends for invitations to dinner to avoid having to eat a potato.  So I knew I had a real a challengeto deal with, but not one I was going to back down from. I needed to find a way to use 10 lbs of potatoes before they go bad AND so my son would enjoy them.  Obviously one task was going to be easier than the other.

The first step was deciding how to have potatoes for dinner.  That is never too hard when I turn to the internet and browse around until I find something that sounds good.  This time I landed on a potato soup recipe which sounded fabulous (to me) but in the back of my mind the voice kept saying, “Mom, you know I don’t like (we don’t use the word hate but I know he’d want to use it here) potatoes!”  So the bigger challenge now was to find a way to hide the fact he was eating potatoes.

Coming up with a recipe isn’t difficult but passing it off to the critics is daunting.  I had to be sure to get all my ingredients together and in the pot before anyone saw what was going in.  If one critic saw a potato near the stove, it was over!  Working quickly I sauteed, boiled, mashed and blended in record time.  Lucky for me the added carrots gave the soup enough color that it wasn’t distinguishable as any kind of soup they would recognize. 

As we all know, the mere mention of vegetables can either excite a child or send them into the ugly cry (depending on the day, right mom’s?).  This day was a good one in our house.  When I mentioned dinner was a vegetable soup, I didn’t get the myriad of questions regarding “which vegetables”.  Nope!  Instead, I got a few uncertain stares and one brave child who dug in and quickly said “MMMmmmm, that’s good mom!”  Eureka!  The sign the rest of them were all waiting for (and she didn’t even fall over dead).

I think it is safe to say, this one is a hit…and yes, I did tell Keaton he was eating potatoes.  After choking on his spoon, he looked up with big, fearful eyes and said, “What?!” 

I love it when a plan comes together. 

(I don’t have a picture of the soup because I was so anxious to see if the critics would like it or not that I forgot to have a picture moment.)

Herb Potato Soup

     8 small potatoes, diced (4 large russets)
     2 carrots, diced
     1 large onion, diced
     2 celery, diced

     2 cups warm milk
     6 cups vegetable stock
     2 cups potato water

     ½ teaspoon crushed rosemary
     ½ teaspoon thyme
     ½ teaspoon parsley
     ½ teaspoon garlic powder

     ½ cup parmesan cheese

     Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions

In a large pot add  diced potatoes and enough water to cover them.  Bring to a boil then cook until the potatoes are soft.  Drain, reserving 2 cups of cooking liquid, and mash with potato masher.  Set aside.

Dice the carrots, onions and celery.  Heat a pan over medium heat and add 1 tablespoon oil.  Add diced vegetables to the pan and cook, stirring often, until they start to get caramel color on them.  Be careful not to burn the vegetables.  Now add 3 cups of vegetable stock to your  pan and bring it all to a medium simmer.  Let it simmer until vegetables are soft and liquid cooks out.  If you need to add more stock because the vegetables are not soft yet, do so and continue to cook.

When the vegetables are soft, add them along with any liquid that remains to the mashed potatoes.  Add 2 cups of warm milk and combine.  Add the remainder of vegetable stock to the pot and use an immersion blender to blend ingredients together into a smooth soup (you can use a blender for this step but be careful with the hot liquid).  Now add 2 cups of reserved potato water.  The soup should be smooth but not really thick.  Add enough liquid to make it the consistency you like.

Add herbs, parmesan cheese and salt and pepper.  Heat until warm and serve.

You can serve with a garnish of shaved parmesan cheese, fresh herbs or herbed croutons.  I used small herbed croutons to add crunch.

Let’s say you are watching the Food Network one day and the chef is making one of the most amazing recipes ever.  As you watch carefully you notice the recipe calls for red wine but you don’t drink wine and don’t want to cook with alcohol.  Well, I have a simple solution that could change everything and make that amazing recipe possible.  Being that I don’t drink wine at all I cannot give a comparison review but I can tell you I love being Fre.

At last I am Fre.  Fre from using over-salted cooking wine.  Fre from only having two choices, red or white!  Thanks to Sutter Home Winery I am now Fre to choose from a variety of non-alcoholic wines that better suit the recipes I am making.  They have white, red, white zinfandel, chardonnay, merlot, brut and spumante.

I can hear you asking yourself, “how do they make alcohol free wine?”  Well I have the answer to that.  Rather, Sutter Home has the answer and I am going to repeat it. Taken directly from the Fre Wines website:

“Fre wines are the product of a breakthrough dealcoholization process called the spinning cone column. Developed in Australia, the spinning cone facilitates a two-step procedure for the separation and collection of a wine’s fragile aroma and flavor essences and the subsequent removal of its alcohol.

Wine is fed into the top of the spinning cone column (a vertical cylinder roughly 40″ in diameter and 13′ in height) and flows down over a series of alternating stationary and rotary metal cones. Centrifugal force transforms the wine into a thin liquid film, which is contacted by ascending nitrogen gas fed into the bottom of the cone.

The nitrogen acts as a carrier to extract the volatilized aroma and flavor compounds from the wine. These essences are then condensed, separated and safeguarded while the liquid is run through the cone again, at slightly higher temperatures, to remove the alcohol. Then they are reintroduced to the dealcoholized wine and blended with unfermented varietal grape juice to create a beverage with less than 0.5% alcohol. The spinning cone process is superior to other alcohol-removal systems, such as steam distillation and reverse osmosis (also known as membrane filtration), for two reasons. First, it protects the delicate aroma and flavor essences by removing them, at low temperatures, prior to alcohol removal. Both steam distillation and reverse osmosis are single-stage systems in which wine aromas and flavors are degraded through exposure to either the heat or high pressures employed to remove the alcohol. Second, the spinning cone, unlike reverse osmosis, does not concentrate the residual base liquid to the extent that it must be re-diluted with water.” 

So, for all of you who don’t drink or want to cook with alcoholic wine, here is your chance to be Fre.

It’s another day of possibilities and I am curled up in my favorite knit blanket, sitting on my newly made bed, watching the “butter queen” – that would be Paula Deen, making candies loaded with tons of sugar and butter. (Did she just say she’s kind of “dewey eyed” over the candy? ) The only thing that is missing now is a mug of hot chocolate.  If I hadn’t just finished my workout maybe I’d endulge in that too but no, I shall resist.

My purpose for this post is to talk about a restuarant here in Salt Lake City that I think has one of the best dishes this side of the Mississippi (good thing I remember the grade school song so I can spell M i s s i s s i p p i ).  John and I have invited several of our friends to join us there and I always encourage them to try this dish.  Without exception, those who tried it loved it! 

The place is called Stoneground Restaurant.  It is located on 249 East 400 South in Salt Lake.  What it is really known for is their New York-style pizza but I have yet to make it past the Pork Tenderloin –  Brined, roasted pork tenderloin served with grilled polenta and finished with a creamy portobello, dried cranberry and red wine sauce. 

This is the most mouth-watering dish ever.  I love to explore and try many things on the menus of restaurants we frequent but this dish has me to where I can’t order anything else.

To start, the pork tenderloin is sliced into medallions and cooked to perfection.  They are juicy and tender enough to cut with the back end of a butter knife.  Yes, you heard me…the “back end” of a butter knife.  Now if that wasn’t enough already, the meat sits on a thick square of grilled polenta.  OH MY GOODNESS.  If you have never heard of or enjoyed polenta before, this is a must-try.  Polenta is cornmeal cooked up with parmesan cheese, butter and milk.  Then you can put it in the fridge and let it firm up (kinda like jell-o only sooooo much better).  The key is when they grill it — I am getting giddy just thinking about this — it becomes crispy on the outside and so smooth and creamy on the inside.  Heaven just arrived at this party!

I could stop there and the meal would be awesome…but there is more.  The sauce!  Oh, the sauce.  It’s the part that makes me cry, literally, when I eat this.  It is sweet and savory all in one sauce.  The cranberries bring sweetness and the mushrooms bring an earthy savory flavor while the red wine makes it all sing in perfect harmony.  Pour the sauce over the tower of polenta and tenderloin, skewer it with a sprig of rosemary and voilà, heaven on a plate!!!

I am positive Stoneground has more lovely dishes to offer but I can’t order anything else (yet).  I have tried but everytime the waitress comes to the table I can only speak the words, “tenderloin please”. 

To give fairness to one of the other dishes, John loves the Cajun Pasta (very similar to jambalaya) and orders that every time.  The appetizers are most excellent too and we always order way too many (how can you resist?!).  I’m sure their pizza is great.  In fact, I’ve heard people say Stoneground has some of the best New York-style pizza around.  Unfortunately, I cannot confirm or deny those claims because the word “pizza” can’t get out of my mouth before “tenderloin please”.

I can’t end this artcile without mentioning the Tiramisu.  Oh yeah… just when you thought it couldn’t get any better.  Let me start by saying that I’m generally not a fan of this dessert at any other restaurant, deli or dessert establishment - primarily because I do not like the coffee flavor.  HOWEVER, Stoneground’s tiramisu is not your ordinary or average dessert.  It is so much better!  This tiramisu alone has won many awards in the Salt Lake area and is completely off-the-hook good.  I do indulge gladly, even after grazing on the appetizers and gorging on the entree.  I tell you, Stoneground knows how to make good food and make it right.  To quote someone I see on TV sometimes, YUM-O!

Just remember:

    Stoneground Restaurant
    249 East 400 South
    Salt Lake City, Utah 84111
    801-364-1368

Tell them I sent you.  Not that they will know who I am but you can see what they say