Potato Salad: An Instant Pot Story

Our Mom made a great potato salad, and I’m pleased to say that I’ve managed to recreate the recipe with a few of my own touches. Using the Instant Pot makes it even quicker and a guaranteed success.

Potato Salad

4 cups Yukon gold potatoes

4 eggs

1 cup Kewpie mayonnaise

2 tablespoon sweet relish

2 teaspoon yellow mustard

1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar

1 teaspoon dried dill

1/2 teaspoon

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Peel, cube into bite-sized pieces, and rinse the potatoes. Put about a cup of water into your Instant Pot and place a steamer basket with the potato cubes in. Place the two eggs on top of the potatoes. Cook them for 5 minutes on high pressure and allow about two minutes of natural pressure release before venting.

Cool, peel, and dice the hard boiled egg finely.

Combine the remaining ingredients to make the dressing.

IMPORTANT Do not under any circumstances substitute ordinary mayonnaise for the Kewpie. There is no comparison and no excuse since you can get it at any grocery store with a good Asian food selection, have it delivered by Amazon, or go to an Amazon Fresh. Also, don’t substitute for the rice wine vinegar. Just don’t do it.

Add the dressing to salad and toss very lightly to avoid smushing all the lovely potato cubes.

Place in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to chill for the absolute best result.

Scalloped Potatoes with Mushroom and Garlic

This is another fond memory from childhood brought back with a touch of my own sensibilities. The amounts in this recipe are per serving in a 4.5 inch round baking dish. If you make a larger volume you will need to add cooking time.

Scalloped Potatoes with Mushroom and Garlic

Per serving:

• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh garlic
• 2/3 cup heavy cream
• 1/3 cup chicken stock
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 white mushroom
• 1 teaspoon chopped chives
• ~1/2 Yukon gold potato (about 120 g)

Melt the butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and sauté for about one minute. Add the flour and mix to form a roux. Cook the roux for several minutes while stirring constantly.

When the roux begins to darken in colour, add the cream and chicken stock and stir to blend. Add the salt, pepper, and chives. Dial the heat up to medium high and continue to stir while the mixture thickens. When it begins to boil, remove it from the heat and add the mushroom. The mushroom will cook just enough while the sauce cools to give the whole mixture a rich mushroom flavour.

Peel the potato and slice carefully using a mandoline slicer. Put a small ladle full of sauce in the baking dish and add your first layer of potato slices. Add more sauce and continue until the dish is full. Cover the last layer of potato generously. I like to add a final touch of freshly ground black pepper to the top.

Place in a pre-heated oven at 325º F for approximately 50 minutes. Check for doneness by inserting a bamboo skewer. When it passes easily through all the layers of potato, it is ready. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes before serving. The inside will be like a volcano.

Chicken Karaage

Japanese mayonnaise is exquisite

While being in isolation during this pandemic, I have been doing a lot of cooking, and lately my focus has been on Japanese cuisine. My godmother was a second generation Japanese American named Kimiko Sakai. She and her husband Toshio lived in a beautiful house overlooking a large pond on Bainbridge Island along with Uncle Tosh’s mother, Botchan. I went to their house very often as a child when Mom would go visit, so I had plenty of Japanese food there. Mom also picked up a few dishes from Kim and made them for us at home. I don’t remember learning how to make sushi rice or sukiyaki because it was just by osmosis. In the midst of the second month of cooking for myself all the time and being alone, I started to crave comfort food and for me that meant fish and chips and Japanese food - the love of my two mothers.

I’m super careful about trimming

You can’t live on three dishes, though, so I started picking favourites from our frequent visits to Japanese restaurants to try at home. I soon discovered my new favourite food blogger, Nami Chen from justonecookbook.com. Her YouTube videos are absolutely great and she is as charming as a fresh pot of houjicha! The marinade in this recipe is the same as hers. I tried several, but this one is the best. The techniques, however are gleaned from multiple different sources and I think they are easier and give an excellent result. This recipe can be made gluten free by substituting gluten free soy sauce.

Chicken Karaage

all ingredients are per person

1 chicken thigh
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon soy sauce (substitute gluten free if desired)
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon sake
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 tablespoon ginger paste
1-2 tablespoons potato starch
oil for frying
Japanese mayonnaise

Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces trimming away excess fat. Keep any small scraps you trim off to form a nugget later. I love the nugget! When all the other pieces are done, chop the scraps to the consistency of ground chicken, sprinkle with flour (or some of your potato starch to keep things gluten free) a smoosh into a ball.

Sprinkle the chicken pieces with salt and pepper and set aside while you prepare the marinade.

Combine the sesame oil, sake, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger and pour over the chicken. Mix and put in your refrigerator for anywhere from 30 minutes to overnight.

When you’re ready to get frying, place 1-2 tablespoons of potato starch per chicken thigh into a large freezer bag with the chicken pieces. Seal the bag with lots of air inside and shake it baby, shake it. You want the pieces all to be thoroughly coated with potato starch.

Here’s the magic part: because you use potato starch, the coating is basically potato chips.

If you don’t have a deep fryer (go get one) you will need a heavy duty pan and a candy thermometer. Put about four inches of cooking oil that has a very high smoke point in the pot and heat it up to between 350F and 365F. I like to use a ratchet old pair of wooden chopsticks to place the pieces into the oil so that I can hold them there until they really get bubbling. That way, they are unlikely to stick.

Cook in small batches for between 3 and 3.5 minutes each depending on the size of your pieces. Place on a rack to drain, or alternatively a piece of cooking parchment.

Serve with Japanese mayonnaise for dipping. My favourite is Kewpie brand, which is gluten free by default.

Miso Soup

I made myself some miso soup today for Lockdown Lunch, and realised that I hadn’t done so for an awfully long time. It reminded me how much better it is when you make it at home and can be more generous with the ingredients than is usually found out in restaurants. It’s a very simple dish, which is one of the things that delights me about it both from an aesthetic and dining perspective.

Boil the dashino-moto

Miso Soup

1 packet dashi powder

4-5 cups water

1 scallion

2 tablespoons awase (mixed red and white) miso paste

1/2 cup firm tofu

6-8 dried seaweed pieces

Mix up your miso paste with hot broth

Begin by combining the water and dashi powder. I prefer Shimaya brand, but alternatively it is very easy to make your own. I should write about that. There are vegetarian options for stock, of course, or you can just use plain water and add a couple pinches of monosodium glutamate (which is completely safe - the anti-MSG thing is just anti-Asian racist propaganda)

Bring your soup base to a boil while you slice your scallion. When the base is boiling, remove it from heat and drop the scallions in to blanche. Ladle some of your hot broth into a small bowl with your miso paste and mix. Add the miso paste to the pan.

For the seaweed pieces, I like to use dehydrated wakame which you can get from Amazon or your local Japanese market.

Lastly, the firm tofu. Cut it up into 1/2 to 1/4 inch cubes are drop in. Let the ingredients get to know each other for a few minutes, then serve.

I like to add some soy sauce to my soup bowl, but that’s pure taste.

Add the scallions

Add the rest of the ingredients

My favourite dashi

Tasty snacks also

Roasted Garlic Soup

This recipe is a little complicated for my tastes, but the results are worth it. If you want a lower carbohydrate version, reduce the number of potatoes or omit them.

Roasted Garlic Soup

4 heads of garlic, roasted

1 medium onion, diced

1 tablespoon cooking oil

6-8 fingerling potatoes

1/2 teaspoon salt

Pepper to taste

6 cups chicken or vegetable stock

2 large bay leaves

1 cup heavy cream

1 lemon, juiced

3 eggs

Begin by roasting your garlic. This step can be done well ahead of time, which can make the rest of the process feel a little less labour intensive. If you don’t know how to roast garlic, here is a tutorial on the YouTube How To Roast Garlic

Peel and dice your onion. Place your cooking oil in a large soup pot and sauté the onion until it is transparent. Usually about 3-4 minutes.

Add the stock, potatoes, salt, pepper, and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the potatoes are fork-tender.

Remove the bay leaves and set them aside for future stock-making.

In a small bowl, beat the eggs and lemon juice together. The egg should be thoroughly blended. Ladle two cups of the hot broth into a measuring cup for easy pouring. While continuously stirring the egg and lemon blend, very slowly add the hot broth to temper the egg. Slowly, or you wind up with scrambled egg soup. When the mixture is steaming, the eggs are tempered and will not congeal into solids.

Add the heavy cream and roasted garlic. Lick your fingers - you can, you know. You’re a grown up.

Puree the soup with an immersion blender. Add the lemon and egg mixture and voila! A new way to eat roasted garlic!

Sunshine Soup

Sunshine Soup is a staple of our Winter Solstice Banquet tradition. The secret to a great result is the fresh pumpkin. Where I live in Seattle, it is much easier to find pumpkins in the grocery store around US Thanksgiving than it is in late December, so I buy three pie-sized pumpkins and deconstruct and freeze them. This recipe makes enough soup for 10, so be warned.

Sunshine Soup

1/4 cup butter
1 medium onion diced
2 bay leaves
6 cups chicken or vegetable stock
8 cups fresh pumpkin (a 4 lb pumpkin will yield about this much)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 cups half and half
12 ounces grated gruyere cheese
1 tablespoon fresh orange juice
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Sauté the onion in the butter until it turns until it starts to turn golden. Add the stock, pumpkin, and bay leaves. Cook until the pumpkin is tender - about 15 minutes or so.

Remove the bay leaves. Purée using an immersion blender.

Add salt, pepper, half and half, and cheese.

When the cheese is mostly melted, turn down the heat and add the citrus juices.

Sweet Cheeses: An Instant Pot Story

I’ve been working on several of the dishes that Doug and I are planning for the Winter Solstice Banquet next Saturday. One has been vexing me particularly; cheesecake. Last year my results were pretty awful looking though edible. I was determined that I would solve the last of my cheesecake problems this time and be proud of what we set before our guests at the end of the ritual meal. Here are my results:

I ate one already

Sweet Cheeses

Mini lemon cheesecakes fit for a low-carb queen

Yields six cupcake-sized servings

Equipment

Medium and small mixing bowls
Measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Hand mixer Do not over-mix things
Spatula
Silicone baking cups
Cooking spray
Instant Pot (just go get one)
Wire rack

Ingredients

8 ounces of cream cheese at room temperature
1/4 cup sour cream at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated erythritol
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 drop lemon essential cooking oil or 1/4 teaspoon lemon zest
1 beaten egg at room temperature

Make batter

Take your cream cheese, sour cream, and egg from the refrigerator the night before to be sure they are not even a little chilly. The reason for this is that if they are cold you will have to over-beat them to get the batter smooth and that is a disaster waiting to explode inside your Instant Pot.

Using a hand mixer, blend the cream cheese and sour cream until fairly smooth. Do not over-mix.

Pre-mix the erythritol, cornstarch, and salt.

Add half the dry ingredients to the batter and mix until just combined. Do not over-mix.

Scrape down sides of bowl with a spatula.

Add the remaining half of the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Do not over-mix.

Add the vanilla extract, lemon juice, and either zest or drop of lemon oil and mix until just combined. Do not over-mix.

Put away your hand mixer. Put the beaters into the dishwasher and forget they are there. Hand mixer? What’s that?

Using your spatula, gently fold the beaten egg into the batter until just combined. Do not over-mix. Stop it. Quit mixing now.

Pressure cook

Spray the bottom of your baking cups with cooking spray.

Ladle batter into cups. Gently lift cups a half inch or so and drop them on the counter repeatedly to smooth the top of the batter and encourage air bubbles in the batter to rise to the surface. Use the tines of a fork to pop the bubbles, then repeat the dropping to re-smooth the surface.

Put a half cup of cold water into your Instant Pot. Depending on which kind of rack you have, you might be able to fit six silicone cups in all at once. I’m doing two batches of three so that they cakes aren’t distorted by being crowded on the rack.

Set the Instant Pot to high pressure for 26 minutes. Allow 8-12 minutes after the cooking cycle for full natural pressure release. Remove the cakes and place them on a wire rack to cool to room temperature. If cracks have formed in the top of the cakes, they will mostly or fully close up during cooling.

When cool, put your cakes into the refrigerator overnight. Do not skip this step.

Serve with some fruit element. I make a mixed berry compote. If you make that with erythritol as well you can keep your overall carbohydrates down to ~ 2 grams per serving.

The Winter Solstice Banquet

When I was growing up, Christmas was often a stressful and traumatic time. Life in my family wasn't peaceful in general, so adding stress, expectations, and a fair amount of alcohol didn't improve matters. I was baptized and partially raised in the Catholic Church, so Christmas was very definitely a religious holiday with a bunch of other fun stuff tacked on to it.

I stopped celebrating Christmas when I was 15 years old because I had decided to commit myself to living a Pagan life, and it seemed the height of hypocrisy to make a fuss over the birth of Jesus. My friends and I who formed our teenage coven celebrated Winter Solstice together, of course, but without a home to decorate or the ability to mark the shortest day rather than Jesus' birthday it still kind of felt like Christmas and I didn't like it.

When, after lots of adventures I finally got my first real home in Ballard, I was absolutely resolved that I would decorate for Solstice and have a real celebration. My close friend Pandora and I conceived of a multi-course celebratory dinner, and that was the start of what became the Winter Solstice Banquet.

The Banquet is a ritual meal, rather than a ritual per se. If the Solstice is a religious holiday for you, then the Banquet is a religious event, but if it isn't, it's still a really nice evening with good food, good friends, and heart-felt reflection on the year that is ending. Each of the courses of the meal has a question that each guest answers during that course. The meal doesn't progress until everyone has had a chance to speak. For that reason, it's best to limit guests to about eight. Otherwise, you are likely to spend an uncomfortable amount of time sitting in front of empty plates.

I held the Banquet in my home in Ballard until I was forced out and moved to my condo in Greenwood. My place here doesn't have a dining area, so I thought that the Banquet was lost to me forever.

From 2007 until 2017 there was no Banquet and I grew more bitter and despondent during Christmas with each passing year. I would usually spend Christmas with Doug and his mother in Victoria, and although entirely pleasant, I had grown so resentful of the day that it was a struggle to keep my feelings under wraps.

Then, in 2016, I drew the Tower card (It's a Tarot reference - go look it up). I came home from US Thanksgiving with my family to a home in the process of being destroyed by flooding from my upstairs neighbor. When all was said and done, I came back from two months of living in a hotel to a living room with no furniture. For a while, I looked for replacement items, but nothing felt right. I started using folding camping furniture for convenience. That solution also allowed me to put the seating away when I wanted to set up my sewing studio.

Then, in 2018, my beautiful man asked me why I didn't just set up a folding table and have the Banquet again? Uhhh. Ummm. YEAH!!!!

And so on Solstice 2018, the Winter Solstice Banquet was restored.

Here is the order of service in case you want to do this too:

Winter Solstice Banquet

Appetizers

The Shortest Day

The youngest person present reads The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper while all join hands. At the conclusion, toast to "Welcome Yule."

Salad

Question: What was the hardest challenge this year?

Soup

Question: How have you changed?

Seafood

Question: What have you done for others?

Vegetables

Question: What was the highlight this year?

Main

Question: What do you hope for in the new year?

Salutation

Host reads Salutation by Fra Giovanni Giocondo

Dessert

Before posting the poetry texts and the menu we developed last year, I will just add that anyone is welcome to use this as a template to create your own Banquet tradition. Just please tell everyone you know how my genius has enriched your life. Thenk you.

---

The Shortest Day

Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

---

Salutation

Fra Giovanni Giocondo
excerpted from A Letter to the Most Illustrious the Contessina Allagia degli Aldobrandeschi, Written Christmas Eve 1513 A.D.

I am your friend and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got, but there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see - and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy or hard. Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty - beneath its covering - that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.

And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.

Kitchen Witchery

This is the third of the four enchantments that I designed for my House Blessing / Spell Casting party when I moved to Baile Ard in 1999. See Spell To Attract A Cool Boyfriend for more details on the event.

My relationship with cooking fundamentally changed while I lived in Baile Ard. I had never been particularly enthusiastic about it, but there was something about the combination of having a place I was proud to invite people, having a kitchen that was open to the living area, and a decision I made not long after moving there that changed everything.

The decision was that I was not going to wait to have a man in my life before making a home. I was going to be a family of one, if that was my fate, and that included homemaking, home cooking, decorating for holidays, and entertaining.

I started off by delving back into my childhood memories of cooking Japanese food with my godmother, Kimiko Sakai, and with her mother-in-law, Botchan-san. I was still vegetarian at that time, but managed to pull together a couple six-course Japanese dinners. I don't know if my guests stopped for burgers on the way home or not, but we had a laugh anyway.

The epitome of my culinary adventures was the Winter Solstice Banquet, which I and my friend Pandora started as a collaboration. There's a little more about that in this post: Happy 10th Ballardiversary!

This transformation of ingredients into food was a new form of magic for me, but the spell that was cast by so many friends that night which led to my embrace of it was classic Seumascraft:

Kitchen Witchery

Take your favorite of the cooking implements from the kitchen and go back and forth between there and the dining table waving the implement and intoning the following:

By wooden spoon and crescent Moon
By spice mill, sieve and knife
By spinach, potato and garlic clove
All foods that nourish life,
All meals and snacks and feasts herein
with any tool employed,
Shall be full-well nutritional,
un-fattening, and enjoyed!
Heed this charm!
Cause no harm!
So mote it be!

Blessing on All Future Guests

This is the second of the four enchantments that I designed for my House Blessing / Spell Casting party when I moved to Baile Ard in 1999. See Spell to Attract a Cool Boyfriend for more details on the event.

Blessing on All Future Guests

This one's a snap! Sit on the couch and hold your drink up as if to make a toast while repeating the following:

On this couch my ease I take
And hereby conjuration make:
All who do likewise from this day hence
Shall never lack for common sense.
They shall not want for food or drink
Nor thoughts worth the time to think
But live in wellness and contentment
Free from worry and resentment.
Heed this charm!
Cause no harm!
So mote it be!

Of all four of the spells, I think I'm proudest of the intent and aesthetic of this one. I had countless wonderful social evenings in that home, and I'm just crazy enough to think that all the times this spell was cast on that Friday evening in June 1999 had something to do with it.

Happy 10th Ballardiversary!

Ten years ago today, I moved from a dark, oddly-shaped studio apartment in Northgate to an adorable duplex in Ballard. The place had just been vacated by a co-worker, who tipped me off to its availability. It was perfectly laid out for me, with a bedroom (yippee!) kitchen, dining area, living room, front yard, back patio and parking place and the rent was unbeatable. $650 a month!

After I moved in and got settled a little, I had a series of housewarming events over a weekend. Friday night was the house blessing and spellcasting party. I made up little spell kits with complete instructions and folks had a great time sprinkling saltwater, reciting charms and stringing up rowan berries. Saturday was a drop-in buffet for those with evening commitments and Saturday night was a grand céilidh with somewhere around sixty people singing, playing tunes and drinking gallons of scotch. Sunday was a "survivor's brunch" complete with a reenactment of the assault on the Death Star from Star Wars using primarily French cheese for all the actors and ships.

Over the next seven years, countless wonderful and moving things happened in that house. I threw at least twenty huge céilidhs for the Slighe nan Gaidheal community. There were times when every room, including the tiny bathroom, was packed with happy, laughing, singing people enjoying the little home I had made for myself.

My friend Pandora and I started the Winter Solstice Banquet, which usually entailed a full day of decorating, a day and a half of cooking and a full day of washing dishes and cleaning afterward. The traditions of heartfelt reflection and honest sharing that evolved around the Winter Solstice table will stay with me for as long as I live.

One year I held a birthday céilidh for my dear friend Kat which her evangelical parents attended. I was pretty nervous about not offending them and with controlling my reactions if they inadvertently offended me. I kept myself in an icy grip of self-control, but despite my fears we had a truly wonderful evening and found common ground despite our differences.

That house was also the last of my homes that my mother ever saw. The year that I moved there, I decided that I wanted to host the family Christmas celebration. It was a very big deal to me and it came off really well. I took the last photo of my Mom that I ever would that day. We blew it up and framed it for her memorial service.

Lingoman and I met while I was still living there in 2001. In the early years of our romance, he would come down to Seattle fairly often so we spent a lot of time in that house getting better acquainted. One weekend, we were getting ready to go out of town when I discovered an enormous dragonfly perched over my dining room table. I mean enormous and it had apparently decided to settle down and start a family with my Ikea light fixture. Being the son of a biologist, Lingoman had no problems capturing the guy unharmed and releasing him outside to rejoin the dragonfly dating pool. That next Solstice, he gave me a beautiful cast aluminum tray decorated with dragonflies. Every time I see it I think "he will help me deal with my fears."

In January 2006, I received notice from the landlords that they had sold the place to a developer, who would be tearing it down to build townhouses. After crying for a week, I picked my self up and started looking into buying a place, since I never wanted to get that kind of letter again. With help and guidance from my wonderful realtor, Sara, I found the condo in which I now live. I moved at the beginning of August, 2006. It's a nice place; comfortable and convenient, but not set up for entertaining. Life has become rather solitary as a result and I struggle with that.

The developer didn't get around to demolishing the place until January 2nd, 2007. I got a call from my former neighbors while I was driving Lingoman to the airport to fly home. By the time I got there, it was all over. You can see my stove on which seven Winter Solstice Banquets were prepared in the pile of rubble if you look closely.

I often ask myself if I would trade the more upscale conveniences of this place to have my little duplex back. The answer is still 'yes.' I would go back if I could.