♪ ♪ - You know, many years ago, when Julia Child lived in Cambridge, once in a while she'd call me up.

She called a lot of people up to come over for dinner.

So, on this particular evening, I got there and her sister was there and a couple other friends.

And here's what we had for dinner.

We had boiled new potatoes with caviar and copious amounts of wine, of course.

But the idea of just boiling potatoes and serving them with caviar as dinner was a real awakening for me in terms of rethinking what you could do with potatoes and thinking about them a little differently.

So here are three potato recipes I really love that are a new way of thinking about how to cook potatoes.

I was in Turkey not too long ago, in Anatolia, which is across from Istanbul, and I was in a home where they cooked Turkish mashed potatoes.

The second potato recipe is patatas bravas, which is a tapas in Spain.

It's fried potatoes with a smoked paprika sauce.

We actually do the potatoes not in hot oil.

We do them in the oven.

So, finally, we're gonna take an idea from Nigeria, suya, which is a peanut spice with chilies.

They put it on beef skewers and we're going to put it on potatoes.

So if you want a new way with potatoes, stay right here at Milk Street and we'll show you three great recipes from around the world.

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♪ ♪ - You know, I didn't think I would travel all the way to Istanbul and then Anatolia, which is right across the Bosporus, to learn how to make cheesy mashed potatoes.

But I did, it was one of the great recipes.

But I visited the home of two people, it was Zeynep and Turgut.

And then Yuksel and Ayse.

And they were best friends; I spent a day in the kitchen with them and one of the things they cooked were potatoes, Turkish mashed potatoes.

So we're going to start with russets because we want starchy potatoes for mashed.

And they've been rinsed, by the way, to get rid of some of the excess starch.

And put them in a pot with just a cup of water.

That's all we're gonna use.

And a little salt, half a teaspoon of salt.

We're gonna bring this up to a simmer.

We're gonna cook these down for 15 to 20 minutes, till they're really tender.

So let's check out the potatoes.

If there is any water left in here, continue cooking.

I think that's pretty good, and these are definitely cooked through.

Now we add yogurt-- by the way, I think every single dish I had, or almost every single dish I had in Istanbul and Anatolia had yogurt, it's common.

Half-and-half, half a cup, a couple tablespoons of softened butter, and we're gonna mash.

This will take, like, a couple of minutes.

You really want to get fully mashed.

It also might look a little thin, not like your Thanksgiving mashed potatoes, because we're gonna take these and eventually put them in the oven for quite a while.

So this is just step one.

Now, a couple eggs.

By the way, this recipe-- actually, I'm going to try it next Thanksgiving, because you can do most of it ahead of time.

Let it sit in the fridge, and then just put it in the oven to finish.

A little garlic.

A little oil, tablespoons.

Salt.

And just a little bit of pepper.

By the way, the house these two couples entertain me and you walk in, there were cats everywhere.

One of them actually was an exporter of children's toys, so there were toys everywhere.

And it was extremely relaxing, they were great hosts.

We sat around a big table for a couple hours, and it was just like being, well, I would say, like being at home.

You know, I had mashed potatoes in a very comfortable setting.

Just lovely people.

Now, the cheese--of course, one of the problems in adapting recipes from around the world, cheese is one of those problems, because everyone has a different style of cheese.

So this is what is called yellow cheese in Turkey, or kasar-- K-A-S-A-R. And it's very much like a pretty firm mozzarella.

So we're going to use mozzarella, shredded.

I personally like gruyere.

I think it has a little more nuttiness to it.

But you can use this.

This goes covered into a 350 oven for about 45 minutes.

We'll take the foil off and finish browning it for about 20 minutes.

And then we have one last sort of surprise topping.

So here's the really fun part.

And it's the topping.

It's melted butter with about a teaspoon-and-a-half of Aleppo pepper.

Aleppo used to come from Aleppo, Syria.

You can buy, as I did, in the spice bazaar or other small shops in Anatolia, this pepper, it's called urfa or maras.

It's not that strong.

It's not that hot, it's very fruity.

I bought pounds of it and brought it back.

It's much better than red pepper flakes.

It's not as hot, and has a lot more flavor.

So we're gonna melt the butter, put the Aleppo on top, swirl it, and it starts to turn red.

And this is something you could do, you know, probably with oil most of the time, but you could do it with butter.

So if you want a quick way to jazz something up, butter or oil with about a teaspoon-and-a-half of pepper on top is a great way to top mashed potatoes.

Put the pepper in.

Now we're gonna take a fork, and just like you would do, like, with a French cake, when you put a sugar syrup on it.

So it gets down in.

So, okay, how does that look?

Give me some feedback.

I mean, look, I love mashed potatoes, I do it all the time.

But, you know, for a special occasion, it's make ahead.

You get the nice, cheesy topping.

Again, I love gruyere, but you could use mozzarella.

And you get the tarka, that flavored butter or oil on top.

And you have the yogurt in it, which is so great.

I mean, yogurt has that tang that just half-and-half or butter does not have.

So, highly recommend.

♪ ♪ Mmm.

That is really good-- you know, it's got the tang.

It's got a lot of hint of Aleppo pepper at the top.

It's got the cheese, it's crusty.

It's also super light, too.

So next time you want to up your game a little bit with mashed potatoes.

Nothing wrong with the regular version.

Cheesy, a little bit of spice to it, great texture, and it's all make ahead.

Try Turkish mashed potatoes.

I think it should be on your Thanksgiving table.

♪ ♪ - So let's talk potatoes.

There are basically two different kinds of potatoes.

There's a waxy potato and a flowery potato, or starchy potato.

Russets happen to be a flowery or starchy potato.

They are low in sugar and low in moisture, but they are full of starch.

This is what makes them so good for baking.

They're nice and fluffy when you mash them up.

They're good for roasting, but they can fall apart a little bit because they are so high in starch.

And they're particularly good for French fries.

The interior you want there is a nice, fluffy interior.

So most of the time, when you get fries in a restaurant, they're gonna be made with russet potatoes.

Next, of course, is a gold potato.

Now, this is a waxy potato.

These are better for boiling, they hold their shape.

They have a lot less starch and higher moisture content and higher sugar content, along with red potatoes, which are also a waxy potato.

Great for potato salads, great for roasting.

Now, when you're cooking potatoes, you want to always add salt to the water.

Through osmosis, the cellular walls of the potato will open up and the salt will penetrate them.

That will dry out the moisture and will make them fluffier when you go to mash them.

So be real careful when you're cooking potatoes and you're adding any kind of acidic ingredient, like tomatoes or white wine.

The acid reacts with the pectin in the potato, and it creates almost, like, a skin on the potato.

In fact, we found through a lot of testing that French fries are best when you blanch them in a little vinegar or acidulated water, let them cool, and then fry them.

The surface becomes kind of firm and crisp, and the interiors stay fluffy-- it makes the perfect French fry.

So if you're making a potato salad for, say, and you're using maybe small gold and red potatoes, add just a tiny splash of vinegar to the water.

They will hold their shape.

Don't add too much vinegar, though, because they can get really tough and rubbery.

In fact, I took some potatoes, I sliced some russets, dropped them in cold water.

To one pot, I added lemon juice.

Another pot, I added white vinegar.

Lemon juice is a little bit less acidic than vinegar.

We wanted to see there how much it would affect the surface of the potato.

First one, nothing.

Just plain water.

And we'll see that the interior there is nice and fluffy.

The lemon juice, that one is a little bit tougher and breaks apart-- it's not quite as fluffy.

You can see it, kind of, breaking off in shards.

That's the acid.

Now the vinegar is even tougher.

You can see that there's almost a snap there.

And when I break it open, there's no fluffiness left there.

It's really kind of rubbery and not fluffy-- you can see the difference.

So be sure to choose the right potato and cook it the right way.

We've got one other special trick that you can use to get nice, crispy potatoes in the oven.

♪ ♪ One of the most glorious potato recipes there are patatas bravas.

If you're in Spain, patatas bravas is like French fries to us here in America.

We're going to work with some russets here-- they are a starchy, flowery potato.

I want them to hold their shape but be fluffy on the inside.

Now, classically, if you were in a tapas restaurant, they would be tossing these right into the deep fryer.

But we don't need to fry, we've got a couple of great techniques here that are going to give us that crusty exterior and fluffy interior.

So first we're going to par cook in the microwave.

This is a great technique.

The potatoes themselves are about one-and-a-half to two inch chunks, kind of big here.

And then we'll just add a little water to the bowl here and cover them up, and I'm going to microwave these-- stir them once about halfway through-- for eight minutes on high.

So while those are parcooking in the microwave, I'm going to get started on the sauce.

Patatas bravas literally means "spicy potatoes."

Now, depending on where you are in Spain, you might have some fried potatoes with one sauce, the brava sauce, the spicy, sometimes tomato, sometimes paprika sauce.

If you're in Barcelona, you're going to have patatas mixtas, which is two sauces, and that's what we're working with here today.

Now, if you've had patatas bravas in a tapas restaurant, you know that garlicky aioli is what makes them so good.

And it's creamy and rich.

With that crispy potato, it's delicious.

But I don't particularly like heavy, heavy garlic flavor.

So one way to kind of disperse that flavor a little bit, that bite, is to temper the garlic with a little bit of lemon juice.

So I'm gonna add a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, and I'm gonna let the garlic sit in the lemon juice.

This will temper that raw garlic bite.

Anytime you'd want a little bit of milder garlic in your aioli, just soak the garlic in a little bit of lemon juice.

I'm gonna set that aside, and that's gonna mellow the garlic-- it almost cooks it, if you think of ceviche or raw fish, you put citrus juice on it, it actually begins to cook it.

It's doing the same thing here.

So I'll set that garlic aside and grab the potatoes out of the microwave.

Now what we can see is they're starting to cook.

They're probably 30% cooked.

The rest of the time, we're going to throw them into the oven, but we're gonna do a little trick on them first to get them nice and crispy without having to drop them in a big pot of oil.

So I'm gonna take a sheet pan here and lay a towel out, and get those potatoes out of this bowl.

And I want to dry them off.

Moisture is the enemy of anything crisp.

So if you're trying to get a vegetable crispy, or these potatoes, you want to make sure that you've got all the moisture off of them.

If you were to throw these in the oven while they were still a little wet, they are not going to get as crisp as they might otherwise.

Just give them a little gentle toss here, If a few of them break, it's not a big deal.

They're going to roast up and get nice and crispy.

Now that I've dried them off, I'm going to put the potatoes into this bowl here, and we're going to do a little treatment on them.

Now, in order to get them creamy and fluffy on the inside, we want to set the crust, set the outer exterior of the potato.

And the way we're going to do that is with cornstarch.

This is a wonderful trick to get crispy vegetables, crispy potatoes in the oven without using a deep fryer and making that big mess.

So I've got a couple tablespoons of cornstarch here.

And now we can start seasoning.

I'm going to add a little bit of salt and give those a toss-- toss them gently, but toss them well.

So that there's cornstarch on all of the edges of the potato.

What that does is it pulls any moisture left on the surface of the potato off the potato.

And we're going to add a tiny bit of oil to these and have an oiled sheet pan and that will create a crisp edge.

And now about a tablespoon over the potatoes just to give them a little extra help.

And now onto the sheet pan they go.

Now, try to arrange them.

Of course, the best part of a crispy potato is the edge, the cut edge that's flat.

Get those down on the sheet pan so that you get as much surface area exposed to the pan as you can and those will give you crispier edges.

So now I have a super-hot oven, 450 degrees, with a rack right in the center.

Just put these in there, toss them about halfway through.

You want them to get golden and crisp and brown on the edges.

The interiors will be fluffy.

That'll take about 40, 45 minutes.

So now back to the aioli.

That garlic has mellowed out.

It's been sitting in that lemon juice.

Now I'll just add a little bit of store-bought mayonnaise, make it yourself if you like, and right into that lemony garlic mixture.

And a little bit of salt and give it a good stir.

Now we want this to be like a loose, almost yogurt or sour cream consistency so that we can drizzle it over the potatoes.

So also just to emulsify this mixture together a little more, I'm going to add just a touch of oil and that will thin it out a tiny bit more and give it a little more richness.

Now we'll move on to the brava sauce.

This is what looks like a tomato-based sauce-- has no tomato in it.

In this case, paprika is going to give us all of our flavor.

So this starts with very finely minced shallots.

Small pan here, I'm going to heat up some olive oil and put my shallots in here.

We just want to cook these till they're softened.

We don't need to brown, we just want to soften them.

So just soften up the shallots here and that'll just take a couple of minutes.

Now I want to thicken this sauce a little bit.

I'm going to add a little bit of flour to the pan, some cayenne, there's our spice.

Now, the real backbone flavor of a brava sauce is paprika.

We're going to use smoked paprika, but we're going to wait and add it until the end.

If you add too much heat to smoked paprika or sweet paprika, you will dull the flavor.

You want to add those types of spices where you really want it prevalent at the end of cooking.

So we've switched to a whisk, and just keep moving that around.

So I want to brown the flour a little bit here as if I were making, like, a jambalaya.

I want a brown-- not a deep, deep brown.

Now I'm going to shut the pan off for one second and add my vermouth.

Be careful to add that off the heat.

The alcohol fumes can catch fire.

I'll turn my heat back on and scrape up any of those brown bits down there in the bottom.

Now a little bit of water just to give us a little more sauce.

And then another classic Spanish ingredient, sherry vinegar.

Sherry vinegar is wonderful.

If you don't keep it at home, you really should.

It's got a really nice, kind of malty flavor.

Makes delicious dressings.

Now, because we had the flour in there, I will let it come to a boil to cook that flour, but then it will start to thicken.

And then off the heat, I'll add a little bit of salt and smoked paprika, and that is it, that's the brava sauce.

So I will shut off the heat, add the smoked paprika, and a little bit of olive oil just to give us a nice richness.

Ah, smells so good.

The minute that paprika hits the heat, it's just smells great.

And you can see it's a beautiful thickness.

The paprika helped thicken it up, too, but the flour did its job.

Nice and thick, but still thin enough to drizzle over the potatoes.

All right, we're ready to plate these.

I'm going to get those crunchy roasted potatoes out of the oven and put it all together.

Oh, they look great.

Those crispy edges, really, really nice.

And I did not need a giant pot of oil to get those that way.

So now finishing these up, I want to add a little more of that smoked paprika flavor.

It's so good.

So sprinkle that over the potatoes and some salt and pepper.

fresh seasoning at the end, and just give them a toss.

Just make sure you toss them with the cornstarch before you roast them.

So you get them nice and crunchy like these.

Wow, you can actually see here, we got a little bit of that nice crispy edge.

And inside is fluffy... (potato crunches) ...russet potato, mm.

All right, beautiful.

I have to give them a taste.

So now you can serve the aioli and the brava sauce on the side.

People can dip them in if they like, or you can drizzle it all over the whole platter.

It's up to you.

So there's our brava sauce.

It's a really, really nice consistency.

Just gonna drizzle a little of that over, And then a little squiggle there.

Let your inner Jackson Pollock out.

That's it, that's patatas bravas.

They're really pretty easy to do, and just like what you might have in Spain.

♪ ♪ Mm, the smoked paprika, so, putting it into that hot sauce, it sort of muted the flavor a little bit.

It's very rich and very earthy.

And then adding some fresh smoked paprika to the potatoes at the end has a really bright life too.

It's paprika all the way through, and it's really delicious.

Nobody needs French fries anymore, give these a try.

♪ ♪ - All right, folks, so, so far today, you've learned how to mash potatoes the Turkish way, and you've learned how to fry potatoes our way.

And now we're going to talk about roasting potatoes.

And these potatoes, they have this crusty, crunchy, aromatic exterior and a perfectly velvety inside.

There's two reasons for that.

One, the magic is in the sauce.

We'll get to that in a second.

And two, a really hot oven.

You need that to get the crunch on the outside.

So you want to preheat your oven to 475 degrees with a rack in the middle.

And then you want to spray or oil a baking sheet.

That extra fat will help not only make sure the potatoes don't stick, but also get some extra browning and crust on the outside.

Let's get back to reason number one, the sauce.

So in Nigeria, there's a quintessential streetside snack, which is suya, which are beef skewers that have a peanutty, spicy sauce, and it's grilled and smoky and aromatic.

So we took a cue from Evi Aki, the author of Flavors of Africa.

Pull that spice blend out, and we're putting it on roasted potatoes.

It's very simple to make.

You start with half a cup of roasted, unsalted peanuts, and to that you want to add in two teaspoons of paprika.

You can use sweet or spicy-- I like hot.

You want two teaspoons of granulated garlic, and then you want two teaspoons of dried ginger.

If you chose sweet paprika, then the ginger is gonna give you all the kick.

If you chose hot paprika, you have even more kick.

And then you want to add in one teaspoon of brown sugar.

This helps not only with sweetness to balance out the spice, but it also helps with caramelization, some extra browning.

and you want half a teaspoon of salt and one teaspoon of fresh cracked black pepper.

When you grind it up, the key is you want to get it very finely ground.

It might take 20 seconds or so.

This is also dry-- we need them to stick to the potatoes.

So we're gonna add in two tablespoons of neutral oil.

And now this will become a paste that really can hold on to the potatoes and make that nice crust I talked about in the beginning.

All right, so we want to give these a little bit extra oil before we put our spice mixture on.

So about another tablespoon, and toss these-- I just get in there with my hands.

It's a much easier way to make sure that everything is well-coated.

Okay, always remove the blade before you turn over your food processor, And then go ahead and dump it all in the potatoes.

And then just get in there and really smush it-- that's the official word.

Just really smush it into all of these potatoes.

And then you transfer this to the sheet tray.

You notice that the potatoes are cut in half, they have a lot of surface area.

That also helps with the browning.

So you want to make sure when you're cutting them up, if you have larger potatoes, that they have large, flat areas.

That way you're going to get that big contrast I talked about in the beginning.

I mean, the joy of roasted potatoes is the contrast.

That crispy, browned, almost meaty, savory outside, and then that soft, velvety inside.

I like to flip them over quickly so they get a lot of browning on the flat side and then halfway through, we'll stir them.

Okay, that looks good.

All right, so again, going into a hot oven, 475 degrees, for about 20 or 25 minutes.

You do want to stir them partway through so you get that nice browning all the way around.

So now clean your hands, probably clean the outside of your oven, and then we're gonna make a relish.

So every rich, roast-y thing needs a bright, perky thing, and that's what we're gonna do now.

We're going to make a tomato and shallot relish that roughly mimics what you would actually get when you order or buy suya from a streetside vendor in Nigeria.

So we have three Roma tomatoes already diced up here, and now you just want to finely mince a shallot.

One thing that I really like about this recipe, besides that it tastes phenomenal, is that it's a great reminder that every spice blend has a thousand lives.

So you learn about a spice blend in your favorite curry or some fish recipe or eating suya on the streets of Nigeria.

And you can always say, "Hm, "maybe I don't feel like beef tonight, but I sure did like that spice blend."

When there's a spice blend I like, I always think of it as a separate hidden recipe within another recipe, and I pull it out.

So definitely approach your spice blends as, you know, cats with nine lives.

So I also added a serrano chili pepper that was finely minced, and now we're going to do a bunch of parsley.

All right, this is good enough for Tuesday night.

Now we're going to add some lime juice, and I just like to soften it a little bit.

That just releases more of the juice, makes it easier to get what you need out of it.

And then just a little salt and pepper.

Remember, the potatoes are super spiced, so this is really just supposed to be a contrast to them-- something really bright and fresh, a little bit acidic.

Now it's probably time to check on our potatoes.

We want to turn them halfway through.

The potatoes need about ten more minutes to finish crisping up.

♪ ♪ And these are perfect.

See how sort of charred and crispy, a little puffy they are?

So the char is a little reminiscent of, a grill, streetside grill.

The puffiness is from all the moisture, which means you're gonna have that lovely, beautiful interior.

They are very, very hot right now, so give them a minute to cool down.

Oh, wait, yeah.

See all this?

All that crust and texture?

This is perfect.

It's going to contrast with the inside beautifully.

And these peanuts on the outside, these are almost meaty, these potatoes.

It's almost like we're treating our vegetables like meat.

This is a light main course, or definitely a substantial first course.

I would not shy away from serving this to vegetarians, vegans, actually, who come over for dinner.

These are so good.

They're perfect.

They're aromatic and spicy.

They've got so much contrast in the textures.

And this little piquant, relish-y thing, it really livens it all up.

So in this recipe, the secret is high heat and the sauce.

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- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪