New Year's Eve: Latke Board

New Year's Eve 2025 is right at the top of my list of most memorable year-end celebrations. And for all the wrong reasons. Somehow, I picked up a nasty case of food poisoning, and by the time that midnight rolled around, I had all the classic symptoms.

The cautious drive home down the slippery butte in the icy and misting rain-fog-snow mess was excruciating as I fought back wave after wave of gut wrenching nausea. I finally got to sleep around 0300 and when I awoke the next morning, I had strained the ribs on my right side. Fun times.

I should have known something was up earlier; I did not even feel like taking photos which is uncharacteristic.

Small Potato Latkes for NYE Caviar

We made plans with Rob and Dyce to have caviar and Champagne at their house to ring in the new year. All of us really like caviar and I happen to like latkes with my caviar, although the more I think about it, really great potato chips are fantastic and so much easier. In any case, a couple years ago, I came up with an idea for New Year's along the lines of a charcuterie board: a latke board. I had never heard of or seen anyone doing any such thing, but when I typed the phrase into my handy dandy search engine, up popped thousands of photos of people who beat me to the punch.

This reminds me that there is little truly original thought in cooking; dishes are built from a long lineage of precursors. Long ago in my restaurant days, a line cook from another restaurant angrily confronted me outside my restaurant, accusing me of stealing a dish from the menu at his restaurant. As busy as I was, I did not have the time or the energy to look at another restaurant's menu, let alone steal a dish.

I believe that it might have been some kind of beet and goat cheese salad. Because people have been putting beets and goat cheese as long as there have been beets and goat cheese, I am certain that it was not original to either the young cook's restaurant or mine. It was on thousands of menus long before our two.

In any case, my latke board idea reminds me that two people can come up with the same idea independently. My idea was to make several different kinds of latkes, a few pickles, and a few spreads, all of which would work with caviar.

Shallot Pickles and Cucumber Pickles Curing

My Latke Board
Potato, Celery Root, and Sweet Potato Latkes
Cucumber, Shallot, and Cornichon Pickles
Smoked Trout Mousse, Saffron Aïoli, Horseradish-Dill Sour Cream
Smoked Salmon and Caper Mousse

If you can name a root vegetable, I have made latkes from it, and likely fries and chips, or for you Brits, chips and crisps. Of the three vegetables that I picked for this latke board, potatoes will always be the best, but celery root latkes are equally phenomenal. The little sugar in sweet potato latkes is interesting, but makes the latkes want to stick to the pan and want to burn before they are done. Reducing the heat is necessary for making sweet potato latkes.

Latkes with smoked trout mousse was a regular feature of the lunch menu at the restaurant for many years, probably a decade. Ultimately, I believe it was a series of fad diets that did them in. For many years, the ladies who lunch would not order anything fried, no matter how tasty. In any case, apparently I had a reputation for making latkes, as the following cute "diploma" will attest. My oldest daughter, then but a tiny girl, awarded me a "specialty in making potato pancakes." How cute is this!?!

Chef's Diploma with
Specialty in Making Potato Pancakes

For caviar for the restaurant, I always bought from Browne Trading Company in Maine. I still buy from them, but the retail prices are a shock after paying wholesale for decades. Rob bought caviar from a company that is new to me, OM. Their ossetra and Browne's Siberian Supreme malossol were the best of the bunch.

We All Bought Caviar

Potato Chips, Best Vehicle for Caviar

Being the designated driver, I could only but sip a little of the delicious Champagne on offer at Rob and Dyce's. I managed to photograph the two that we bought so that I could remember them. The Gonet-Médeville is a lovely blanc de noirs. The André Clouet "Chalky" looks pretty gimmicky in its white wrap, but it is a fine 100% Chardonnay blanc de blancs. I like it, but I like many others better.

Here's hoping that 2026 proves better than New Year's Eve's inauspicious start.

Sweet Potatoes

Man, the restaurant life really sapped my enthusiasm for cooking! My love for the kitchen, even to this day, has not recovered and I retired from the business five and a half years ago. I used to think nothing of spending joyful hours in the kitchen, but now there are days when I can barely be bothered to go back in the kitchen for two minutes to throw together a ham sandwich.

Kitchen Mojo: Sweet Potato Cakes, Pork Tenderloin, Cole Slaw, Chipotle Honey

Just after retirement from the restaurant, I had no love for the kitchen. But these days some five-plus years hence, my love of cooking comes and goes. In the last ten days or so, my kitchen mojo is finally on the wax, at least temporarily. That's a good thing in that I have accumulated of a bit of winter fat and I need to eat better. Also, my body is longing for fresh vegetables, something that it quite usual for me in this cold vegetable-challenged season. That longing in part spurs me to action in the kitchen.

Though many vegetables are now available 365 days a year, thanks to a worldwide supply chain, old habits die hard with me. I try to use ingredients only in season, though I have relented a bit from this imperative in recent years. Back in the restaurant days, as a seasonal restaurant supplied by local farmers, we were limited in winter to storage vegetables from the previous growing season, our farmers bringing us only the tiniest amount of fresh produce from their expensive-to-heat greenhouses.

Winter therefore meant sweet potatoes, bushels and bushels of sweet potatoes. Out of necessity, we had to find creative ways to use them so as not to bore ourselves or customers. Fortunately, the sweet potato is as equally useful as a regular potato and therefore lends itself to a myriad of preparations: boiled, mashed, baked, chips, fries, grated for latkes, and even hashed.

Exercising all my creativity, at one point during my restaurant career, I hit upon a sweet potato hash that quickly became a customer favorite when accompanying our Berkshire x Ossabaw pork, wild boar, Moulard duck, or any of the venison that would come and go on the menu throughout the course of the winter: red deer, white tail, caribou, or elk.

The hash at the restaurant would have started in a vast sauté pan with cubes of our slab bacon, or house-cured pancetta if we were between slabs of bacon, cooked just enough to release a bit of fat. Into the sauté pan would go diced onion and cubes of raw sweet potato. Like any hash, it would stay on the flame until the bacon was rendered, the onions browned, and the sweet potato cooked all the way through.

I have never been one to like sweet food (I'm that guy who does not eat dessert) and I have always frowned on sweet sweet potato preparations. Properly cured sweet potatoes have enough natural sweetness on their own that they really don't need any added sugar, except perhaps if they are being served as a dessert course. But I do make a slight exception for my sweet potato hash.

Just as the hash is cooked is where the sweetness comes in, though not via added sugar (at least not raw sugar). At this point, we'd add dried sweetened cranberries (or cherries) and then flambé the whole shebang with a good slug of Bourbon. Ann is not a fan of the sweet woody and vanilla notes that the Bourbon imparts nor has she ever been a fan of fruit in savory dishes. But this hash ticks my boxes: creative, savory, smoky, and oh so tasty.  For more on the hash technique see here and here.

I have finally got enough distance from the restaurant and its sea of winter sweet potatoes to want to prepare sweet potatoes again at home. So, to accompany a roast pork tenderloin, I made this hash again, omitting the bacon to keep the dish a bit healthier. In spite of Ann not being a big fan, every once in a while, I make a dish because I like it. My usual MO is to only cook the things that I know that Ann loves. Mea culpa.

I actually cooked two tenderloins and put the second one in the fridge along with a small amount of leftover hash, the perfect starting point for a leftover-based dish the next evening. But how to change it up so that it would be different enough from the night before? I didn't have enough hash left to serve one person, let alone two, so I thought about ways to stretch it. And it occurred to me that if I roasted a sweet potato, mashed it, and incorporated the leftover hash into the mash, I could make sweet potato cakes.

I find myself using rolled oats instead of bread crumbs or panko to bind things these days: meatloaf, meatballs, potato cakes, and so forth. The results are fantastic and to my mind, at least, the complex carbs in rolled oats are a healthier option than the more simple bread carbs. Although I put a little panko on the surface of the sweet potato cakes to yield a nice crust, I bound the cakes with oats.

Sweet Potato Cakes, Bound with Rolled Oats

Once I had made the sweet potato cakes and put them in the refrigerator to set up, the full dish came together in my mind: sweet potato cakes, thinly sliced pork tenderloin, a bit of my vinegar-based cole slaw that is always in the fridge, and a drizzle of spicy chipotle-honey (chipotle purée, honey, water to thin, and salt to taste).

At least temporarily, my kitchen mojo is back and functioning at a decent level and I'm still making good use of winter storage vegetables: sweet potatoes, onions, cabbage, and carrots. And Ann is going to forgive my use of sweet dried fruit and Bourbon in the sweet potato cakes.

Pork Tenderloin Medallions on Sweet Potato Hash

Yesterday was a blah, chilly, mainly cloudy, slightly rainy day and a very good day to be inside. These are the kinds of days when I need to get in the kitchen and cook to relieve the sense of having been a slug for the day. In short, it was a good day to make something a little more involved for dinner.

Pork Tenderloin Medallions on Sweet Potato Hash

My restaurant was highly seasonal with menus changing each day depending on the ingredients our farmers, fisherman, and foragers had found for us. Because of this, our winter and early spring menus were of necessity creative to make good use of the storage vegetables on which we depended.

One of those storage vegetables that we always had in vast quantities was sweet potatoes. Out of necessity, we came up with a sweet potato hash to accompany a wide variety of proteins, and I decided to reprise a version of that hash at home last night. This hash is diced sweet potatoes, onions, and dried cherries, flavored with a touch of garlic and then flambéed with Bourbon.

Start with Raw Sweet Potatoes and Onions

To start the hash, cook the raw sweet potatoes and onions until the sides are a bit browned and the sweet potatoes are just tender. At the restaurant, we might have started with cubes of slab bacon before adding the veggies or we might have added cubed pork belly after the veggies were cooked. For a vegan dish, we would have proceeded just as I did last evening. We might have even added Cajun-spiced pecans to the hash once it was done. This idea is just that, an idea from which to launch your imagination.

Flaming the Hash with Bourbon

Once the vegetables were cooked, I added a bit of minced garlic and a handful of dried cherries. Once the garlic started smelling really good, I added a shot of Bourbon and tilted the pan towards the flame to light it. The hash is quite savory from the onions and garlic, yet it gets a touch of sweetness from the sweet potatoes and cherries and a hint of oaky vanilla from the Bourbon. This sweet profile really resonates with pork and duck, and even gamier meats such as elk, caribou/reindeer, or venison.

Pork Tenderloin Medallions

Pork tenderloin is inexpensive and so super simple to cook that it should be a go-to protein in your refrigerator. It takes seconds to remove the little piece of silverskin from the head end and mere seconds more to cut it into say one-inch segments. Turn the segments on end and flatten them gently with your palm and after a good dose of salt, they're ready for the pan in which they will cook very quickly, perhaps two minutes on one side and another minute on the flip side.

To finish the plating, I wilted some spinach and placed it between the hash and the pork on the plate. A drizzle of honey and a sprinkle of smoked salt finished the dish. At the restaurant, we might have topped the pork with a few fern fiddleheads, a pat of toasted pecan compound butter, or even a drizzle of chipotle honey, the spice working well with the sweetness of the dish.

This is one of those super simple dishes that you can use to impress people. They never need to know how easy it is to make. And it makes a great springboard for your imagination to morph it into many other kinds of dishes.

Sweet Potato-Quinoa Cakes

Going through the pantry the other day, I ran across a very large container of quinoa, something that I don't eat very often because it just doesn't do anything for me. Don't get me wrong. I will eat just about anything, quinoa included, but I've just never found it to be worth the effort to prepare. Ann likes it more than me which is probably why we have so much on hand.

Sweet Potato-Quinoa Cakes

In an effort to start using it, I thought that I might try to make some kind of cakes. In trying to figure out how to hold the quinoa together in a cake, I thought I might try mashed sweet potato.

To that end, I sautéed some onion, poblano, cilantro stems, and garlic with a little cumin, then added a drained and rinsed can of black beans, a cup of cooked quinoa, and then a couple of medium roasted sweet potatoes. The resulting mix was very tasty and would have made a great vegetarian stuffing for poblanos rellenos, but proved to be really soft for cakes.

I added a cup of rolled oats to the mix and refrigerated overnight to see if I could stiffen them up. They were stiffer and I was able to form cakes, but they were a bear to handle in the frying pan without breaking them. Still too soft I would judge. And the quinoa was not noticeable either.

Delicious but not ready for prime time, I judge this dish. Tasty, but without adding a lot more undesirable carbs, I just don't think this idea is going anywhere. To be honest, I would just as soon do a hash by sautéing raw cubes of sweet potato with the onion and poblano and then mixing them into quinoa for a warm salad.

Pork Chop with Sweet Potato Hash

I was off early one night in the lead up to Christmas and Ann was home from her parents' house, so I brought home some pork chops and some mâche, a light and slightly nutty salad green. None of us are eating/eating well given the current circumstances with Ann's father, so I am making a conscious effort to at least get us all around the table when I can.

The pork chops I put in a hickory bark syrup brine for about a week before cooking. These I seared in a hot black steel pan and then finished for about five minutes in a 400F oven. A quarter cup of hickory bark (or maple) syrup and a tablespoon of salt to a gallon of water makes a fine brine. Hickory bark syrup is made locally by boiling shagbark hickory bark in water and then adding turbinado sugar which gives it a smoky flavor.

Pork Chop with Sweet Potato Hash and Mâche Salad

I have for years made a sweet potato hash from sweet potatoes, onions, slab bacon, and dried cranberries. Once all is cooked, I deglaze the pan with bourbon to add a woody, caramel note. I spied a sweet potato on the counter and turned it into this hash. Ann wasn't a big fan but I'm not surprised: she's one of those that has an issue with fruit in savory dishes. I find that it a wonderful accompaniment to pork or duck.

Bourbon-Flambéed Sweet Potato, Bacon, and Cranberry Hash

Pease Porridge

Depending on who you ask, we've been on borrowed time for anywhere from three days to two weeks. Our luck ran out overnight on Saturday: our first frost of the year followed by a 28F freeze the following evening. Earlier in the week in preparation for the coming cold weather, I picked all the basil and made pesto and Ann asked if I would make a pot of split pea soup on Sunday to accompany the chilly weather and a loaf of her delicious bread.

I've never really considered split pea soup and by considered, I mean in an academic nature. [Cue groaning noises from my wife.] Been making it all my adult life, but I never considered from which culinary tradition it has come. I didn't know anything about the history of the dish.

I certainly did have a guess that since we have a nursery rhyme about the dish ("pease porridge hot/pease porridge cold/...") that the dish is very old. And that it is, the rhyme is first recorded in the early 18th century but the dish is mentioned by Aristophanes and that was nearly 2500 years ago. Split pea soup is downright ancient on a human timescale. Further reading leads me to believe that cooked dried peas and pork is common to most of northern Europe; it certainly is extremely common in many militaries and all throughout Scandinavia. That it appears across such a broad swath of the world tells us that this dish is so old that it predates our modern notion of cuisines and international boundaries.

And its antiquity probably explains why we love it so: at this point, love for the soup is probably recorded at some level in our DNA. All joking aside, it is one of the few dishes that I, the ultimate omnivore, came to kicking and screaming. When I was a youngster of about 8 or 9, my mother made for the first time in my reckoning a nasty looking green soup which she assured me was delicious. I've never really balked at foods, but I bet it took her a solid half an hour of cajoling me while she was cooking it to get me to try that damn green stuff. I guess the color put me off. But once I finally nerved up enough to taste it, I was hooked.

[The only other thing that I came to balkily was sushi. At 25 years of age, I had never seen raw fish before. These were the days before you could buy sushi in any town anywhere. Four or five beers it took to get into the raw fish, but after that, I was likewise hooked.]

My split pea soup is always made with green split peas, a ham hock, an onion, a couple of carrots, some garlic, a bay leaf, and some thyme. Except this batch.

Not My Usual Split Pea Soup Mise

I was fresh out of carrots, so I grabbed a sweet potato for color. That's the only reason carrot is in the soup: for contrasting color. And I grabbed a few small pork sausages because I don't have a ham in the fridge and I didn't feel like getting one out of the back and unwrapping it. The secret weapon in my soup is what we call "pork goodness," the juices that congeal in the bottom of the pan after we have roasted our pork belly. I added about a pint of that at the very end. Because it is so salty, I add it at the end instead of salt.

Ann's roasted garlic loaf was incredibly delicious. Alas the photos did not turn out. The short day did not afford enough daylight and the picture quality was awful. Pictures or no, the soup and bread in front of the fire was a great way to temporarily chase away our first taste of winter.

Smoked Salmon Hash with Poached Duck Eggs

On Thursday, when Sarah brought us the first duck eggs of the year (who knew the girls were laying already?), I knew I wanted to poach some on Sunday morning and put them over a hash of some kind. Saturday night as I was leaving the restaurant, I went on a scavenger hunt to see what I could find: an end of smoked salmon, some unloved slabs of sweet potato, some smoked sausage, three little yellow potatoes, a few chives, and four duck eggs. Outstanding!

Smoked Salmon, Sweet Potatoes, Smoked Sausage, Potatoes, Chives, Duck Eggs

Smoked Salmon Hash with Poached Duck Eggs

Thanksgiving 2014

And another Thanksgiving is in the books, for Ann and me, our 6th, this one a good bit smaller than in years past. But though it was smaller, it is always a pleasure to gather with friends and family at the table to celebrate another year. It was really easy this year. With it snowing on Wednesday, there wasn't any business at the restaurant and I was able to prep most of the meal at work, letting us go slow and relax on Thanksgiving itself.

Ann and her Parents

Who is That Photo Bombing the Girls?

Appetizers: Turkey Rillettes, Galantine, and Cornichons

A Really Nice Right Bank Bordeaux

Ann Always Sets a Beautiful Table



Apple Cider-Brined Turkey Thighs Only This Year; No White Meat for Us

Ann's Bread and Saltine Cracker Dressing

Ann's Bistro Mash: Half Sweet Potatoes, Half Red Skin Potatoes

Sweet and Sour Brussels Sprouts with Pork Belly

The Obligatory Cranberry-Orange Sauce

Sweet Potato Tart with Cassis Cream and Black Walnut Streusel

And a 1991 Port to Finish off the Meal

Thanksgiving 2013

Darn! I thought we were going to do something different this year for Thanksgiving: a turkey and smoked sausage paella. Now wouldn't that have been fun? But alas, it wasn't to be. After agreeing to the paella, Ann changed her mind and decided we needed to cook the same old meal that I have been doing for about 30 years. I don't really mind the traditional Thanksgiving, but it is no longer something that excites me. Maybe because Ann doesn't cook all that often, she gets excitement and satisfaction from the once-a-year big feast. Speaking only for myself, I regularly cook for lots more people than we have over for Thanksgiving and so not only is it not a big feast, but I am bored with the menu, something we avoid at the restaurant by changing the menu nightly. Alas, maybe next year....

Lest you think I am complaining, I am not really. I had a wonderful time with all our friends and family and enjoyed getting in the kitchen with Ann and making it happen.

Here are some people shots. My camera is useless indoors if there is any motion and people, unlike food, just will not hold still. I couldn't even get a single decent photo of Mary, of the seven or eight frames, not a one was worth a damn. I dislike my camera. My cell phone does a better job.

Love the Light on the Place Cards

Found Centerpiece: Pampas Grass, Juniper, Leeks

Mark and Kelley Brought Huge Antipasti Trays

Cindy Brought Awesome Cheeses

Mash, Half Sweet Potato, Half Potato

Ann's Spinach Salad with Hot Bacon Dressing: Amazing and New!

We did actually have a new dish this year: a spinach salad with caramelized red onions, crispy shiitakes, bacon, and blue cheese with a hot bacon vinaigrette. I think Ann set out to make sautéed greens but picked a salad recipe by mistake. What a great mistake!

Ann's "Burnt" Sweet Potato Torte

Ann called me on Wednesday afternoon to say that she had burned her sweet potato torte and asked me if I could bring a dessert home, so I threw together a quick sweet potato cheese cake to replace it. It turned out she was freaking unnecessarily and her torte was excellent, if a tad brown on top. And so we had two sweet potato desserts, though my cheese cake was two thirds cheese and only a third sweet potato, just to give it some color.

My Sweet Potato Cheese Cake

Another delicious Thanksgiving with friends and family in the books. You should have been there!