While my style of cooking can be very global, I definitely am a purist.
I'd like to see the ingredient shine for what it is, for where it came from.
Which in this case, potatoes are perfect for the complexity in their flavor, their versatility
in their use.
So in the approach to some of the dishes here it was to use them in a very clean and straightforward
manner so that they're still the focus of the dish and maybe having some meat as garnish
in occasional plates, but with the potatoes focused.
This is charcoal roasted smashed potatas bravas, saffron poached octopus, and aiolis.
While I wanted to use dishes and explore recipes that might have been lighter, I wanted to
also look at replacing meat with potatoes as the center of the plate, as the main focus.
This is a potato robata with a sticky spicy glaze, daichon and turnip pickles, and cherry
blossom salt.
For the robata, I took some russet potatoes, grilled them over binchotan charcoal, put
this glaze on it, and the put them on the grill again just to caramelize the glaze.
So while the flavor elements here are that of a very traditional Japanese curry, the
approach is very untraditional.
Instead of a potato croquette, the potato croquette here was made by using layers of
dehydrated potato.
The crust instead of just being a straight forward panko has some dehydrated potato flake
in it.
The dehydrated potato flake added the crunchiness to the outside similar to a panko with a little
bit more crunchiness.
This is a Hasselback French onion potato poutine made with really beautiful purple potato.
Over the top I added a light bechamel sauce and put some really beautiful telaggio cheese
on top and torched it and then some really deeply caramelized onions in the style of
a French onion soup.
Underneath the Hasselback are sous vide marble potatoes in duck fat and butter.
This dish is a take on a traditional pasta bolognese.
We replaced the pasta this time by using an English style roasted potato but where we
went a little bit differently on this is use some of the dehydrated potato flakes in lieu
of the semolina that would be in traditional English roasted potato, and then put the bolognese
sauce on top of that with some roasted shallots and rosemary and sel de Guerande.
This is a take on a shakshuka.
Where we went different with this is after putting garbanzos in the tomato sauce, adding
in some roasted potatoes, and some chili marinated goat cheese, baking that off with poached
eggs.
I used dehydrated potato flakes in the flatbread to control the moisture content.
Perogi can be a very heavy dish, here it's a little bit lighter with pea tendrils at
the base.
The perogi was filled using the frozen potatoes.
Outside on the dish is a rose colored fingerling potato, mustard and cherry braised cabbage,
just a bit of creme fraiche and then some pickled radish for punch.
This is a very straight forward looking dish.
It's a potato salad with a soft egg and leek ash.
But potato salad can be very complex, this one we used really beautiful yellow potatoes
and then just put a poached egg on top, the leek ash, and then for spice for flavor and
a little bit of eel nori or dried seaweed.
So this is a potato udon with potato mochi, shisho leaf, bean sprouts, spring onions,
crispy garlic and togarashi.
It looks very traditional in the presentation.
The udon noodles are made using russet potatoes.
The mochi was made using frozen potatoes and then put a little bit of the peels into the
actual ramen broth.
To sort of prove the versatility of the potato, I wanted to make a take on an Indian table
with five different curries, five different chutneys, two different breads, all potato
based.
I made the tandori potato kabob with really beautiful fingerling potatoes, marinated them
in yogurt and tandori spices, grilled them over high heat and then made five different
curries all with different potatoes and different presentations.
Overall it was amazing to show the potatoes' versatility and how it can be the center of
the plate and not just a side.
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