potato chips -

by gansie

Ignoring Butter

The scene: Hannah G’s, Ventnor, NJ.

“Can I have the crab and artichoke dip and the Chamberlain salad (mixed greens, red onion, shredded swiss, cashews and apples with a sweet & sour vinaigrette) to share. I’ll have the spaghetti. Thanks.” (Whole wheat spaghetti, with butternut squash, fried fresh sage & organic spinach. And holy crap they ended up pan-frying the entire dish so the noodles were slightly crisp and the squash tasted like sweet potato fries.)

“And I’ll have the nut-crusted salmon with sides of snap peas and garlic mashed potatoes,” 80 excitedly said.

“Okay, I’ll bring out some bread and potato chips,” the waiter said as he walked inside.

Potato chips! Potato chips!

Of course I love bread and butter. In fact, I barely can tolerate bread and oil. I really only use the bread as a vehicle for butter. But, anyway, even though we ordered a fuck load of food, we were pumped for those chips.

Although, I was nervous for too crunchy, kettle-style chips. Instead we received crisp, yet slightly bendy, potato-flavored chips. Dipped in a garlic mayo.

And I ignored the butter. When was the last time you ignored bread and butter?

in Restaurants 1 comments

by gansie

A Consummated Love Affair: Eggs and Potato Chips

Without a doubt potato chips are my favorite snack food. Cheese (extremely sharp cheddar) is next and a combination of a plate of Herr’s Ripples with cheddar, spicy mustard and a pickle is my ultimate combo. With all this love, however, I’ve never incorporated chips into my cooking. (Though I always wanted to try Herr’s Potato Chip Cookie.)

This was until I saw DC food writer Monica Bhide tweet about chips in an Indian-spiced egg dish. Holy Crap! How have I never thought of combining my two favorite things to eat. Finally! My love for salty crunch and creamy egg can be together at last! And because I now work from home full time I decided to try this out last week for lunch.

Egg Over Green Chili Potato Chips

Because I cooked this on the fly I didn’t have all of Monica’s set ingredients, which you can check out at her site. Here’s how I handled the situation.

The Dark-Herr, The Better

I truly adore Michael Pollan. I pretty much take his words as gospel. His new “for dummies” type book, Food Rules, breaks down his complex narratives of our broken food systems into succinct guidelines. His rules make sense. They are easy to understand and to follow. This one is particularly relevant to our I want it now culture:

#39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we’re eating them every day. The french fry did not become America’s most popular vegetable until industry took over the jobs of washing, peeling, cutting, and frying the potatoes — and cleaning up the mess. If you made all the french fries you ate, you would eat them much less often, if only because they’re so much work. The same holds true for fried chicken, chips, cakes, pies, and ice cream. Enjoy these treats as often as you’re willing to prepare them — chances are good it won’t be every day. [HuffPo]

But the idea of making a potato chip better than Herr’s is just a fucking lie. They make the best chips in the world and it wouldn’t be fair to attempt replication at home when they are already out there on shelves across Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

I recently spotted an enviable collection of Herr’s chips at a Philly-themed hoagie shop in DC, Taylor. My eyes widened at their floor to ceiling display, noticing the new (and I find misguided) direction of Herr’s: kettle chips. Kettle chips have too much of a bite for me. Too crunchy, too much time in the oil.

I asked the dude behind the cash register about the many new flavors and he pointed out a recent failure: Herr’s Dark Russet Kettle Chips. He said they tasted straight burnt. I bought them instantly.