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Potatoes and Celery Hash
2 cups sliced cold potatoes 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup cut celery 1 tablespoon butter Mix the potatoes with the finely cut celery. Add the salt and the melted butter, stir together, place in a hot oven, and bake until browned on top; stir the potatoes, and brown again. Repeat this two or three times until the potatoes have been nicely browned throughout and the celery well cooked.
A four-ingredient oven hash that depends entirely on repeated stirring and re-browning. The method is the recipe.
- Oven heatA "hot oven" in books of this period is generally taken to mean somewhere around 400-450F. Anything cooler and the potatoes will steam in their own moisture rather than crust.
- Use a shallow metal panSpread the mixture no more than an inch deep in a cast-iron skillet or heavy sheet pan. A deep casserole traps steam and you will never get the browning the recipe is built around.
- The stirring is the pointEach pass browns a new set of surfaces. Expect three or four rounds of 10-12 minutes each, roughly 40 minutes total, scraping up the stuck crust each time and folding it back through.
- Cold cooked potatoes onlyThe recipe assumes leftovers. Boiled or steamed potatoes chilled overnight are firm and dry enough to slice and brown; freshly boiled hot potatoes fall apart into mash.
- Cut the celery smallCelery cooks slower than already-cooked potato, so a fine dice (1/4 inch or less) is needed for it to soften in the same time. Include the leaves if you have them.
- FatOne tablespoon of butter for two cups of potato is lean. Two to three tablespoons, or an oiled pan, gives a proper crust without making the dish greasy.
- YieldServes two as a side or one as a light main. Salt again at the table; a half teaspoon distributed through cooked potato is modest.
Hash was traditionally a way of stretching yesterday's roast, so a hash with no meat in it at all points towards the meatless-cookery tradition. Books of this kind proliferated in the English-speaking world around the First World War, when meatless days were promoted as a patriotic economy, and they overlapped with an older vegetarian publishing tradition that had been arguing the same case on ethical and health grounds since the middle of the nineteenth century. Celery was often valued in such cookery for its savoury quality as well as its flavour, which may help explain how often it turns up alongside potato, breadcrumbs and nuts in the loaves and roasts of these books.