Vegetable Hash
Take whatever pieces of cabbage and all vegetables over from a boiled dinner and chop them quite fine; warm them in a saucepan with butter, pepper and salt and a little cream.
A leftovers dish with no measurements at all, built on the assumption that you boiled a dinner yesterday. The proportions are yours to set; what matters is moisture and browning.
- What "a boiled dinner" meansNew England boiled dinner: corned beef or salt pork simmered with cabbage, potatoes, turnip, carrot, parsnip and onion. Any mix of cooked root vegetables and cabbage works, and a little of the meat chopped in is entirely in keeping.
- Chop, do not purée"Quite fine" means knife-chopped to a coarse rubble, not processed. A food processor turns boiled potato into glue; the texture of the hash depends on discrete pieces holding their edges.
- The hinge is the panThe recipe says only to warm the hash in a saucepan with butter, so no crust is called for. If you want one, use a wide skillet over medium-high heat, press the hash flat and leave it alone for five or six minutes before turning; stirring constantly gives you warm mashed vegetables instead.
- Cream, sparinglyThe recipe says only 'a little,' with no quantity given; a couple of tablespoons to several cups of vegetables is enough, added at the end. Boiled vegetables already carry water, and too much cream will make the mixture sloppy.
- Season above your instinctTwice-cooked vegetables taste flat. Salt in stages, use pepper generously, and a dash of cider vinegar or mustard at the end brings the whole thing back into focus.
- Yield and servingFour cups of chopped vegetables serves three or four as a supper or breakfast dish. An egg on top is a common accompaniment to hash, though this recipe does not call for one.
- Reheated leftovers, handled properlyCooked vegetables that have sat in the refrigerator should go from cold to hot briskly and be served at once, not held warm on the stove.
Hash is the household economy of the nineteenth-century kitchen in its plainest form: the boiled dinner one day, the hash from its remains the next, and, in New England, red flannel hash when the beets went in and turned the whole pan pink. The word comes through French hacher, to chop, and the technique long predates the cookbooks that record it, since a dish assembled from whatever was left needed no recipe until printed household manuals began writing down what cooks already knew.