Maine Potato Stuffing

Five hundred weeks of the blog. The number caught me by surprise Tuesday morning when I sat down at the kitchen table with my coffee and looked at the dashboard for the new post and saw the count. Five hundred weeks. Almost ten years. The blog Helen had signed me up for in 2016 because she was tired of hearing me complain about retirement has now been a continuous part of my Tuesday morning routine for nearly a decade, the writing becoming over the years as much a part of the kitchen as the coffee or the woodstove or the dog at my feet. I had not planned to mark the number. I marked it anyway. The post was short — three paragraphs about Helen and the original signup and the unbroken run of weeks since — and the comments came in by the dozens within hours, including from readers I have been writing to for years and have come to think of as the standing audience even though I have never met any of them.

Phil at the Friday vets coffee made a small joke about the milestone — he reads the blog, which I have known for years and which I do not call attention to because the attention would be unwelcome — and he raised his coffee cup in my direction without saying anything else and the rest of the room raised theirs and the tribute was made in the most Vermont way available to a roomful of veterans, which is to say through a half-second of group acknowledgment that contained no overt sentiment but that meant exactly what sentiment would have meant. I nodded back. The moment passed. We continued the conversation about ice fishing equipment.

Made a chicken pot pie Sunday — the proper full pot pie, with the leftover roast chicken and the gravy and the vegetables and the biscuit top. The dish has been in heavy rotation in my kitchen since the cooler weather arrived, the pot pie being the kind of single-dish supper that solves the question of what to eat for several days running and that improves on the second night and is still good on the third. I ate it at the table by the window and watched the rain coming down (the first sustained rain of October, the leaves going faster under the wet) and thought about the five hundred weeks and the kitchen and the dog and the small accumulating life that ten years of writing about supper has been part of.

Sarah's 8 PM call ran long — she had read the five-hundred-weeks post and was emotional in the way Sarah gets emotional when she is reading something she cares about by someone she loves, and she said the things mothers and daughters and now also fifty-year-old daughters say to their seventy-two-year-old fathers when something marks a passage. I listened. I said the things I say when Sarah is being expressive, which is mostly to receive what she is saying without arguing about whether the things she is saying are accurate. They were accurate enough. We talked for forty minutes. After we hung up I sat for a long time at the kitchen table with the dog and thought about Helen, who would have laughed at me for marking the milestone publicly, and would also have been proud of the number, the two things being not in tension in her view of the world.

The pot pie had already done its work by the time I thought to write the recipe down — three nights of supper, the last bowl eaten standing at the counter on Tuesday morning before I sat down to write the five-hundred-weeks post. What I kept coming back to, though, was the stuffing I had served alongside it the first night, a Maine potato stuffing my mother made the same way her mother made it, the kind of dish that has no occasion other than the cold and the appetite and the sense that the table ought to hold something substantial. That felt right for the week it was.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 1 hr 5 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

3 lbs russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1/2 cup whole milk, warmed
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
1 large yellow onion, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups day-old white bread, torn into rough pieces
1/2 cup chicken broth
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon dried sage
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

Instructions

Boil the potatoes. Place the cubed potatoes in a large pot and cover with cold salted water. Bring to a boil over high heat and cook until fork-tender, about 15 to 18 minutes. Drain well.
Mash and season. Return the potatoes to the pot. Add the warm milk and 2 tablespoons of butter. Mash until smooth but not stiff — a few small lumps are fine. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.
Cook the aromatics. In a large skillet, melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Add the onion and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and lightly golden, about 8 to 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute.
Soften the bread. Add the torn bread pieces and the chicken broth to the skillet. Stir to combine and let the bread absorb the liquid for 2 to 3 minutes, until softened but not mushy. Remove from heat.
Combine. Fold the bread and vegetable mixture into the mashed potatoes along with the sage, thyme, and parsley. Stir until evenly combined. Taste and adjust salt as needed. Let the mixture cool for 5 minutes, then fold in the beaten eggs.
Bake. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Transfer the stuffing to a buttered 9×13-inch baking dish and spread into an even layer. Bake uncovered for 30 to 35 minutes, until the top is golden and set at the center.
Rest and serve. Allow the stuffing to rest for 5 minutes before serving. It reheats well the next day with a splash of broth to loosen it.

Nutrition (per serving)

Maine Potato Stuffing — The Side Dish That Belongs at a Milestone Table