By Early November. The aftermath of the Bon Appétit essay. My inbox is full. The blog gained three thousand readers in a week. People I have never met are writing to tell me about their grandmothers — Italian grandmothers, Mexican grandmothers, Chinese grandmothers, Indian grandmothers — all of them cooks, all of them carriers of recipes that their grandchildren are trying to preserve. The universality is staggering. The specificity is what makes it universal: I wrote about one Japanese grandmother in one Sacramento apartment, and the one-ness opened into everyone-ness. The specific is the universal. This is what Dana taught me in the writing course eight years ago. This is what Fumiko taught me in the kitchen thirty years ago. The particular is the door. The universal is on the other side.
I made miso-butter roasted root vegetables — the Thanksgiving precursor, the practice run for the meal that is three weeks away. The vegetables were carrots and parsnips and sweet potatoes, roasted with white miso and butter until caramelized and sweet, the umami of the miso deepening the natural sweetness of the roots. The dish is the bridge: Japanese technique (miso) applied to American tradition (Thanksgiving roasted vegetables). The bridge is my contribution to American food culture. The bridge is what I build.
Twenty-one thousand readers. The number arrived like a wave — the Bon Appétit essay pushed a surge, and the surge deposited new readers on the blog's shore, and some of them will stay and some won't, and the staying is the metric and the metric is climbing. The climbing is not the goal. The goal is the soup. The goal has always been the soup. The climbing is what happens when you make good soup and write honestly about it for seven years. The climbing is the side effect. The soup is the medicine.
After a week of watching the inbox fill and the reader count climb, I needed to come back to the thing that started all of it — a pan, some root vegetables, and the particular quiet of a kitchen doing its work. These Sheepherder’s Potatoes are everything the story is about: simple, honest, built from the ground up, and better than they have any right to be. Make them when you need to remember why you cook in the first place.
Sheepherder’s Potatoes
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 6 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced into 3/4-inch cubes
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- 1 green bell pepper, diced
- 4 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
- Salt and black pepper to taste
- 4 large eggs
- 1/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Instructions
- Cook the bacon. In a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat, cook the chopped bacon until crisp, about 6–8 minutes. Transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate, leaving 1 tablespoon of drippings in the pan.
- Sauté the aromatics. Add the olive oil to the skillet with the bacon drippings. Add the diced onion and bell pepper and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes.
- Add the potatoes. Add the diced potatoes, garlic powder, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper. Stir to coat everything evenly. Press into an even layer, cover, and cook for 15–18 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes, until the potatoes are tender and golden on the edges.
- Return the bacon. Stir the cooked bacon back into the skillet and distribute evenly throughout the potatoes.
- Add the eggs. Using a spoon, create 4 small wells in the potato mixture. Crack one egg into each well. Cover the skillet and cook over medium-low heat for 5–7 minutes, until the egg whites are set but the yolks are still slightly runny (or cooked to your preference).
- Finish and serve. Scatter the shredded cheddar over the top and allow it to melt for 1 minute. Garnish with fresh parsley and serve straight from the skillet.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 420 | Protein: 18g | Fat: 22g | Carbs: 38g | Fiber: 4g | Sodium: 520mg