Knish

Being the world traveler and not to mention spending alot of time on Long Island I've never had a Knish. What is it? A bread filled with a mashed potato mixture. I personally think it was created by a poor Jewish mother trying to fill up her children not to mention how can you go wrong with portable mashed potatoes!!

Here's how I made them. I must confess I was motivated by one of my favorite blog sites.

I made an egg based bread dough.

I boiled some potatoes while working the dough.

I used whole wheat and probably wouldn't next time. It was a bit heavy.

I chopped some onion and a low fat cooked sausage. 

I cooked the onions and then added the sausage to it.

I then combined the cooked potatoes to this mixture.

I bathed the sausages in a beer. Makes it real yummy as the beer cooks down covering the sausage.

I guess I should own stock in neufchâtel cheese. But here again I used it in this recipe adding it to the potato onion sausage mix.

I used some of my favorite seasonings to add some depth.

Mixed it all together and added some steamed carrots just to sneak in some veggies.

A bit of mustard to sharpen it.

Now the real work begins. I did get better an tried a couple of different techniques I had read about.

After cutting it into rectangles I placed some of the filling on it.

Rolling the dough into a tube while pinching the ends I pulled it into the little loop.

This was method two I called the sausage roll. Making a longer tube I then squeezed it off and twisted the segments into separate pieces. Then I separated them and made the little loops.

Bake them at 375 until nice and brown. Not bad. Give it a try.

The Best Mashed Potatoes

Flying international is not only just about the layovers. There are some other nice perks. One of these is that the company feeds me a business class meal. Actually they get pretty old fast.  There are about 4 menus with 4 choices.  One of the choices is always a vegetarian pasta, which for the most part are extremely bland. There is always a beef dish with some kind of sauce. The beef is of a nice quality however sometimes it gets over cooked before it gets to the plane. Since all these meals are partially precooked.

One of the dishes is a chicken breast topped with caramelized balsamic vinegar onions. On the side are blue cheese mashed potatoes. Of coarse you can't expect a boneless skinless chicken breast to be edible at 35 thousand feet, which it often isn't unless you have the jaws of a Pitt bull. I just scraped the onions onto the potato and discovered a great combination.

When I do this at home I mash the potatoes with butter and sour cream and part of my blue cheese. I like red onions and as I cook them in some oil, I liberally add balsamic vinegar. Towards the end of the cooking process I also add some sugar and let them caramelize. They get so yummy.

Now I place the potatoes on a platter cover them with the onions and top with blue cheese and bacon bits. Sometimes I put some green onions on top too.

This is a real crowd pleaser. Enjoy!