Recipe for Irish Potatoes

As most of my ancestors traced their lineage to Ireland, I will offer an Irish potato dish that you can easily make and that will delight your guests. The finished product is crispy brown on the bottom and pleasingly soft in the center.

Maggie Quick, a Middle Grade Novel by Robert T. Rhode and Eleanor Y. Stewart

While much has been written about the contributions made by the waves of Irish immigrants that came to cities in the United States in the nineteenth century, little has been recorded about the influence of Irish culture on small towns in the heartland. To compensate for this neglect, Eleanor Y. Stewart and I offer for middle grade readers a novel that focuses on Irish beliefs, customs, and folklore in a village in the Midwest. Entitled Maggie Quick, our novel recently received a glowing review from Kid Lit Reviews, arguably the best website for accurate information about books for kids. Maggie Quick is available in hardcover and as an eBook. Eleanor and I are ideally suited to co-author a book like Maggie Quick as we are the descendants of Irish immigrants to American towns.

  

My Millikin Ancestors (Jen Seated at Left)

Before I turn to the recipe for Irish potatoes, I want to share a story about my great grandmother Jen Millikin and her husband, William Curtis Rhode. When it came to their children’s talents, William was as quiet as Jen was talkative. At a family reunion, Jen was addressing the crowd about the recent achievements of her sons and daughter. To her credit, her narrative was accurate and not exaggerated. Even so, quite suddenly, out of the blue, William said, “Let somebody else tell it, Jen.” There was an initial silence as the surprised listeners began to realize that the taciturn William had actually said something! The family tradition is that the gathering ultimately burst into laughter. With a sense of humor no one could rival, Jen laughed along with the rest. Since that day, people in my family have urged one another to “let somebody else tell it” if anybody has temporarily forgotten to remain humble. You can take away from this cautionary tale the suggestion to avoid boasting about how delicious your potatoes are!

Ingredients

4 cups baking potatoes

1 medium onion grated

5 or 6 Tbsp unsalted butter

½ cup double-acting baking powder

¼ cup cornstarch

Sprinkling of salt

Sprinkling of pepper

Directions

A large, heavy skillet is a must!

Peel enough big baking potatoes to form approximately four cups. Using a mandolin, slice the potatoes fairly thin. Dry the slices with towels. Melt the butter in the skillet then turn off the heat until you are ready to cook the potatoes.

Prepare a dredging surface, such as a cutting board or large cookie sheet. Mix the baking powder, the cornstarch, the salt, and the pepper. Dredge both sides of each slice of potato. The coating should cover the slice but not be so thick as to leave a noticeably powdery layer when the potatoes are cooked and consumed. Carefully place the slices in overlapping concentric circles covering the bottom of the skillet. When one layer is finished, sprinkle grated onion lightly over the layer, then build up to three additional layers with a small amount of grated onion in between until all the potato slices have been used.

Now slowly turn up the heat and begin to fry the potatoes. Keep checking underneath to see how brown the layer that is in contact with the skillet is becoming. When the potatoes are done and the bottom is a rich brown, quickly turn the potatoes upside down onto a plate. You can serve the attractive potatoes with a sprig of parsley at the dinner table.

Recipe for Dinner in a Dish

In the farming region where I grew up, a general financial downturn ran throughout the 1920s and continued as the Great Depression beginning in 1930. The severe economic conditions rapidly worsened, slowly diminished in the last years of the 1930s, and ended more or less in the early 1940s. Extreme heat in 1934 and again in 1936 threatened to make farming a losing proposition. My father said that, in 1934, there were only a few glimmers of hope that the economic slump might end but that, by the late 1930s, the country’s overall financial situation had become noticeably less dire. During the era, even farm families that could grow much of their food were mindful of the cost. Recipes for inexpensive meals were widely shared.

My Father with Horses Named Togo and Maud in April of 1930

The Middle of a Long Economic Depression in Rural Indiana

One such recipe, called “dinner in a dish,” was the contribution of Elsie Dowden, who lived in my hometown but who grew up in Bedford. If you like recipes that combine hamburger with other ingredients, you will enjoy Elsie’s dinner in a dish!

I have used Panko instead of bread crumbs with good results, but, if you prefer a larger crumb, dry several slices of bread on trays in a warm kitchen for a day until the bread crumbles into large morsels.

My mother referred to the recipe’s green peppers as “mangoes.” In the 1700s, fruit, such as the mango, and vegetables, such as the green pepper, were pickled to preserve them. People began to call any pickled fruit or vegetable a “mango.” The generic term stuck for the green pepper and was in widespread use as late as my mother’s generation.

Rev. Lowell Morris and Mrs. Morris on July 29, 1937

At the Parsonage in Westville, Indiana

Before They Moved to My Hometown

Near the End of the Great Depression

If you want to reduce the salt in your diet, you can put only 1 tsp of salt in the mixture without a significant loss of saltiness; in fact, I tend to find the recipe’s salt level a bit too much. I have wondered if people who lived through the Great Depression were so accustomed to preserving meat in salt that they felt they needed lots of salt in a hamburger dish.

The directions warn against accidental scrambling of the eggs when adding them to ingredients that have just come from a hot skillet. You don’t have to worry excessively about scrambling the eggs; even if your mixture is too hot, the eggs won’t entirely scramble, and you won’t notice the scrambling.

Incidentally, to “dot with butter” means to shave some cold butter here and there on top of the bread crumbs to flavor them and brown them.

Ingredients

4 Tbsp butter

1 medium onion chopped

2 green peppers sliced

1 pound hamburger

1 ½ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

2 eggs

2 cups fresh cut corn

4 medium tomatoes sliced

½ cup dry bread crumbs

Directions

Put butter in skillet and lightly fry peppers and onion for 3 minutes. Add meat and blend thoroughly. Add salt and pepper. Remove from fire, let cool just enough that eggs will not scramble when added, stir in eggs, and mix well. Put 1 cup corn in baking dish, then half of meat mixture, then a layer of sliced tomatoes, then another layer of corn, meat, and tomatoes, cover with crumbs, dot with butter, and bake 35 minutes.