Farmer sausage, garlic mashed potatoes and glazed carrots.

Speaking of garlic, it plays a pretty big role in tonight's dinner. I saw that garlic farmer sausage was what was thawed on the counter when I got home and that started the wheels turning. We usually do Helmi's perogies (cottage cheese only, if you please) with farmer sausage, but tonight the "garlic" label seemed to be calling out for a change. I had wanted to try a recipe idea that I had read about in Cooks Illustrated about rinsing potatoes halfway through cooking to get them less gluey and tonight seemed like as good a time as any. I also got a new potato ricer from Ikea that I haven't used much yet, so garlic mashed potatoes it is.

• Start the farmer sausage on a pan in the oven at about 350-400, add a garlic bulb (top cut, drizzled with olive oil and wrapped in foil) for roasting
• Leave the jackets on the potatoes and just cut them into about golf-ball sized pieces.
• Set some water boiling and steam the potatoes for about ten minutes.
• Cut up some carrots into finger-length pieces.
• At ten minutes rinse the potatoes at the sink and return to the steamer, adding the carrots.
• Set the timer for 15 minutes and let carrots and potatoes continue to steam.
• Remove the steamer with the potatoes and cover with a clean cloth to absorb steam
• Add carrots to the empty steamer base pot with some butter, honey (or Rogers Golden!), a splash of lemon juice and salt.
• Let the liquid reduce while getting the garlic out of the oven (should roast for about 45 mins)
• Set the carrots aside and begin "ricing" the potatoes and roasted garlic
• Add butter, cream, milk, cheese, spices, whatever you want to your potatoes as you stir/mash them over medium heat
• Done!

We ended up eating most of the potatoes, but left-over mashed potatoes work pretty well in soups as leftovers. They can give body to a soup and add a creamy consistency in a way that doesn't need to be quite as rich as achieving the same with cream or a flour-based roux.

OK, is "roux" too fancy for this blog—let me know and I'll tone it down ;-)