Flipping in the pan

So I do remember how to do it.

A few weeks ago, I stepped in as a line cook at a place where I used to be the pastry chef. It was just for a few days, and I warned them that I no longer knew how to flip ingredients in a saute pan. I was worried that I was going to lose the contents all over the stove, and I used a spoon. I have not line cooked in at least 15 years.

We have a lot of leftover mashed potatoes from Thanksgiving. There was a theory in our house, back when the kids were still children, that there was no such thing as too many mashed potatoes. I guess it was with this in mind that Kurt cooked about 5 pounds of potatoes for nine people. Delicious, but we had at least half of them left.

Back when we had the coffeehouse, I used to make a soup I called Ancho Corn Chowder. It was something easy that I made up, and is vegan (unless you use leftover mashed potatoes). We usually ran two soups. In summer, one was always gazpacho, but in the winter, we ran two hot soups, and one was always vegetarian.

To make the soup, I would boil potatoes in salted water. While they were cooking, I chopped an onion, a couple of dried anchos, a bit of green bell pepper. I sauteed these with garlic, salt, cumin, coriander and frozen corn. Then I pureed the cooked potatoes and the water (don't drain off the water) and poured it back on top of the sauteed vegetables. Simmer. It's that easy.

But in this case, I was sauteing the vegetable/spice mixture and pulling stuff out of the fridge. The mashed potatoes were behind the eggs, and the leftover vegetable stock was hidden somewhere. So I flipped the food in the pan without thinking about it, and didn't lose any. Surprised, I did it a bunch of times. I never used a spatula at all.

Then I topped it with the mashed potatoes and stock, and whisked it together. It's nice to know my body remembers how to do it.

Don't think I'll try flipping omelets in the air yet, though.