Baby new potatoes, brussel sprouts and garlic roasted on the grill, Metal-Day style. ©Rye Cooks
We were shooting at Paula's house. She was saying something about Metal Tuesday in Rye, while dumping baby potatoes into this metal thing she'd rescued from the pile.
I'd never seen anything like the grilling basket, but I can say the baby new potatoes she grilled in them were the best-tasting baby potatoes I'd ever had.
That is saying something. I'm from North Syracuse, New York, where our local delicacy is the salt potato. In the long shadow of the Salt City, its packaging perfected by clambake king Hinderwadle's on Taft Road, the salt potato is your basic baby spud, boiled in uber-salted water until it absorbs all that salt through its skin and develops a delicate crust on the outside. Hinderwadle's puts the raw potatoes and a big pouch of salt together in a sack and sells them locally for clambakes and barbecues. They're usually slathered with butter.
But I bought a brand-new grilling basket at Kohl's, and gave it to John for Father's Day. Paula gave Drew a smoker like the one that sits, Appalachia-style, on our front porch, next to the still.
