Recipe of the Week: Lemon Rosemary Mashers

How was your holiday? I hope you were able to squeeze in the teeniest bit of time for yourself! I barely managed to take a little time for myself last night to watch an amazing documentary (which deserves a post all its own later this week!)

I've managed to move up the what-dish-are-you-bringing-to-Thanksgiving-ranks since Shug made our relationship "official." Instead of store-bought rolls or salad, I was allowed to bring *gasp* the MASHED POTATOES this year!!!!!!!!!!! See! Marriage has all of these hidden perks!!! The treasure chest overfloweth, I tell ya.

Anyway, I wanted to knock socks off in the mashed potato department and I had the lovely opportunity to give these hallowed mashers a "test run" with the company at Friendsgiving. And the results were great! All the friends gave my new recipe the green light for my family Thanksgiving the following week.

But wouldn't cha know, that these mashers were just too stinking "weird" for the palates of traditionalists...my family politely picked at their mounds of taters, but as I helped with the dishes, it was these molded peaks that were hitting the trash can...! Thanksgiving fail.

I've been demoted back to salad, FYI.

So, I urge you to proceed with caution with this recipe and think about your guests and what appeals most to their "ideas" about what potatoes should "do." Are they a dish all their own and can stand up to the robust flavors of their accompanying dishes? Or are they merely a blank slate, a medium to hold overly-salted gravy and turkey on the way to the mouth? THINK about it.

Lemon Rosemary Mashers
Serves 8-10...or two people with leftovers for days since no one would eat them
Ingredients:
7-8 pounds new potatoes, scrubbed clean and cut into large chunks, unpeeled
8 cloves peeled and cleaned garlic
salt
1 brick Neufatchel (sp?) cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups sour cream
Zest of one lemon
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 stick of unsalted butter
2 large sprigs of fresh rosemary plus a few more sprigs for garnish
salt and pepper

Bring a large pot of heavily salted water, garlic cloves, and the potatoes to a boil, making sure all of the potatoes are covered with water. Boil for 45 minutes to an hour or until the potatoes are easily pierced with a knife. Drain potatoes and garlic and return to the pot.

Add the butter, Neufatchel cheese, sour cream, lemon juice and lemon zest. Mash your heart out. When your arms get tired, take a break to finely mince the rosemary leaves that have been cleaned from their stalks. Add this to the potatoes with some pepper. Mash until it's all incorporated. Take a quick taste to see if you need any more salt, since you boiled the potatoes in the salted water, you may not need to add any!

Transfer to serving dish and add the extra rosemary sprigs for garnish. Pray your guests are the open-minded-about-potatoes-crowd.