The Hash Archive

Musée Mécanique, San Francisco

 

Both Sherdos grew up loving the dish generally known simply, and somewhat imprecisely, as "hash." 

S. grew up eating something he knew as "corn-beef hash," and which (even when you had it at a breakfast counter) always came out of a can.  When you opened the can, the hash came out as a can-shaped tube of pink stuff (with perhaps a somewhat uncomfortable resemblance to dog food).  But when you fried it up in a pan, squishing it back into little bits, and served it with a fried egg or two, it still seemed like something special.   F., by contrast, grew up often eating a hash made from left-over homemade corned or roast beef, coarsely ground with a hand meat grinder screwed to the side of the kitchen table and combined with diced onions and leftover boiled potatoes.  It was served with a poached egg on top.  When time was short and even the leftovers were scarce, F.'s family would sometimes have corned beef hash out of a can from a company called Mary’s Kitchen, fried in little patties.  Since F.'s mother's name was also Mary, the family joke was that both versions of hash were from Mary’s kitchen.  The dog food appearance of the canned version served to highlight the messy hodgepodge of flavors and textures, crispy bits and soft centers, of the homemade version.   

A similar dish from F's childhood was called “farmers’ breakfast,” although we didn’t know any farmers.  In our multi-ethnic Chicago neighborhood, where we knew people from all over the world, it was farmers who appealed as exotic.  Presumably, those farmers needed hearty breakfasts.  Farmers’ Breakfast, as served in Mary’s kitchen, was a hash of leftover potatoes and onions, perhaps meat scraps, fried crisp and brown over low heat for a long time, and then bound together with scrambled egg. 

As so often happens with words that refer to foods, the word "hash" begins referring to something very simple and ends up with some more complicated connotations.  It descends originally from the French word hacher, "to chop."  The Oxford English Dictionary gives the earliest senses of the word "hash" as "something cut up into small pieces," and then specifically, "a dish consisting of meat which has been previously cooked, cut small, and warmed up with gravy and sauce or other flavouring."  Although the English word is not quite as old as some of those we have discussed in this blog, it has been around for a long time: as the OED records, Samuel Pepys, in his famous diary from the 1660s, mentions having a "first course" of "a hash of rabbits and lamb."  Later,  presumably because hash is essentially a simple dish lending itself to improvisation and variation, and in which cheap things like onions and potatoes supplement more expensive meats, hash lent its name to the lowest form of commercial eating establishment: the "hash house" or "hash joint," in which waiters “sling hash.” 

The ubiquity of this term for a cheap place to eat is revealed in the miniature hash house shown above: from the mechanized model of a carnival at San Francisco’s Musée Mécanique.

In later colloquial uses, the word hash picks up vaguely negative or even violent connotations.  To “make a hash of” something, an expression usually used metaphorically for things outside of the kitchen, means to spoil or ruin it.  As we once again learn from the OED, the poet Alexander Pope speaks of "The Hash of Tongues, A Pedant makes."  Even more strikingly, to “settle someone’s hash" (an expression that seems to us sadly out of favor) means something like "to reduce to order; to silence, subdue; to make an end of."  Even when it remains in the kitchen, hash today still means (citing the OED one last time), "a mixture of mangled and incongruous fragments; a medley; a spoiled mixture; a mess, jumble.”  Oh dear!  Frankly, this seems to remain the case even with the hash that sometimes appears on the menus of fancy restaurants, along with meatloaf and other tasty, homely mishmashes, in homage to the home cooking many people remember but don’t do anymore.  These fancy and overpriced restaurant versions tend, on the one hand, to overdo it by loading on cheese, overcooking the eggs, and leaving the meat in big chunks; and, on the other hand, to underdo it, serving pallid potatoes and never letting anything get crisp enough. 

Thus, we want to make a pitch here for making hash at home.  However paradoxical it may seem for what is always an improvisational dish, we suggest you plan ahead, collecting choice leftovers in what we think of as the “hash archive.”  

There are four secrets to good hash, in our view:  1) begin with good ingredients (certainly nothing spoiled); 2) plan and cook in advance to build the “hash archive,” that is, the leftovers that will make the hash; 3) think beyond the spud; 4) and cook the ingredients one at a time to insure browning.  This last step, on which we’ll elaborate below, is not one Mary used.  If memory serves, she threw everything into a huge cast iron skillet and somehow got it all to brown.   

We have gotten into the habit of building the hash archive by saving extra roast vegetables and now, increasingly, roasting extra vegetables on purpose so that there will be leftovers for hash.  When we have hash in view, we tend to roast the vegetables whole (in the case of small potatoes or turnips) or in large slices (in the case of other root vegetables) so that they don’t dry out.    

Here, for instance, is a baking sheet of potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, parsnips, and celery root ready to go into the oven.  Some would be smashed into a rough mash.  The rest went into the hash archive for later in the week.

 
When it comes time to make your hash, you’ll need onions, shallots, or leeks.  If you are taking up the opportunity to use things up, you might even have one or more of each. Three cheers for you.  You’ll need at least some roasted (or boiled) vegetables.  But your hash will be tastiest if you have a range of different things: for instance, potatoes, butternut squash, and celery root make a great combination.  We rarely make hash without celery root because it adds so much flavor.  (Guevara/Cortez/LVL produce at the south end of the market almost always has celery roots.)  The goal is to balance earthy, sweet, and salty flavors.  Although our hash usually has a little meat in it, it is easy to make a delicious hash that's completely vegetarian.  Eggs make a great finish.  For equipment, all you need are a large skillet and a big bowl.

Chop everything roughly the same size so that everything will mingle together well in the finished hash. First brown your meat, if you are using it. The meat lays the foundation for the layers of flavor in the hash and will then serve as a kind of garnish.  We love scraps of grilled skirt steak, recently mentioned in another post.  Leftovers from roasted pork loin or turkey work well.  A Holiday ham could easily make an appearance here.  A strip or two of bacon is always a good addition to hash. Once the meat is brown and crispy, we remove it and reserve it to add to the hash at the very end because we don’t want it to be steamed by the addition of the vegetables as they cook.  

Add oil to the pan, and saute your onions, leeks, and/or shallots. You want to take the time to let the vegetables get golden and soft.  This is crucial to the flavor of your hash.  If you feel impatient, try dancing around singing “you can’t hurry hash, no you just have to wait.”

When you are happy with your onions, take them out and put them in a large bowl (where you will assemble your hash before returning it to the pan).  Then add a little more oil and turn up the heat.  When your oil is hot, add your potatoes.  You really want to brown them.  Then in batches cook each of the vegetables you are including in your hash.  When you are satisfied with each vegetable, take it out and add it to the bowl. Conclude with the vegetable with the highest sugar content (say the butternut squash) and watch the heat so that you don’t blacken your pan.

When all of the vegetables are done, mix it all up and then return the hash to the skillet over low while you cook the eggs, poached or sunny side up.  It is also possible to put the hash in individual ramekins, crack an egg onto the top of each, and bake them in the oven (350 degrees) until the eggs set.  The timing on this is not that predictable so we tend to stay at the stove top.

A word about those eggs.  When we opened the carton from Chowdown Farms we gasped with pleasure at the varied colors of the eggs.  We also love the number on each carton of Islote Farms eggs, like limited edition lithographs.  These are fresh, local eggs and they are a treat, each and every time.  

We usually serve hash for dinner.  But if you are serving it for a holiday breakfast, you might consider another mishmash from a Chicago childhood.  The Chicago hash-eater’s father, who never cooked, did make juice drinks with a great deal of chaotic showmanship.  These began with frozen orange juice in a blender but they could easily start with fresh squeezed.  The blender, however, is crucial.  He liked to throw whole fruit into the running blender from across the room, usually with a nifty pitch and a whistle.  He usually threw in a banana (sans peel).  But he especially liked a whole apple, causing even the stalwart bar blender to groan and hiccup.  We’d advise you to take the seeds out of the apple, but leave the peel on.  Pears and persimmons might also go in with skins on but without cores or stems.  To avoid utter mayhem, your blender should not be too full when you start throwing fruit into it.  But, if you have children to amuse, you might consider tossing some fruit into the whirling blender, knowing that you will probably have to wipe up later.  The result is a frothy drink that Dad would have given a name, such as a “sunrise surprise frappe.”  But even better is the delicious sense of making hash out of the simple task of preparing juice.  As Dad would have said, wiping foam off his small helper’s glasses, “don’t tell your mother how we did this.”