I remember, many years ago in Paris, being startled but delighted that the little Alsatian restaurant we were lunching in near the Opéra Comique served mashed potatoes as a separate course, after our cold roast and mayonnaise.  In the same spirit, but without carnivoral overture, we offer a vegetarian solo by the adjacent butter-bathed potatoes taking a well-deserved place in the sun.

Scrub and skewer 1 large potato per person and bake at 400° for about an hour – no, better make that an hour and 20 minutes — at which point I usually squeeze them a little to see if they “give.”

Open each potato and squeeze thereon pressed garlic to taste (but more is better than less), then sprinkle them with dill weed and tarragon and pour some browned butter over the garlic-and-herb mix, spreading the combined ingredients over the full opened surface.

Serve your potatoes “in solemn state” as my mother used to say, on rather large plates.

ON THE OTHER HAND:   It’s fun for a change sometimes to bake your potatoes for half an hour, then bisect ‘em and continue baking them face down in a puddle of olive oil flecked with thyme.

        The idea of corn on the cob as a solo course we got from a poolside lunch at our friend Jimmy Schwabacher’s under that up-market Carmel Valley sky.  That was some time back, but not as long ago as the 30s when I remember traveling “up the valley” with my parents (could I have been in the rumble seat of the green ‘37 Chevy?)  to buy corn at thirty cents a dozen, the price from outer space.  Jimmy served us three ears each and I would say two are the minimum – with nothing else on a big plate.  He was right, of course: corn on the cob does need one’s undivided attention.  Wasn’t there an old cartoon showing a diligent canine gastronome working his way across the kernel keyboard until the bell rings?

        And as for that expression to serve a vegetable “in state,” I can trace it back another generation.  My Zeisler Bloomfield grandmother, an expert, by the way, in the art of seven layer cakes — and she had a diploma in piano from the Vienna Conservatoire, signed by Hellmesberger himself — was writing home from Algiers in 1905 where she’d accompanied her Sanskritologist husband to a conference of “Orientalists,” and the dinner she reports on from the garden-surrounded Beau Séjour Hotel positioned a nice helping of spinach exactly thus.  But one didn’t dine on spinach alone in old Algiers, there was soup, fish, chicken and artichokes, mutton and lettuce salad, hot baked apples, figs, nuts and raisins.

        Back at 861 Park in Baltimore, my father and aunt read that this meal was “rather well cooked.”

        My grandmother, perhaps for her sanity, only played her Steinway at holiday parties on Park Avenue.  Concertizing she left to her assorted cousins including the one who was known as the Jupiter of the Octaves and scared the cook with his budding keyboard genius — I’m sure he was a little stuck up as well.

        Her letters from the field were a little bossy when my teenage father with his head in the clouds needed to be reminded about some prosaic duty, probably monetary, but the warmth in them is unmistakeable.  They unroll a Time Machine tapestry of travel in the age before airborne cattle cars came into vogue; the inconveniences in 1905, except for what one sea captain called “that confused ocean,” were simply different.

        Read here about the market in Gibraltar with its profusion of flowers and fruits along with “live chickens and doubtful looking eggs,” potato races and three-legged races on board the Dominion liner crossing the Mediterranean (I don’t think this was a “Love Boat”), “noise and fleas” in Bologna (bad luck, I suspect) and only delight in Venice . . .

Steam your allotment of ears of corn with a pinch of sugar for about 10 minutes and serve with a crock of butter and no frills.

(to serve with Roast Turkey or Pork Chops and cress)

        Quite a long time ago chestnut purée became a given on our Thanksgiving turkey-and-trimmings menu.  Earlier than that, back in my Orléans days, it accompanied wild boar or venison when several culinarily deprived GIs trooped to the stately salle of the Hôtel Ste-Catherine for a festive meal.

        Another delicious escape from Headquarters Co. 7805 was dinner at a little upstairs place called Au Père Jean where course 2 out of 5 was always escargots and the gastronomic needle tended to get stuck in a groove at this point as we ordered seconds of the good father’s amply-garlicked snails.

Put 12 to 20 chestnuts in a pot with cold water up to 1 inch above them, bring the water to a boil and simmer the chestnuts exactly 30 minutes. Keep the chestnuts covered in the water as you remove them one at a time, cutting each nut in two and pushing the inside out.

Now put all the peeled nuts in a pot with water to cover and boil them until they’re very soft, about 30 minutes. Purée the nuts in a blender or food processor a little at a time, along with some cooking liquid, until they’re the consistency of mashed potatoes.

Finally, add butter to taste (don’t stint if you want a silky texture) and reheat the purée in a double boiler.

ALTERNATIVE:   Serve your turkey or pork with Gigi’s Sweet Potato Croquettes.