Potato Glass

I've a few essays that I considered putting up today, but frankly, their importance has been circumvented by a strange discovery that occurred in our kitchen. Today, I tell you the strange tale of potato glass.

Before I get to the genesis of this miracle substance, it will be helpful if I begin by giving you a layout of our kitchen. Like the apartment itself, it is a small little thing, and a bit sad. The kitchen is a small alcove nestled in the corner of the living room. There is some cabinetry, but our passion for the acquisition of kitchen gadgetry easily dwarfs this meager offering of cupboards. It would be fair to say that our kitchen area overflows with food paraphernalia. Due to this scarcity of space, storage of gear requires some unique configurations.

Case in point: the cast-iron pan. A few years ago, I purchased a cast-iron frying pan. In short order, I discovered that there is a reason that people have been using them for hundreds of years. They heat evenly, retain said heat, and fare well on the stove and in the oven. Cast-irons also have non-stick properties without any help from space-age materials from the Kennedy era. It also bears mentioning that the damn things are nearly indestructible. (Key word: Nearly.) Unfortunately, our cabinet containing pans, like the rest of our house, was overflowing well before the cast-iron pan ever made its appearance in our kitchen.

The solution? We put it in the oven. It makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. Cast-iron pans are pretty much impervious to all harm. It doesn't matter to the pan whether or not it gets baked along with tater tots, cookies, or cakes. The cast-iron pan, a true creature of the ages, shrugs off these trials and tribulations. Thus, for the past few years, it has gotten baked along with everything else we ever cooked.

It didn't give a damn.

Until today.

I have this strange tradition on Saturdays following particularly demanding weeks. See, I have my son all day. My wife works. It is a great time, because the two of us get to play and have adventures. The only real hiatus is nap-time, which falls between noon and 2. On these rough weeks, I go to the grocery store and buy a good steak. My wife and son aren't steak people, so I use this small window of "me time" while Jack is napping to cook something no one else I live with is interested in eating. (I call it "Steak-tuary Saturday", but that really isn't relevant to the story. I just like the term.)

As I've previously detailed in other places, I can make some damn fine music when I put together steak and cast-iron. It was with just such a tune in mind that I reached for my cast-iron pan this afternoon. When I did so, I discovered something strange and, upon reflection, more than a bit wondrous.

I pulled out the pan, and ran my hand over it and discovered a bizarre glassy surface instead of the rough, oily, and re-assuring one I was expecting. Upon visual inspection, it appeared that the strange gloss covered a large portion of the pan. It was totally clear and smooth.

It first it seemed a minor annoyance. Just one more pot to scrub in an otherwise tidy kitchen. With an exasperated sigh, I set to heating the pan, and scouring it with tongs and a wet towel. Given that this particular pan is well-seasoned and not prone to sticking to food, that is the most I have ever had to do in order to return it to its pristine state.

In this case, it didn't do a damn thing. Not to be deterred, I got a metric buttload (measured precisely) of kosher salt and scoured hell out of the pan with that. Again, despite vigorous scrubbing and a few suggestions about exactly where this glossy aberration should go, it remained.

By this point, my mind craved some guidance as to what the hell this phantom substance was. In all of my years of washing dishes (and we're sneaking up on three decades of doing that job), I have never encountered a substance like it in my life. I called up my wife at work.

"So, honey, what the hell did you cook in the stove last? Epoxy?"

"I'm sorry? This is the library. Who are you?"

"Oh, hi Inez. This is Pat Songy. Can you please transfer me to my wife?"

"Sure Pat. Please hold."

I heard a click and some muffled laughter. Monica picked up.

"You're baking epoxy? What the hell?" my wife asked with some amusement in her voice.

"No. Evidently, you are! There is bizarre glass on the bottom of the cast-iron! Nothing will kill it, and I've tried  everything short of holy water and a crucifix!"

"Fact: That only works on vampires, not cookware. And for your information, the only thing I've done in that oven since you last used the cast iron was bake two potatoes."

"You're kidding. Just potatoes?"

"My hand to God. Just potatoes."

"You made potato glass."

"What?!"

"There is a substance in our cast-iron pan. It is smooth and clear like glass. It is as hard as steel. Evidently, you made it with two potatoes. Potato glass could be our key to wealth."

"So, how are you going to cook your steak?"

It was a sobering question. It quickly brought me back to the heart of my dilemma. No pan, no beautifully pan-seared sirloin. Now that was a serious problem. You can't expect a man of my station to forgo Steak-tuary Saturday just because my wife inadvertently created a space-age polymer with a potato.

That would just be ridiculous.

I got off the phone with her and re-engaged the cast-iron with renewed vigor. Steel wool didn't touch it. A second round of kosher salt did nothing. Getting it smoking hot and scouring it with wet rags didn't even make a dint. Finally, more than a little miffed, I resorted to extreme measures.

The chisel isn't usually a tool that I go for in the kitchen, but I guess there is an exception to every rule. Using a hammer and chisel, I could not injure the substance, but I did manage to knock off flakes of iron that the potato glass had evidently bonded to on a molecular level. Somewhere in my frenzy of hammering, a little sane thought flew into my head.

"Pat, you bought this for $8.99 at K-Mart. Is this truly worth all this swearing and exertion?"

A friend's grandmother once said that no matter what happened to a cast-iron pan, you could throw it in a bonfire and get it just about good as new. While I briefly considered how I might create such a conflagration in my apartment complex, I put the idea aside. You really don't want to juggle toddler nap-time and a raging inferno, steak or no. That's life experience talking.

Ultimately, I cooked the steak in a lesser pan. Tomorrow I'll have to procure a new cast-iron. Though I think I'll save the original and send it off to a lab. Who knows? In a few months, you could be reading the blog of a wealthy potato glass magnate.

Of course, we'll have to come up with a more clever name. I think, given its starchy origins and my love of Star Wars, I'll call it carb-onite.

Or maybe "Monica's Badass Potato Glass". That has a nice ring to it.





... steak-tuary.