Recently I made a dish (Bacalao a la Vizcaina) which is a stew-like concoction in which nearly all the liquid comes from 2 cans of diced tomatoes. Anyway, the recipe also includes diced potatoes that are supposed to be boiled first, then added to the stew, which then cooks for 20-30 minutes longer. In my infinite wisdom I decided that I would skip the pre-boiling step and let the raw potatoes cook in the mixture, after all, there was plenty of liquid to cover them. Well, for some reason, the potatoes would never completely soften using this method. I cooked and simmered for well over an hour and still could barely poke a fork through a piece of potato! I even fished out every single piece of potato from the stew and tried boiling them in a separate pot of water - still no success!
Is it possible that the acidity of the tomatoes did something to prevent the potatoes from cooking thoroughly? The same thing happened to me a couple of years ago while preparing a different recipe that also included canned tomatoes. Does anyone have an idea what would cause this to happen?
BTW, eventually I just added a batch of freshly boiled potato cubes (only took 15 minutes to cook them!) and the dish came out fine.
Food science question
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