French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [122]
First prepare a purée from 1 lb. of potatoes, boiled in their skins, then peeled, and mashed while still warm. Season them liberally, adding grated nutmeg as well as salt and pepper. Add, a little at a time, pint of milk. When this purée is amalgamated put it in a saucepan and, stirring all the time, bring just to simmering point. Pour in 3 oz. of fine semolina, and stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture is very stiff and coming away from the sides of the pan. Remove from the fire and stir in 2 whole well-beaten eggs. Have ready a buttered tin, pour in the mixture in a layer nearly an inch thick. Leave until next day.
For the final cooking, cut squares of the mixture, roll these in your floured hands into little croquette shapes. Fry them in a mixture of oil and butter until they are firm and golden. They can be served dry, as a first course, or as an accompaniment to meat, or they can be put in a fireproof dish with melted butter and grated cheese and left in the oven until the cheese has melted.
Although it is not traditional, a little grated Gruyère or Parmesan, about an ounce, added to the original mixture at the same time as the eggs, is an improvement. And since the frying of this quantity of croquettes is heavy on butter and rather tricky to do all at one time, they can be cooked and served like Italian potato gnocchi. That is, instead of forming the mixture into croquettes, roll them lightly into small round or cork shapes. Drop them into very gently boiling salted water, and take them out with a perforated spoon when they float to the top, which takes 3 or 4 minutes. Put them in a buttered gratin dish, sprinkle with grated cheese and a little more butter and leave in a moderate oven for a few minutes. They are very light done like this.
L’ALIGOT
The French have invented dozens of excellent potato dishes, but many of them turn out less successfully here than in France because we can rarely get the right varieties of kidney or waxy potatoes. Here is one which is suitable to English potatoes. It is a purely local country dish which I came across at Entraygues, a little town on the confluence of two rivers, the Lot and the Truyère, in south-western France. It was described to me by a very ancient lady in the shop where I was buying local cooking pots, and the proprietress of the hotel where we were staying obligingly cooked it for us.
2 lb. floury potatoes, 10 oz. cheese, 2 oz. butter, 4-5 oz. cream, salt, garlic.
The cheese used for this dish is the soft white unfermented tomme de Cantal (not to be confused with Cantal proper, which somewhat resembles English cheeses in consistency) but I find that Caerphilly, a mild cheese which melts easily, serves the purpose very well. A mild and unmatured Lancashire would also be suitable but, being stronger flavoured, 2 oz. less would be sufficient.
Cook the potatoes in their skins, peel and sieve them to a dry purée, and add seasoning. Heat the butter and cream in a heavy pan, put in the purée, stir until hot and amalgamated, add a very little crushed garlic, then the cheese, cut into small squares, all at once, and stir until it is all melted and quite smooth. Serve quickly before the mixture starts getting grainy.
As will be perceived from the list of ingredients, this is scarcely a light dish. It was served to us quite on its own, as a first course, but I think myself a few small slices of bread fried in butter provide a good accompaniment—something crisp to contrast with the softness of the potatoes.
If there is some left over, it makes most excellent potato cakes. Simply form the mixture into small flat cakes, roll them lightly in flour and fry them gently to a light golden colour.
GRATIN DAUPHINOIS
Dauphine and dauphinois, similar though they sound, are two very different preparations of potatoes, both most excellent in their ways. pommes dauphine (the recipe is on page 273) make an ideal accompaniment to