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Pommes Sarladais – French garlic potatoes

In my mental spreadsheet of The Very Best Things You Can Do With A Potato (everyone should have one of these), Pommes Sarladais come in near, if not at, the very top. If you visit the Dordogne region of France, you’ll find these on every menu; in this area where duck and goose farming is so common, and the fat from those birds so ubiquitous in cookery, this preparation of potatoes comes as naturally as breathing.

This is an intensely rich, garlicky recipe. The peeled potatoes are par-boiled, then sautéed in generous amounts of duck or goose fat until golden and crisp. In the last few minutes, pulverised garlic is briskly stirred through the hot fat and crunchy potatoes, and finally the finished dish is tossed with a handful of aromatic, fresh parsley. This is an ideal accompaniment for duck confit, roast chickens, dense and boozy stews – almost anything rich and European. (Insert Silvio Berlusconi joke here.)

Choose a floury potato for this recipe. I like King Edward potatoes here – if you can’t find any, try Desiree, which have a pleasant sweetness that works well against the robust flavour of the garlic. I’m recommending a more generous amount of potato per person than you might expect here, simply because this is so tasty that people do tend to overeat. The semolina dusting doesn’t make it into the standard French recipe, but I gave it a whirl after hearing about the Nigella Lawson semolina trick with English roast potatoes, and found that it raises the golden crispiness to a simply heavenly level around the soft interior of each bite – this dish is the mouth-feel equivalent of about 80 naked, silky angels bopping lewdly to the best bits of ABBA. Admittedly, Pommes Sarladais are full of all those things you’re meant to be avoiding after Christmas like animal fat and carbs, but I’m convinced that the joyful endorphins you’ll produce while munching on them more than make up for that. So to serve four, you’ll need:

1kg King Edward or Desiree potatoes
5 heaping (and I mean heaping) tablespoons duck or goose fat
5 large, juicy cloves garlic
1 large (hand-sized) bunch flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon semolina flour
Generous amounts of salt

Peel the potatoes, and cut them into squares of about 1 inch. Bring a large pan of water to the boil and drop the potatoes in. Bring back to the boil and simmer for four minutes. While the potatoes are simmering, bring the duck or goose fat to a high temperature in your very largest frying pan. (If you don’t have one large enough to house all the potato chunks in a single layer, split the dish between two pans.)

Drain the potatoes well in a colander, and return them to the saucepan you parboiled them in. Sprinkle over a heaped tablespoon of semolina flour and toss the potatoes well. The semolina should be coating the potato chunks unevenly – tossing the potatoes will have caused their edges to bang up against each other and become craggy and fluffy.

Ladle the semolina-coated potatoes into the hot fat in a single layer. Cook, turning every few minutes, until the potatoes are evenly crisp and gold (about 20 minutes). As you turn, you may feel that the pan is becoming dry – if this is the case, add another tablespoon of duck or goose fat.

While the potatoes are cooking, pulverise the garlic by crushing or grating. When the potatoes are gold, add the garlic to the pan and toss the potatoes around the pan for four minutes to make sure all the garlic cooks and is distributed throughout the whole dish.

Remove the cooked potatoes to a large bowl and toss with the chopped parsley and a generous sprinkling of salt (these can take a lot of salting, which is an excellent excuse to do some tasting as you season). Serve immediately.

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Rösti with bacon and onion

You’ll read some tremendously complicated recipes for rosti, involving time-consuming methods like par-boiling and cooling before you grate, quick spells in the freezer, wrapping the grated potato in a tea towel and whirling it around your head in the garden, and so on. There’s none of that in this recipe, which is extremely easy.

There’s some dispute surrounding the boiling issue – it’s true that a par-boiled potato will make your rösti absorb sauces a little better. I’ve tried both methods and have found the difference to be minute. The raw potato method is faster and results in a deliciously crisp surface, giving to the pressure of your teeth like a thin layer of ice. The potato inside is soft and yielding – delicious.

Ashkenazi Jewish latkes are a similar kind of potato cake (without bacon, for obvious reasons). Recipes for latkes and other Hannukah foods abound in Evelyn Rose’s books – I’ve just managed to find a second-hand copy of the Entertaining Cookbook at an online bookstore for a quarter of the shudder-inducing price I’d been quoted elsewhere, so look forward to some recipes from it when it finally makes its tortured way through the Royal Mail.

I used Kestrel potatoes for these rösti. Kestrel are easy to grow in the garden, and have an excellent flavour. Be careful that whichever variety of potato you choose is a waxy-fleshed one. Don’t be alarmed by the amount of starchy liquid that comes out of your squeezed potato – you will get more than a mugful from 500g.

To serve four as an accompaniment, you’ll need:

500g Kestrel potatoes, peeled
4 rashers of bacon, chopped finely
1 small onion
3 tablespoons goose or duck fat (you can use any cooking fat with a good flavour, but goose or duck fat does create a particularly crisp surface. Bacon fat would be excellent in this, as would schmaltz.)
Salt and pepper

Grate the potatoes and onion finely. You can do this by hand, or in a food processor with a grating blade. Squeeze the grated potato and onion out, handful by handful, into a bowl and discard the juices. Mix in a large bowl with the bacon, and season.

Melt half the goose fat in a large, non-stick frying pan over a high flame, and add the grated mixture when the fat is sizzling hot. Pack the potatoes down into the pan firmly to create a dense cake, and turn the hob down to a medium heat for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, you’ll notice a change in the shreds of potato on the surface, which will now be transluscent and glossy. Take a large dinner plate and, using oven gloves, place it upside down on top of the frying pan. Turn the pan and plate arrangement upside down, so the rösti is neatly turned out onto the plate. Melt the rest of the fat in the pan, slide the rösti back in (the cooked side will be facing you) and leave for another 20 minutes.

This was delicious with a roast chicken, soaking up the buttery juices beautifully. Experiment with your rösti – try adding a grated apple, cheese, or fresh herbs. If there are only two of you, try making this larger amount and eat the remainder cold for lunch the next day.

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Crisp sauteed potatoes with speck

King Edward potatoes are in the shops at the moment; they’re my very favourite potato for frying and roasting flavour and texture. Extremely floury, they roast and saute to a beautiful crisp, and they also mash beautifully.

Speck is a smoked, raw ham from northern Italy. It can be eaten raw like prosciutto, but it also cooks to a glassy crispiness like a very superior bacon. It’s usually in the delicatessen section of the supermarket; one small pack is plenty in this dish.

To serve two, you’ll need:

6 King Edward potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
6 slices Speck
2 tablespoons duck or goose fat
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Salt and pepper to taste

Simmer the potatoes for ten minutes, until they are soft enough to push a knife through. Melt the fat in a large saute pan, and throw in the potatoes and Speck. Saute over a medium heat for twenty minutes, turning regularly until the potatoes are crusty and brown and the Speck is frizzled and crisp.

Stir in the parsley, salt and pepper away from the heat and serve immediately.

The duck or goose fat is important here. No other fat I’ve tried (it should be noted that Jeffrey Steingarten has a soft spot for horse fat – sadly unavailable in the UK) will result in the friable golden crisp that duck or goose fat gives. If you’ve made your own by roasting a duck and draining the tray, so much the better; the fat will be flavourful and will carry the scent of all the herbs and garlic you cooked the duck with.

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Sweet roast winter vegetables

Outside it’s dismal. The garden is kitted out in a million shades of brown and dark grey. So how is it that vegetables at this time of year are so brightly coloured? Right now, I can buy fresh, dark red beetroot, bright orange butternut squash, and darkest green winter herbs like rosemary and sage. The vegetables in season at this time of year have an added benefit – they’re full of the sugars they’ve been saving up all year, so they are sweet and delicious.

Beetroot is a much maligned vegetable. Unsurprising, really; I can’t think of many things which benefit from being drowned in malt vinegar. We used to be served it at school, and God, it was revolting. The holiday in France when I was 9, where I was served a plate of crudites including some raw, grated beetroot, was a revelation. Beetroot in its natural state is sweet, juicy and earthy. If you’re only used to the pickled stuff and you see a bunch on sale raw, take it home and experiment with it. You may give yourself a delicious surprise.

Whole bulbs of fennel are on sale at the moment as well. Sweet and fragrant, fennel cooks to a delectable crunch, and here, where it’s roasted in white wine and goose fat, it’s just beautiful. I’ve used sweet onions (Vidalia) – these onions are not as easy to come across in the UK as they are in America, but Sainsbury’s are carrying them at the moment with a recommendation that you use them in salads. They’re so full of sugar that they roast to a caramel perfection. I’m roasting a couple more onions in this than we’re likely to eat tonight – they’re excellent cold too.

To serve three hungry people or four preoccupied ones, you’ll need:

1 butternut squash, quartered lengthways
1 bulb fennel
6 sweet onions
4 raw beetroots
1 bulb garlic
1 handful thyme
1 handful sage
1 handful rosemary stalks
5 anchovies
¼ bottle white wine (I used a Chardonnay)
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
3 tablespoons goose fat
2 tablespoons maple syrup
Salt and pepper

Wash the beetroot and cut the tops and bottoms off. Cut ends like this will allow the edges to catch and caramelise. Cut the squash into four lengthwise, and slice the fennel roughly (into about five pieces). Divide the garlic into cloves – don’t peel them.

Peel four of the onions and trim the roots and tips off, then push a knife through them so they are nearly quartered, but still held together at the bottom. Stuff each nearly-quartered onion with thyme, making sure there’s a good amount of salt sprinkled over the cut surfaces. Chop the rest roughly.

Put all of the vegetables into a baking tray with the anchovies on the bottom. The anchovies will not make the dish taste fishy, but they’ll give everything a rich, dark background flavour. Pour over the wine and drizzle with whole coriander seeds, maple syrup and goose fat. Strew the rosemary and the thyme over the top and put in the oven at 180°C for an hour and a half, or until the edges of all the vegetables are golden brown.

The wine and juices will have made an alarmingly pink sauce. Serve the vegetables with some crusty bread to mop up the liquid, and drink the rest of that bottle of wine.