Pommes Anna/ Potatoes Anna - French Baked Potatoes (GF)
This month’s book choice for our “This Book Makes Me Cook” club was [The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaeffer and Annie Barrows](http://www.amazon.com/Guernsey-Literary-Pota
Ingredients
- 5 to 6 potatoes largish (peeled, washed and dried)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 3/4 tsp garlic paste
- rosemary some (I used frozen, use fresh if you have it)
- 1 tbsp butter
- to taste black pepper crushed
- to taste salt
Instructions
- Lightly oil (or butter) your dish or ramekins. In a small pan, heat the olive oil and sautxe9 the garlic, but do not let it brown. Add the butter and rosemary, stir a couple of times till the butter melts and take the pan off the heat.
- Make sure your washed potatoes are really dry. Slice them thinly.
- Now place a layer of potato slices in an overlapping manner to cover the bottom of your dish or ramekins. Brush the oil-butter mixture over the layer. Donu2019t worry if a bit of the garlic or rosemary comes along.
- If you are very generous with the oil-butter while brushing, the oil will come out while baking and your Pommes Anna will have a slightly greasy feel to it.
- Lightly and evenly sprinkle some salt and crushed pepper. Now lay another layer of potato slices as before, brush with the oil-butter and season with salt and pepper. Make sure to press down the layers with your fingers, as well as you can.
- Repeat this till the ramekins are filled to the top. Cover the ramekins with foil. If you are using a large dish, layer the slices upto the rim, cover with foil and then place another somewhat heavy dish on top. This will help press down the layers while baking.
- Bake the Pommes Anna at 180C (350F) for 25 to 30 minutes till a knife pushed through the middle goes through without resistance. This means the potatoes are cooked thoroughly.
- Take the ramekins/ dish out of the oven and run a knife along the edges to loosen the potato pie. Allow to sit for about 10 minutes and then carefully invert the ramekins/ dish onto an oven proof plate. If you are baking it in a dish, it would be a good idea to invert it onto your serving plate.
- Now bake the Pommes Anna again, this time at 200C (400F), till the edges are golden and crisp. The original recipe says about 5 minutes, but my individual serves took almost 25 minutes to turn crisp and golden.
- Serve warm as it is, as a side to your main dish. If you do not want your Pommes Anna to be served plain, you can up the calories some more by serving it with some Basil Cream. I shall post the recipe for that some time next week.
Notes
Some thoughts to keep in mind when planning for Pommes Anna:
1. The experts advise the use of waxy potatoes rather than floury potatoes. I wouldn’t know as I get only one kind of potatoes here, and that’s the kind that’s piled in a mound at the market, from which I pick out the good ones!
I guess they were the right kind, as my Pommes Anna turned out very well.
2. As I mentioned above, use a cast iron frying pan. The next best choice would be a shallow and wide heavy ceramic dish or smaller ones like I used. I believe there are also specially designed dishes available for cooking Pommes Anna.
3. If you have them, use a mandoline or food processor to slice the potatoes thinly and of uniform thickness to ensure even cooking and crispness. This can also be done by hand, it just takes more time and effort. After all, Adolph Dugléré didn’t have either though he probably had assistants he could order around. If you want your potato slice cook and crisp well, they need to be sliced quite thin.
4. Do not rinse the potato slices in water as this gets rid of the starch which is needed to bind the layers together while cooking. If the starch is not there, your cooked slices will slide off into a mess when you try to plate your dish. I peeled my potatoes, washed them, dried them well and then sliced them. Work quickly while layering, else the salt will cause the potato slices to “weep” and not bind while cooking. Also, the potatoes have less time to discolour.
5. Try to layer not more than about 5 to 6 layers of sliced potatoes or the outer layers might crisp (and burn) before the inner layers have cooked.
6. If you’re counting calories or on some sort of diet, Pommes Anna is not for you unless you have the self control to make it and actually stand by and watch the others enjoy themselves! Of course, you could always give in to temptation and “taste” it, just once. And if you make the less “buttery” version like I did, you can feel happy about it.