Pommes Chef Anne Recipes

ANNE BURRELL'S POMMES CHEF ANNE

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 425°F
• Working one potato at a time, use a mandoline to cut the potatoes into slices about 1/8-inch thick, or as thinly as you can
• (Contrary to what you might have heard, you don't want to put the potatoes in water because this will wash off the starch, which will prevent them from sticking together
• Just work quickly so the potatoes don't turn brown
• ) Coat an ovenproof 8-inch nonstick sauté pan with olive oil
• Starting in the center of the pan, lay the potato slices in concentric circles
• (You're going to flip this out of the pan eventually, so your bottom becomes your top-make sure it looks pretty!) Brush the layer of potatoes with olive oil and add another layer
• Brush each layer with olive oil and sprinkle every second or third layer liberally with grated Parmigiano and salt
• After each layer of potatoes, use a spatula to press down on the potatoes so they stay compact
• Heat the pan over medium-high heat
• When a lovely brown crust has formed, shoot the pan in the oven for 20 minutes
• Remove the pan from the oven, place a lid on the top, and tip the pan to drain off any excess oil
• (This is an EXTREMELY important step: When you take the cake out of the pan to serve it, you don't want hot oil to pour out and burn you
• YIKES!) After the excess oil has completely drained off, flip the pan over so the cake is turned out onto the underside of the lid
• Carefully slide the cake off the lid and back into the pan so the beautiful brown side is on top
• Return the uncovered pan to the oven and bake for another 15 minutes or until the cake is fork-tender
• Cut into wedges and serve
• MORE: Anne Burrell's Rockin' Porchetta with Fall Veggies Anne Burrell's Sweet Potato and Apple Hash Anne Burrell's Whole Wheat Pappardelle with Roasted Butternut Squash, Broccoli Rabe and Pumpkin Seeds

POMMES CHEF ANNE

Steps:

• You will need an 8-inch nonstick sauté pan for this and a mandolin.
• Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
• Working 1 potato at a time, slice very thin on the mandolin. It is important to work with purpose here (quickly) because the potatoes will discolor. Do not put the potatoes in water because this will wash the starch off the potatoes.
• Coat an 8-inch nonstick sauté pan with olive oil, using the potato slices starting from the center make concentric circles of potatoes. Remember that eventually the bottom will be the top so it is important for the first circles of potatoes to look pretty.
• Brush each layer with olive oil and every 2nd or 3rd layer sprinkle liberally with grated Parmigiano and salt.
• After every layer of potatoes press the potatoes so they are very compact.
• Repeat this process with the remaining 2 potatoes.
• Place the pan of potatoes over medium heat and cook until the olive oil begins to sizzle and the potatoes begin to brown on the bottom.
• Put the pan in the preheated oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
• Remove the pan from the oven and place a tight fitting lid on the pan. Drain the excess oil out the side of the pan. THIS STEP IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT! After the excess oil has been drained, completely flip the pan so the cake is turned out onto the bottom of the lid, then slide the cake off the lid back into the pan so the brown side of the cake is now up and the top becomes the bottom. We see now why draining the excess oil is important - if you attempt this without draining the oil it will drain out on your wrist and burn you.
• Return the cake to the oven and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes or until the cake is fork tender. Cut into wedges and serve.

POMMES CHEF ANNE

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
• Working 1 potato at a time, slice very thin on the mandoline. It is important to work with purpose here (quickly) because the potatoes will discolor. Do not put the potatoes in water because this will wash the starch off the potatoes. Coat an 8-inch nonstick saute pan with olive oil. Starting from the center, make concentric circles of potatoes in the bottom of the pan. Remember that eventually the bottom will be the top so it is important for the first circles of potatoes to look pretty. Brush each layer with olive oil and every 2nd or 3rd layer sprinkle liberally with grated cheese and salt. After every layer of potatoes, press the potatoes so they are very compact. Repeat this process with the remaining 2 potatoes.
• Place the pan of potatoes over medium heat and cook until the olive oil begins to sizzle and the potatoes begin to brown on the bottom. Put the pan in the oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and place a tight fitting lid on the pan. Drain the excess oil out the side of the pan. THIS STEP IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!! After the excess oil has been drained, completely flip the pan so the cake is turned out onto the bottom of the lid, then slide the cake off the lid back into the pan so the brown side of the cake is now up and the top becomes the bottom. We see now why draining the excess oil is important. If you attempt this without draining the oil it will drain out on your wrist and burn you.
• Return the cake to the oven and bake until the cake is fork tender, another 10 to 15 minutes. Cut into wedges and serve.

POMMES ANNA

Steps:

• Heat large knob of butter with a healthy drizzle of olive oil over medium low heat until butter melts and just starts to foam. Shut off heat under pan.
• Using a sharp and stable Japanese mandolin - or the real French metal one if you're lucky enough to have one - slice the potatoes into very thin but not paper-thin slices.
• Arrange the slices tightly, careful shingling around the pan in concentric circles starting at the outer edge of the pan and working your way into the center. Season the first layer with a little salt. Repeat with each potato until you achieve three tight and gorgeous layers.
• Turn the heat back on under the pan at medium. Drizzle the potatoes with a generous pour of olive oil and dot a few more pats of butter around the pan of potatoes. Season with salt. As the pan starts to sizzle, you will see the fat bubbling up and spitting a bit. Put a lid on the pan and seal tightly for a minute or two, giving the potatoes a little steam bath, helping to soften and cook the flesh. Remove the lid and swirl the pan with a little muscle to see if the potatoes are binding together as their starch begins to heat up. If they slip loosely all around the pan, tuck the slices back into the tight circle using a heat-proof rubber spatula and allow to sizzle and cook longer uncovered. Bump up the flame a little if the cooking sounds and looks listless - you want to hear sizzle. When you start to smell the potatoes turning golden and crisp - like the smell of toast - swirl the pan again to confirm that the potato layers have formed a cake, and then flip the pommes Anna and cook on the other side also until golden and crispy. Slide onto serving plate or cutting board, season with salt, and cut into wedges.

POMMES CHEF ANNE W/ ANNE BURRELL - SECRETS OF A RESTAURANT CHEF

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
• Working 1 potato at a time, slice very thin on the mandoline. It is important to work with purpose here (quickly) because the potatoes will discolor. Do not put the potatoes in water because this will wash the starch off the potatoes.
• Coat an 8-inch nonstick saute pan with olive oil, using the potato slices starting from the center make concentric circles of potatoes. Remember that eventually the bottom will be the top so it is important for the first circles of potatoes to look pretty.
• Brush each layer with olive oil and every 2nd or 3rd layer sprinkle liberally with grated Parmigiano and salt. After every layer of potatoes press the potatoes so they are very compact. Repeat this process with the remaining 2 potatoes.
• Place the pan of potatoes over medium heat and cook until the olive oil begins to sizzle and the potatoes begin to brown on the bottom.
• Put the pan in the preheated oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
• Remove the pan from the oven and place a tight fitting lid on the pan. Drain the excess oil out the side of the pan. THIS STEP IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!
• After the excess oil has been drained, completely flip the pan so the cake is turned out onto the bottom of the lid, then slide the cake off the lid back into the pan so the brown side of the cake is now up and the top becomes the bottom.
• We see now why draining the excess oil is important- if you attempt this without draining the oil it will drain out on your wrist and burn you.
• Return the cake to the oven and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes or until the cake is fork tender. Cut into wedges and serve.

POMMES ANNA WITH GRUYERE

Steps:

• Combine salt, pepper, and thyme in a bowl.
• Melt 1 tablespoon butter in a 10-inch skillet over medium heat. Cook and stir onions until soft and golden brown, about 8 minutes. Move to a bowl.
• Melt remaining 1 tablespoon butter in the skillet; remove from heat.
• Arrange 1/3 of potato slices in the skillet in a slightly overlapping layer. Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon of the salt mixture. Top with 1/2 of the onions and 1/2 of the Gruyere cheese. Repeat layers, ending with potatoes; sprinkle with remaining salt mixture.
• Cover and cook over medium-low heat, reducing heat to low if necessary, until potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes. Uncover and continue cooking, about 5 minutes. Run a spatula around edges to loosen; let cool, 5 to 10 minutes.
• Invert potatoes carefully onto a serving dish.

HOW TO MAKE POMMES ANNA

Steps:

• Crisp frites, creamy gratins - the French do beautiful things with potatoes. And of all the magnificent potato dishes they make, pommes Anna is a classic, one that deserves more acclaim beyond France. A buttery cake composed of paper-thin slices of potato, pommes Anna is similar to potato gratin in the way it is layered and baked. But unlike a gratin, which is lightly browned on top and creamy soft all the way through, pommes Anna emerges from the oven with a tender, slippery interior and a crunchy golden crust. It is a gorgeous contrast in textures. To make it, the potatoes are trimmed into cylinders (to ensure a neat and attractive shape), sliced and then layered into a skillet sizzling with clarified butter. The potatoes are first cooked on top of the stove, to sear and brown them on the bottom, then moved to the oven to bake until the slices in the center turn soft. After baking, the pan is inverted onto a platter and presented as a stunning, burnished cake of crunchy potato petals. You can dress up the basic recipe with an array of aromatics, cheeses and other vegetables. (Here, we've added an optional touch of garlic for a sweetly pungent contrast to the mild potatoes.) But pommes Anna doesn't need it. The simple flavor of potato and butter is always a comfort, but the interplay of crisp and soft in this dish elevates it to another plane.
• Pommes Anna was created in the mid-19th century by the chef Adolphe Dugléré at Café Anglais in Paris. It was most likely named after Anna Deslions, one of the café's grandes cocottes, who is said to have entertained an international coterie of princes and other dignitaries in a private salon above the dining room. It's telling that the dish was named for a glamorous courtesan. At that time, the potato still had a somewhat shady reputation among the French, having been considered poisonous for centuries after its introduction to Europe. It seemed delectable, yet just a little bit dangerous. Potatoes arrived in France in the 16th century via the Spanish, who encountered them in what is now Colombia. The combination of the Northern French climate and the varieties of potato that were imported produced sad, watery tubers, thought to be toxic and unfit for human consumption. As late as 1748, potatoes were outlawed as crops in Paris. Because of their resemblance to the twisted limbs of lepers, the tubers were believed to cause the disease. This began to change in the late 18th century through the efforts of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, a French army officer who developed a taste for potatoes in a Prussian jail in Hamburg, where he was held captive after the Seven Years War. Once he returned to France, Parmentier persuaded King Louis XVI to embrace the potato, both as a delicacy for the court when dressed up with cream and butter, and as cheap, reliable food for the poor when made into soups and gruels. This is why his name is linked to several French potato dishes, including hachis Parmentier, a baked dish of minced meat and mashed potatoes, and potage Parmentier, a puréed leek and potato soup. Over the next centuries, potato preparations flourished, and potatoes soon became a necessary accompaniment to roasts, stews and sautéed dishes across the French repertoire de cuisine. Today, pommes Anna is considered to be among the finest of all French potato dishes, one skillful cooks take pride in making. Above, "Harvesting Potatoes During the Flood of the Rhine in 1852" by Gustave Brion (1824-1877).
• Mandoline This very sharp slicing tool allows you to cut potatoes thinly and evenly. There's no need to buy a pricey, stainless-steel model; an inexpensive plastic mandoline is fine and can go in the dishwasher. A sharp chef's knife will get the job done, but a mandoline is made for this task. Wirecutter, a product recommendations website owned by The New York Times Company, has a guide to the best mandolines.Skillets Traditionally, pommes Anna is cooked in a copper pan made specifically for that purpose. A skillet, either well-seasoned cast iron or heavy-duty nonstick, works just as well (or perhaps even better). Use one with a tightfitting cover. You'll also need a slightly smaller skillet or a saucepan for pressing down the potatoes, which helps compress the cake and cook it evenly.Rimmed baking sheet It's a good idea to place the skillet on a baking sheet before transferring it to the oven; it promotes even browning of the potatoes and catches any sizzling butter overflow.Offset spatula A small metal offset spatula, which has a long, thin, blunt blade (it is often used for frosting cakes), will help you remove the potatoes from the pan easily and in one piece. If you don't have one, use the smallest spatula you have, or a butter knife.
• This recipe brings out the best in the humble potato, with a crisp exterior and satiny slices within, all of them bathed in clarified butter (a recipe is below). The garlic isn't traditional, but adds pungent sweetness. Serve it alongside roasted meat, or top it with eggs for an unusual meatless main course.
• Clear, golden clarified butter can withstand heat without burning for a longer period and at a higher temperature, making it ideal for pan-frying. The process is simple and takes just a few minutes.
• What sets pommes Anna apart from other fried potato recipes is the refinement of its technique. All the tiny details, from the potatoes themselves to the way you slice them, may seem like a lot to absorb, but understanding them is essential to success. • For the potatoes, you can use either waxy boiling potatoes or starchy baking potatoes, depending on the texture you're after. Or, if you'd like, you can use a combination of the two. Julia Child recommends waxy, low-starch boiling potatoes, such as round white potatoes, red potatoes or Yukon golds. When you use these, the potato slices remain in distinct coins as opposed to merging into a uniform cake. These slippery potato pieces make it harder to cut through the cake neatly after unmolding. It can easily fall apart. But the buttery flavor and satiny texture of the waxy potatoes are marvelous, making up for the precarious presentation. Russet baking potatoes make for a more compact cake; the starchy potato slices glue themselves into a uniform disk, one that slices into neat wedges. Texturally, the cake will have a crisp exterior with a mashed-potato-like heart. Because of their oblong shape, Russets are easier to work with than round potatoes, and you'll have less waste. • Use good butter: European-style butter with a high fat content (at least 82 percent) works best here because it contains less moisture than regular butter. • You can make pommes Anna with regular butter, but it really is worth the few extra minutes it takes to make clarified butter first. It can take the heat for longer and at higher temperatures than butter that has not been clarified, so it will be less likely to burn. • If you don't want to clarify your butter, use a combination of oil and regular butter instead. You will end up with a more neutral and less buttery flavor, but the recipe will still work. (If you decide not to clarify, then it is especially important to use that high-fat, European-style butter.) Or you could use ghee, which is basically clarified butter in which the milk solids have been allowed to brown before being removed. It has a lightly caramelized, nutty flavor.• You need to trim the potatoes so they are about uniform in size, but don't obsess over it. Using a paring or chef's knife, remove the ends from each potato, then trim the sides so you end up with cylinders. It may seem like a lot of waste, especially if you are using round boiling potatoes, as opposed to oblong baking potatoes. But you can use the trimmings in mashed potatoes or soups. • If you'd like, skip all the trimming and merely peel the potatoes. You won't get as nice a presentation when you unmold the cake, but if that doesn't bother you, you will save yourself a lot of work. • The beauty of a mandoline is that it gives you very thin and even slices of potato, and does so very quickly. (In this recipe, you are aiming for pieces that are 1/8-inch thick.) Take extreme care when using a mandoline. The blade is sharp, and your hand is moving quickly; it is easy to slice your finger. It's best to use the protective hand guard or gloves (the mesh gloves meant for shucking oysters work well). • Once you have sliced the potatoes, it is essential to dry them so they don't stick to the pan. To do so, place the slices between paper towels on a counter and press slightly. Let them sit in the open air and dry, about 5 to 10 minutes. (One way to save time is to let them sit out while you clarify the butter.) • Never rinse the potato slices. It removes their starch, which is what helps them bind together into a cake.• Before you begin layering the potatoes into the hot skillet, take a moment to place a baking sheet in the oven and preheat it. Later, you can place the skillet with the potatoes directly on the sheet, which will distribute the heat more evenly and catch any stray splashes of butter. • Do not worry about forming a perfect circle of overlapping potatoes; it will look stunning even if a potato or two is not exactly aligned. • Take care when adding the sliced potatoes to the hot butter. It can splatter and burn you. As long as you keep the pan at medium heat and add the slices quickly, you should be fine. • For a compact cake with uniform thickness, use a second skillet or large saucepan to press down on the potatoes. Choose one that is large enough to cover most of the potatoes, and butter the bottom of the pan. Press down on the potatoes twice: once before the pan is transferred to the oven, and again after 20 minutes of baking. • Remember what you're looking for: a brown, crisp bottom in the pan. (The cake is flipped out of the pan, so the bottom will become the top.) Be careful that the bottom does not get too dark; you can peek, lifting up the cake slightly with an offset spatula or butter knife. You also want all of the potatoes to be cooked through, but to maintain a bit of texture (they should not be completely mushy or too soft to the touch). The top does not need to be golden as long as the potatoes are cooked through.• Unmold the potatoes by running a spatula around the pan rim. Try to get the spatula under the potatoes, too, making sure they are not stuck to the bottom of the pan. Once you feel confident the potatoes can unmold, quickly turn the baking dish over onto a large serving platter. Or, if it makes you feel more comfortable, you can put a serving platter on top of the pan, and flip the pan over so the potato cake falls onto the platter. (Use oven mitts; the pan will be hot.) If some potato slices stick, remove them with the spatula and place them on top of the cake. • If the dish looks like a disaster, follow Julia Child's advice: Cover the cake with grated Gruyère, Parmesan or Cheddar cheese, dot with another spoonful of butter, then brown for a few seconds under the broiler. The cheese will mask any imperfections. • You can make pommes Anna up to 4 hours ahead. After draining the excess butter from the pan and unmolding the cake, flip it back in the pan and cover it. Then gently place over a very low flame to crisp up again and reheat before serving.
• Served plain, without embellishment, pommes Anna is a stunning dish. But after mastering its most basic form, you can take liberties with the recipe, adding cheeses, herbs and spices, and other vegetables.Adding cheese gives you a more intensely flavored dish with a melting, gooey center. And if you're using low-starch potatoes like all-purpose white or Yukon gold, the cheese acts as an adhesive, helping to glue the cake together. Add 6 ounces Gruyère, Cheddar or Emmental cheese, grated, along with (or instead of) the garlic. Make sure the cheese doesn't touch the bottom or sides of the pan or it can burn. You can also experiment with crumbled feta, blue cheese or goat cheese.Potatoes aren't the only vegetable that you can prepare in this fashion - other root vegetables and squashes will also work. Be sure to choose vegetables with a low moisture content so you get a crisp, browned exterior. Try sweet potatoes, turnips, winter squash, beets or rutabaga instead of (or in combination with) regular potatoes.For a bolder take on pommes Anna, substitute a thinly sliced shallot for the garlic, or add it along with the garlic. Ditto a sliced chile. You could also add a few tablespoons of chopped fresh herbs, such as tarragon, thyme, rosemary, sage or chives, or a dusting of nutmeg, cinnamon, cumin, fennel or other spices. Sprinkle herbs and spices on top of each layer of potatoes along with the salt and pepper.
• Photography Food styling: Alison Attenborough. Prop styling: Beverley Hyde. Additional photography: Karsten Moran for The New York Times. Additional styling: Jade Zimmerman. Video Food styling: Chris Barsch and Jade Zimmerman. Art direction: Alex Brannian. Prop styling: Catherine Pearson. Director of photography: James Herron. Camera operators: Tim Wu and Zack Sainz. Editing: Will Lloyd and Adam Saewitz. Additional editing: Meg Felling.
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