The Escoffier Series continues: Vegetables

Rice, tomatoes, and truffles. Two of those seem a stretch to add to a vegetables chapter, but here we are. We’ll cover some basic cooking for rice, which seems always to flummox people.

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Chapter 13 has certainly given us plenty to look at. We’re winding up the veg portion today and then the farinacious products remain.

Escoffier includes rice in the vegetable portion, not the starch portion, which seems at least curious.

Basic white rice is, or should be, pretty easy to cook. Converted white rice is about 2:1 water to rice. Rice cookery can get confusing quickly though. 2 cups of rice is cooked in about 3.5 Cups of water, not 4. 3 cups of rice is cooked in about 5 cups of water, not 6.

Brown rice, wild rice, and black rice are slightly different. Aromatic rices, mostly Basmati and Jasmine, are different again. Since this isn’t a rice episode, those will have to wait.

Escoffier mentions two kinds of rice, Patna and Carolina.

Patna is a long-grain white rice. Longer than what we know of as rice. Most Americans, probably, are familiar with Uncle Ben’s or Mahatma brand white rice. It’s sorta a long oval, cooks nicely into distinct grains, and is what we would call fluffy.

Patna rice is an aromatic rice which means it has a delicate perfume aroma. Not strong but present. Basmati and Jasmine, as previously mentioned, are probably the most popular in the US. Escoffier suggests Patna rice as well-suited for Rice Pilaw, Pilaf to us.

Carolina can be substituted if needs be. Carolina rice is preferred by Escoffier for sweet dishes and salads but does also use Patna for salads. He also identifies the Piedmont variety of rice as suitable for risotto.

Escoffier makes a point to indicate that for certain dishes the Carolina and the Patna rice is to remain unrinsed. Most of us who make rice don’t rinse it so that seems like an odd instruction. The aromatic rices are generally rinsed several times to ensure the excess starch is removed. When I make Jasmine or Basmati, I soak it, drain it, soak it again, drain it, then add the water for the cooking. When I make regular white rice, it just gets added to the buttered, salted boiling water.

The first issue is finding Patna and Carolina rice. They still exist and can be found online and in higher-end grocery stores. Most of us will buy Uncle Ben’s or Mahatma or some other brand of converted white rice.

For risotto, the most popular rice is Arborrio and, in my opinion, is hardly worth buying when there is better rice to be found. I did an entire episode on risotto, culinarylibertarian.com/126. I discuss the various grains and the cooking processes. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Rice Pilaf sounds complicated since there’s nothing in the name to explain what’s happening.

Instead of making rice on the stove top, Pilaf has some aromatics in the initial cooking step and it is baked instead of cooked on the stove. It’s a pretty simple dish and here’s how to do it.

Rice Pilaw, procedure 4239, is simple.

Cook 50 grams, 2 ounces, of small diced onion in 50 grams of butter until lightly golden brown in color. Add 250 grams, 9 ounces, of unwashed Patna rice, mixing until the starch begins to make a milky appearance.

Add (Escoffier uses the phrase moisten) with 2 5/8ths cups of white bouillon (water will work), cover with a lid, and cook in a moderate oven for 18 minutes. As soon as it is cooked, turn into another pan and carefully fork in 50 grams, 2 ounces, of whole butter cut into small pieces.

One thing missing is salt. Add salt.

Pilaf will often have the full mirepoix of veggies instead of only onions.

This procedure, cooking the veg first, adding the rice, then the liquid, then covering and cooking, is wildly useful. Add some curry to the onions. Add garlic or chopped chicken livers and gizzards. You can add pretty much anything in that first stage to make the rice dish specific to your meal needs.

Rice cooked this way does take a few more steps and at least one more pan than cooking it on the stovetop and the variety of flavors is well worth adding this to your standard procedures.

When you fork in the butter, be careful how you say that, add chopped salad herbs: chives or parsley or cilantro.

Procedure 4242 shows just that idea. Riz a la Turque reads as so: Prepare the rice as for Riz Pilaw adding approximately 2 grams of saffron to the Bouillon. When the rice is cooked, mix in 150 grams of Tomato Fondue. That sounds fantastic.

Escoffier offers some rice procedures that are just so odd to us I have to mention at least one. The process is to cook then drain the rice and rinse it. Seems odd, yes? Procedure 4238, Riz a l’Indienne reads as so, “Cook 250 g (9 oz) Patna rice in 2 1/2 liters (2 3/4 quarts) boiling water with 25 grams salt.

Allow to cook for 16 minutes from the time the water comes back to a boil, then drain, wash well in plenty of warm water and drain again. Spread on a warmed cloth on a tray and dry for 15 minutes in a warm oven.”

You may notice he didn’t offer a final use. Salads. Cold salads, specifically, is the intended use for rice cooked as such. Notice the absence of butter in the cooking process.

The key takeaway about rice is the pilaf method allows for much more flavor innovation than the stovetop method. You get a better product, too. And, one tip if you are going to add saffron to your rice. Saffron is potent so a little goes a long way. Place a few strands in the palm of your hand and smash them. Sometimes saffron can be a bit M-word, moist for you who didn’t follow that, so you may need to put them on a cutting board and cut them. Drizzle just a few drops of olive oil on them before you cut them. The oil will add liquid surface tension which will help prevent the strands from flying away, especially if the saffron is brittle. The chief reason to use oil and not water is the color from saffron is not oil soluble. If you use water, the color will bleed out onto the cutting board and with it, some flavor. Add the saffron to the veggie part of your pilaf. The heat will release the aroma and open up the flavors so when the water is added you get the most from your saffron.

Salsify is next. I like it. It seems hard to find and not cheap when found. The key things about salsify are these. There are two varieties, black and white. Sometimes it is called viper root or scorsenera. It’s sticky when you peel it. Almost like there’s a sap in it and it makes your hands sticky. Also, it darkens quickly like apples or artichokes. I should be blanched in lightly acidulated water which will stop the browning enzyme. We used to cook salsify at the Governors’ Club in Tallahassee as part of the veg for some dishes. Escoffier offers some baked dishes in cream sauce. It is mild in flavor. In some places, it grows in the lawn as a weed. I have it. The wild variety roots are very fibrous and look more like an underdeveloped parsnip. There’s not much to them compared to the commercial kind. You might see them going to seed and think of them as some giant kind of Dandelion.

Tomatoes, as a veg, are mostly going to be stuffed with something. In nearly all cases the tomato is cut in half, seeds and juice removed, salted, stuffed and baked. There are a few alterations to the process. Sometimes the seeded halves are baked then stuffed and baked again to make the filling hot and then gratineed for pretty.

Escoffier does not write to skin them first. I’ve not been shy about stating I hate tomato skins when they are cooked. In this application the skins are not made better. They do serve at least to help hold the tomato together a bit as it is cooked. The other issue is the tomato meat inside the tomato. He’s not always clear about what to do with that. Leave it or carefully remove it?

In one case he writes to remove the seeds and juice and in another, he writes to remove the insides without damaging the tomato. It seems from my reading the procedure asking for the insides to be removed is to take the flesh out as well. Nearly none of his recipes ask for the inside flesh to be used in the stuffing. That is not a suggestion that it is to be discarded. It is very fine diced and added to anything you add tomato to or salted and eaten as is.

Those tomatoes that are baked can present a problem. You can probably visualize a round tomato stuffed with mushroom Duxelles and diced ham would not necessarily sit nicely on a flat baking dish since it is a round object. Rolling or tipping is very possible. To get around this issue, place some Kosher salt in the bottom of the baking dish and rest the tomato in that. Very little salt, if any, will transfer to the tomato since the skin will be a barrier, and the salt will help hold the tomato in place.

The stuffed tomato idea was a popular-ish item in the 70s with tuna salad or something else inside a seeded whole tomato. Some main course lunch salad, or cottage cheese, inside of a tomato is a good lunch idea. For Escoffier’s use, he’s mostly offering that as an accompaniment to a main course.

He does offer one particular procedure which is distinctly different. He writes, “select some firm medium-sized tomatoes and cut them into 1 cm thick slices. Season with salt and pepper then dip into light frying batter and deep fry in very hot fat as required. Drain, arrange on a serviette on a dish and serve immediately.” Very hot fat is unclear. I would pan-fry them in sufficient fat to cover them. Tomato slices in a deep fryer sounds like a mess of a deep fryer. Very hot might be 375°. I would be cautious about getting the fat hotter than that. That might sound familiar to you.

In the South, they simply took the green tomatoes, made a three-step breading process and you know the rest.

Escoffier’s last vegetable entry is truffles. There may be a few conclusions we can reach here. One, the king had nearly unlimited resources to buy truffles or, maybe more likely, enough people who were hunting truffles for the king. Truffles may have been far more available then than now since, probably, cities were fewer and smaller. What is pretty clear today is not too many people can afford to have truffles as a vegetable.

He offers 5 truffle procedures and in 3 of them, the truffles are whole. One, which uses thick slices, is as much a pipe dream as the rest but sounds amazing. Slice 18 ounces of peeled raw truffles into thick slices and cook gently in 2 ounces of butter and then flamed brandy. At the same time, reduce a cup and a quarter of Sauce Bechamel until very thick, add the cooking liquor from the truffles, a good amount of heavy cream, and 2 ounces of butter. Mix in the truffles and serve in a vol-au-vent case.

Vol-au-vent cases are like cups made from puff pastry.

I said it sounded amazing, and it does. It also sounds expensive.

Mostly, and this is so for as long as I’ve been cooking, truffles were a luxury item used as a garnish in pates or a special ingredient in pasta or risotto dishes and the finishing ingredient in sauces. In some cases, Tornadoes Rosinni, the truffle is sliced as a garnish on top of the foie gras.

There’s more to know about truffles than can be covered in what remains of the time. The easiest distinction is between black and white. It gets more complicated after that. White truffles are a fall product and often sell for thousands of dollars per kilo. It is a rare treat to find them, or work with them, and their flavor is deeply potent and complex. Black truffles have some distinctions which are no longer specific to France. China got into the truffle business some years ago. They are cheaper, smaller, and not quite as potent as the French truffles. They are a very suitable substitute. When I say French truffles, that conceals that there are at least two kinds of French truffles, Summer and Perigod.

You can buy whole truffles online. Urbani might be the most reliable source. Not the cheapest; the most reliable. They have a reputation to maintain as a premier truffle vendor. Amazon has them but I would be cautious about ordering truffles there.

Truffles are an acquired taste. One Christmas my employer took the staff to a restaurant for dinner. Everyone came. The first course was truffle risotto. The dishwasher tasted it and it wasn’t for them. As the busboy cleared and came around, he carried those plates of nearly uneaten white truffle risotto which I happily removed from him, scraped onto my plate, and ate it. There was no way in God’s green Earth I was letting that go to the dishpit.

One last story about truffles which almost always has nothing whatsoever to do with truffles. Truffle oil isn’t truffle oil. Almost never. Even with the wee bits of something at the bottom, truffle oil is almost always olive oil with a concoction from the perfumery to make that aroma. Stop using it.

Okay. That ends vegetables in the vegetable chapter. Starches remains. Of particular note are gnocchi, polenta, and noodles, which would make you midwesterners happy. He means pasta, of course. I just like that he uses noodles.

The Escoffier Series, Ch 13, Vegetables continues with potatoes

Escoffier lists only 59 procedures for potatoes, but I’ll wager we can think of more than that.

Many stem from a basic recipe, a mashed potato or a croquette or even a baked potato. The variety comes from different cooking procedures or shapes, and a variety of garnishes.

There’s plenty of innovation and inspiration from this episode to get your potato cookery creativity rolling.

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It seems like a long time coming. We’re finally at the potatoes portion of the chapter.

Escoffier lists 59 different procedures for potatoes. That covers many. In true Escoffier fashion, add one element to any procedure and create a whole new procedure. And that makes the variations increase by a magnitude, maybe even infinite if you consider the variety we now have of potato choices.

Escoffier will rely on a few cooking procedures to get his many variations of potatoes. Cooked in butter or clarified fat on the stovetop is one method of cooking small cuts or small potato pieces. Pomme de Terre Chateau or Fondant are two examples.

Baking the potato is another. It can be the case that baking is the final step in a series of cooking steps. Pommes de Terre Duchesse is one example.

Deep frying is, of course, a much-appreciated cooking method for potatoes. You may recall back in the chicken chapter we mentioned Chicken Maryland. It’s fried chicken. It will then be no surprise to you to learn there is an Escoffier procedure for Pommes de Terre Chip–Potato chips.

The last major process for various potato dishes is puree. He’ll use the puree for mashed potatoes and then for a variety of procedures including croquettes.

Some procedures are outliers. Pommes Anna is one. They are thin, uniform slices of potatoes layered in circles in a thick-bottomed pan, coated well with butter, salted, and finally baked. The ideal version is crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.

When I was at the Ritz-Carleton in Naples, every vegetable got more attention than you would give at home. We did something called a tourner cut, which means to cut the vegetable, carrot or parsnip or potato or beet, into a seven-sided oval shape that is tapered on both ends and each of the seven sides is uniform. Zucchini and yellow squash were trimmed only on the seed side. In all cases the waste, trimmed pieces that were not servable, was immense. At best, one Idaho potato yielded 4 tourner potatoes. Those cuts of veg were used in both fine dining outlets and the banquet outlets. In some cases, the executive chef and any free cooks stood around a table tournering veggies over garbage cans.

Tournered veg makes for attractive and uniform pieces. Cooking time is perhaps the best reason to keep vegetables uniform. Knife skills are important here. A carrot cut into a cube 1/8″ square will not cook the same as a dice cut 1/4″ or 1/2″.

Tourner potatoes is not a goal for home cooks.

Potatoes for Anna potatoes should be cut into round cylinders. There’s an aesthetic appeal, round disks in a round shape. To get that we used the piece of drain pipe that comes from the drain and leads to the P-trap. A good shape, cheat from the do-it-yourself store, and easy to clean.

To get them sliced uniformly thin, which should be a bit less than an 1/8 of an inch, a mandoline is useful. I’ve not tried it with a box cutter. It would be uniform, for sure, but I think most box cutters’ slices are too thick. On the subject of uniform shapes, a melon baller tool is useful for making round shapes of potatoes. Again, uniformity of cooking and aesthetics is the reason to do it and it makes a lot of waste.

Escoffier offers Pommes de terre Noisette, which is potatoes cut into ball shapes with that melon baller tool, pan-fried till golden brown and crispy. A holiday dinner might be a reason to make these potatoes. One very important cooking note is the potatoes must be one layer deep. The same practice is needed for sautéed diced potatoes.

Potatoes have a lot of water. One layer ensures even browning and cooking. It also requires the cook to frequently attend to the pan, tossing or shaking the pan to make sure all sides are browned. Adding more than one layer, basically over-crowding the pan, will make steam. And, in almost every case, the steam rising from the surface of the pan will cook the potatoes above. That cooked potato, even ever so slightly cooked, will stick to the pan when it makes contact. Not only will you not get the pretty golden brown you want, the shape will be destroyed since the potato will stick and pull apart. It is a pretty big mess and can’t be fixed with more heat and fat. The best you can hope for is to stop what has already been done. So, a big pan for Pommes de Terres Noisette or Southern Hash Browns.

Escoffier’s preferred potato for most dishes is a Dutch potato. If you go to the store expect blank stares from the produce staff. What he means is an older potato with a lot of starch. We don’t have a lot of control over the age of the potato we buy. We do have control over which is the preferred potato with the most starch. Idaho or Russet is the ideal potato for most of Escoffier’s dishes. Yukon Golds are often mentioned in contemporary recipes for mashed potatoes and they do taste good. They are slightly less starchy than Russets. The starch is the key to Anna potatoes sticking together in the pan and the mashers holding a lot of butter and cream.

Of published chef/authors, Joel Rubichon made his name, in part, for a potato puree that is sublime. You didn’t know potatoes could be that good. Such a procedure is more time-consuming than most people are willing to give. Fair enough. I’ll mention the details quickly, though. 2 pounds of Russets, washed, left whole, and not peeled. Cook in well-salted water until they are just done. Remove and peel the skins off keeping in mind those potatoes are hot. Puree the potatoes through a very fine-meshed screen into a pan and dry the puree on a low burner on the stovetop. Cut 2 sticks of butter into 8 pieces each and scald the milk, 3/4 of a cup, and set aside.

Dry the potatoes until the steam mostly stops rising from the pan and you see slight streaks of potato sticking. Start adding the chunks of butter, one or two at a time, stirring carefully so you don’t splash hot potato on you. Add the next chunk after the first is mostly incorporated. After all the butter is in, drizzle half of the milk, stirring carefully, and check the consistency. Rubichon’s potato puree barely holds a shape. Season well and serve.

The home version will almost require the fine plate of a food mill. Most ricer tools are more coarse than the finest plate of a food mill. This will make a very satisfactory second. The puree made from passing the potatoes through a fine screen is inexplicably smooth.

Mashed potatoes are often made with peeled potatoes cut into chunks. It’s faster, which can be a benefit. The starch exposed by peeling and cutting goes down the drain and the finished product is inferior for it. Cooking the potatoes in the skin preserves nearly all the possible starch which is vital to hold the butter and cream. And, as we’ll see, vital for most of Escoffier’s dishes where mashers are the first step.

For you playing at home, you are correct that this is the way for nearly all of Escoffier’s procedures. Croquette de Pommes de Terre is the other exception to the guide. The first exception is his own Mashed potatoes. Rubichon is no slouch and his change makes sense.

Cooking potatoes whole, in their skins, isn’t really a rule but a good practice. Croquettes, and Escoffier’s mashers, start with peeled, cut potatoes cooked in boiling salted water until just done, remaining a bit firm. The distinction here is that boiling water cooks, that is, gelatinizes, the starch as soon as it hits the water which mostly seals the potato from releasing more starch. In both cases the minimization of starch loss is important.

Just for reference, Escoffier uses 7 ounces of butter for every 2.25 pounds of potato and 9 ounces of milk.

Croquettes are fried somethings. It is not always potato-based. Carrots or parsnips can be croquettes. Croquette is back in Hors D’oeuvre and is made of half of the total mixture a puree of the principal ingredient, a quarter from flap mushrooms or regular mushrooms, one-sixth ham, and one-twelfth truffle.

Our potato croquettes are a little less elaborate. For every kilo of dried, pureed potato add 3.5 ounces of butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg and mix well on the stovetop. Remove from the heat and add 4 egg yolks and one whole egg. In most cases, Escoffier advises a 2-ounce portion shaped as a cork or an apricot, is the right size. The primary goal is to have the inside hot and the outside well-browned.

That’s the croquette mixture. As it stands, it can be shaped, breaded in the three-step breading procedure, and deep fried. They can also be frozen after breading.

Into that mixture any number of ingredients can be added. The chief caution is to avoid adding so many additional ingredients that the integrity of the mixture is compromised. Instead of nice crispy shapes with stuff, the mixture will not hold together and fall apart in the frying causing no shortage of frustration and colorful metaphors.

Pommes de Terre Berny, B E R N Y, is the croquette mixture with 4 ounces of chopped truffle added. Instead of breadcrumbs, Escoffier writes to coat the apricot-sized pieces in almond meal. Truffles aren’t something you find in your local grocery store. We’ve discussed mushroom Duxelles before and that would be perfect here. Briefly, fine chop or food process some mushrooms. Saute them in whole butter with fine minced shallots and butter on low heat. Cook until the water evaporates and the mushrooms are a thick paste. Add the cooled Duxelles to the croquette mixture and that’s a good substitute. And avoid truffle oil. There may be a wee thumbnail-sized piece of truffle peel in the bottle but the scent is not natural. It’s made in a factory and that’s about all you may want to know about that.

Cheddar cheese, or mostly any cheese you have in the cheese drawer, will do. Chives are a good flavor and a pretty addition.

If you are adding protein, ham or turkey cold cuts for example, dice and saute them first to remove some excess water. Water will work against the croquette mixture.

I mentioned that some of Escoffier’s potato procedures start with one whole recipe just to make a whole other one. Croquette de Pommes de Terre Dauphine is one such procedure.

Start with the croquette mixture and add 11 ounces of still pate au choux. Pate au choux is also called choux paste and is the dough that makes cream puffs and Long Johns. It has a variety of other uses, too, including a French gnocchi. It puffs up wonderfully when cooked and will do so here.

In some cases, as we’ve seen before, use one item, croquettes, form it a different way and it’s a new procedure. Pommes de Terre Dauphine is one such thing. Instead of making a croquette, pipe them into Brioche a tete molds or, using a star tip, pipe spirals on a parchment-lined sheet pan. Brush either with beaten egg and cook until golden brown and serve hot.

I teased recently that you may be cooking Classical French food and not know it. Chicken Maryland is fried chicken. Sauce Mayonnaise and Potato Chips are also in the book. So is Straw Potatoes or what used to be called shoestring potatoes. And, so is the stuffed, double-baked potato.

One detail about frying potatoes for chips or shoestrings. All shapes or sizes for deep-fried potatoes should be rinsed or soaked at least 10 minutes before frying. Then, dried well so the water doesn’t splatter.

350° is a pretty common frying temperature. For chips, especially thin ones, 300 or maybe even 275 is better. The goal is to draw out as much water as possible to make the potato crisp without burning. Burn happens before you see it. A slightly dark brown can taste burnt which means low and slow is the name of the game for chips. Shoestrings can work at 350 and, of course, French fries do, too. One other step for French Fries is worth doing. They should be fried at a low temp for a few minutes. 275 for 5 minutes, or so. That’s called blanching even though it isn’t really. If you read a recipe that says blanch your French fries first, that’s what they mean. If the fryer has no other use, leave the fries in the fryer basket after blanching while you wait for the temperature to reach 350 and/or for the rest of the meal to be close to ready. Then, fry your fries till GBD.

In the potato chip world, the Pommes de Terre Soufflées is the pinnacle of frying skill. Or, sometimes just luck.

The goal is to fry a thin piece of potato chip so it puffs up like a pillow. That’s procedure 4197. The potato is cut into a rectangle, then sliced into slices “exactly 3 mm absolutely even thickness.” Wash and dry the slices. Fried in hot fat and then turning the fat hotter to get it back to heat as rapidly as possible is the technique. Good luck. I’ve had success with this when I didn’t intend it and nearly no success when I did intend it. Done well and correctly the crunch is a delight and the airy texture is giddy fun. I’m told these can be ordered in bistros around France. I’ve never been so I don’t know.

The other procedure that sounds the same is Soufflé de Pommes de Terre. A potato soufflé. Make 1 pound 2 ounces of “fairly stiff mashed potatoes finished with a little cream” Add 3 egg yolks and fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Place in a prepared soufflé dish or dishes and bake till done.

He doesn’t offer any sauce suggestions. It seems any of the cream sauces or creamed veloute sauces would be good here. It also seems a demi glaze would be ideal. All that rich beefy goodness with puffy mashed potatoes is almost too grand to think about.

Escoffier is, perhaps unintentionally, vague more than infrequently. Fairly stiff mashed potatoes. Well, what the heck is that? Since he does say to add cream, I would omit the milk from the regular mashers recipe. Add cream enough to make the mashers somewhat pliable. What is unknown to the cook who has never made a soufflé is the egg yolks will seem to make the mixture runny. All that is fixed in the baking. What can’t be fixed is a soufflé base that is from the start too thin. The risk, and for a soufflé it’s a huge risk, is it will not keep its shape when it comes out of the oven. You could add flavor like truffles or Duxelles here. I would avoid all cheeses since the fat will mess with the ratios. The cheese is best served in the sauce or sprinkled inside after the soufflé is broken open.

A quick recap. Mashed potatoes can be mashers, of course, or have stuff added to them to make new potato dishes. Add eggs and you get croquettes which are shaped, three-step breaded, and fried. Use that same croquette mixture, pipe it on a sheet pan in pretty, uniform shapes and it’s another procedure. Add different garnishes and it’s a new procedure.

Various shapes, oval or round, and different sizes of shapes, make different procedures. In most cases, those shapes are cooked on the stovetop with clarified fat.

Those Anna potatoes are a new procedure if you add grated cheese. Escoffier doesn’t indicate which cheese. Gruyere seems a good choice. The grated cheese is between each layer of potatoes and cooked the same way. That dish is Pommes de Terre Voisin.

Two more procedures I want to address. The first is the stuffed baked potato. In some cases, he’ll use the scooped potato mixture, finished with added garnish and baked in a small pan, often the tin for a Brioche a tete.

Pommes de Tere Ménagère is a stuffed baked potato. Bake the potatoes and when done, cut the top off, maybe half an inch from the top. To every 2.25 pounds of scooped, baked potato, add 5 ounces of diced ham cooked in butter with 3.5 ounces of small diced onions also cooked in butter. Add this to the potato and add 5 ounces of boiling milk to the mixture. Stir well, season, and refill the empty potato shells. Smooth the surface, cover with dry white breadcrumbs and melted butter. Bake to reheat the potato and brown the tops under a broiler.

Of course, you can add anything you want to your filling and each new ingredient is a new procedure.

The last procedure is similar to the stuffed baked, except it isn’t baked. The procedure is Pommes de Terre Macair. We made this at the Governors’ Club with an adjustment to the procedure.

Escoffier’s process is to bake the potatoes. Cut them in half, and scoop out the insides. Season with salt and pepper and mash with a fork adding 7 ounces of butter to every 2.25 pounds of potato. Spread this filling, or some part of it, into the bottom of a hot pan with very hot clarified butter. When browned, flip and brown the other side and serve.

Our alterations were these. Food mill the filling so it’s smooth. Press the potato mixture into a half-sheet pan, pressing it flat and smooth. We chilled it then used a round cutter to cut out shapes. This may sound complex. The shape we used was like a quarter moon. The first round cut was to get into the potato. Cut and lift out the first round and the quarter moons are easy to cut.

This might be more than is necessary at home. A kilo of Macair potatoes is a lot. Making a small portion to cook all at once is fine.

There are a few challenges. The first is the pan is not hot enough. When that happens, the potato mixture will stick. That is, it will not release and will not stay attached to the rest of the potato. The other big challenge is turning the potato over. I do not recommend filling a 10-inch pan to the edges with Macair potato and then trying to turn it over. That’s going to be very frustrating. Instead, try this. Fill a round cutter with the mixture and place that in the very hot pan. Lift the ring off and fill it again. Don’t crowd the pan. Leave room to make sure you can get a tool in the pan to flip the potato. Also, have plenty of clarified butter at the ready to ensure you can keep the pan lubricated.

There is no version of Macair with chives or truffles. It might work.

The variety of potato dishes is immense. Every alteration is a new procedure, but not really. Use Swiss Cheese instead of Cheddar Cheese and that’s a new procedure. It seems silly, but that’s how he do.

What remains in vegetables are rice, which seems like it should not be a vegetable, tomatoes, salsify, Jerusalem artichokes, and truffles. I think that can be managed in one episode then there’s the farniacious products. 4 chapters remain. The next chapter, Sweets, Puddings, and Desserts is huge. I’ll cover just the basics. What’s pretty clear is the principles are the important part and from those the variations stem.