Posts Tagged ‘potatoes’

Quick, easy and satisfying

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

This dish is quick and easy to prepare, and bound to satisfy on cold evenings. Depending on taste preference or budget, the cuts of steak that can be used are fillet, rump or sirloin. The tangy sauce and sautéed potatoes make perfect accompaniments. If you prefer your steak cooked rare, decrease the sauté time by two minutes per side. Serve this dish with roasted root vegetables or a purée of carrots and parsnips.

Pepper steaks with Dijon mustard sauce and sautéed potatoes (serves four)

Sautéed potatoes Ingredients

1kg Rooster potatoes

1 tablespoon olive oil

40g butter

8 leaves of fresh thyme or rosemary

1 clove of garlic (whole and unpeeled) Sea salt

Freshly milled pepper

Method

1. Peel and cut the potatoes in half, and then into slices 1cm thick. Wash them in cold water after peeling and dry them with a towel before cooking.

2. Heat the oil and butter in a large, heavy-based frying pan. When it starts to foam, add the potatoes, thyme or rosemary and garlic.

3. Cook over a medium heat for about ten minutes, ensuring you shake the pan frequently to brown the potatoes evenly and avoid sticking.

4. Remove from the heat and season with sea salt and pepper.

5. Finish cooking in the oven (preheated to 180C) for about ten minutes. Remove and check the seasoning to taste.

Pepper steaks with Dijon mustard sauce

Ingredients

2 tblspns (15g) whole peppercorns

2 steaks (10oz or 300g each)

Sea salt

30g butter 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

100ml créme fraíche or double cream

Method

1. Place the peppercorns on a chopping board and crush them with a rolling pin to a coarse finish. Press down on the rolling pin as you crush them.

2. Lightly salt the steaks and roll them in the peppercorns, pressing down on them as you do so. Refrigerate for about 15 minutes before cooking.

3. Heat the butter in a large, heavy-based frying pan until very hot. Add the steaks and sauté over a high heat for five or six minutes on each side. Remove the steaks from the pan (retaining the pan without washing) and place in a warm oven while you make the sauce.

4. Remove the frying pan from the heat, stir in the mustard and the cream and scrape the bottom of the pan to dissolve any remaining meat juices.

5. Place the pan back on the heat and cook until it almost reaches boiling point, but don’t allow it to boil. Taste and season if necessary. Remove steaks from the oven, pour the sauce over the meat and serve.

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Deceptively simple Dauphinoise

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

The Savoy and Dauphiné areas in the French Alps are renowned for rich dairy pastures. A typical dish from these regions is gratin, in which local milk and cheese is used.

There are at least half a dozen recipes for gratin Dauphinoise, the best known of which is the sliced potato and milk mixture. Some use cream, some are topped with cheese; others are flavoured with garlic or layered with wild mushrooms.

The perfect gratin Dauphinoise – a deceptively simple dish to make – is soft and melted with just the right balance of seasoning. If it is cooked too fast or too long, the milk in gratin Dauphinoise has a tendency to curdle, as potatoes have an unexpectedly high acid content.

In this lovely, rich recipe, the potatoes should first be blanched in milk to remove the acid, then simmered in cream.

This recipe is a great accompaniment for many meat dishes but is also a perfect summer meal that can be served hot or cold and teamed with a simple chicken salad.

Gratin Dauphinoise (potato gratin with cheese and cream)

Ingredients (Serves 6)
Half clove garlic
750g potatoes (1 and half lbs)
Salt and pepper
Pinch of grated nutmeg
600ml milk (1 pint)
300ml (half pint) double cream or crème frâiche
45g (1 and half oz) grated gruyère cheese
30g (1oz) butter
And a shallow baking dish (about 1.25l/2-pint capacity)

Method
1. Rub baking dish with the cut side of the garlic and then butter the dish.

2. Peel the potatoes and cut them in thin slices. Don’t soak them in water as this removes some of the starch needed to give the gratin a creamy consistency. Season the slices with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

3. Bring the milk to the boil in a large saucepan, whisking occasionally to prevent it from burning. Add the potatoes to the boiling milk and simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until slightly tender. Drain the potatoes and discard the milk. Set the oven to a very hot temperature (220C, 425F).

4. Return the potatoes to the saucepan and add the cream. Bring to a boil and simmer, stirring occasionally, for another 10-15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender but not falling apart. Taste for seasoning.

5. Spoon the potatoes and cream into the buttered baking dish, sprinkle with cheese and dot with butter. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. Serve hot from the dish.

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New take on fish and chips

Sunday, January 13th, 2008

No Irish chef could talk about vegetables without mentioning the special place of potatoes in the national diet.

When I was growing up, there were only a couple of types of potatoes used in Irish households: one was what we called the ‘reject’ and the other was termed ‘floury’.

The rejects were small, new potatoes that were rejected by the farmer. Once cheap, today these potatoes are used widely in restaurants and have become much more pricey. Floury potatoes were so termed because they burst their jackets when boiled (if over-cooked, they fall apart completely). But, if caught in time, strained, buttered and cooked for a further ten minutes, they are delicious.

Today, there are so many varieties of potato available that chefs need specialist knowledge to get the right potato for each dish. For example, I use Roosters and Maris Piper to cook potato souffle. Roosters are a tasty red potato with pale yellow, dry, floury flesh, while Maris Pipers have a creamy skin and flesh, and a floury texture. For the souffle, the Rooster is cooked in a fondant stock and the Maris Piper is pureed. Combined, they provide a good balance of bite and softness.

The time of year is another factor to be considered when choosing potatoes for a dish, as the temperature affects the solid components of the potato and its water content. At any given time of year, the staff in Madding’s at the Dublin Corporation Market are always on hand to help me choose the right potatoes for the restaurant.

Did someone mention chips? Ah, chips is a word that has been haunting me since the time of the rugby Six Nations last year. Since then, I have become known as the chef who doesn’t serve chips – but this is not strictly true. What is true is that I won’t serve chips unless they are the best I can make.

The perfect chip requires the perfect potato. Large Maris Pipers are good at this time of year. They should be washed in cold water, peeled and cut into 8cm by 2cm pieces, then dried in a clean cloth or kitchen paper. Next, blanche them in sunflower oil for five minutes.

Then, turn up the heat on the chip pan and cook the chips until golden brown (approx five minutes). Remove, place on kitchen paper, season with salt and serve them in a paper cone with ketchup (Heinz is best). If you make chips from a potato with a higher water content than Maris Pipers, they can be soggy and will stick together like paste.

Purple potatoes were produced in Sligo up to a few years ago, and I found them brilliant for making chips. I cooked them with their skin on so they wouldn’t lose colour. The following dish is my take on fish and chips, but for this, you won’t need ketchup.

Fillet of cod with golden potato, prawn bisque and sabayon, serves four

Ingredients
4 pieces of cod – about 120g each
4 Maris Piper potatoes
30g clarified butter
10g potato starch
Sea salt
Fresh ground white milled pepper
2 lemons
20ml olive oil
1 egg

Method
1. Butter a tray and cover with parchment that has been cut into the same size as the cod fillets. Butter the paper and season. Place the cod on top. Season the cod and brush with egg wash.

2. Wash and peel the potatoes, then slice them thinly with a small cutter. Place the potatoes in a pot and bring them to the boil; cook for one minute only. Remove from the heat and refresh the potatoes under running water.

3. Dab the potatoes dry with kitchen paper and place into a pot. Add the potato starch and clarified butter and mix. Arrange the potatoes on the cod and place into the fridge. When the potatoes have cooled, brush with clarified butter.

4. Heat a copper pan and rub the base with olive oil. Place the cod fillet into the pan with the potato side on the bottom and cook until the potatoes are golden brown.

5. Butter a dish and cover with parchment paper cut the same size as the cod. Season the cod, then place it onto a tray and cook in the oven for five minutes at 170 degrees Celsius. Remove from the oven, squeeze the lemon juice on the fish and serve.

Bisque

Ingredients
20ml of brandy
200ml of dry white wine
1kg of prawn shells
1l of fish stock
100g of miripoix
1/2 bulb of garlic
1/2l single cream
2 bay leaves
1 small bunch of thyme
10g of white peppercorns
20g of unsalted butter
Sea salt
Fresh ground white pepper

Method
1. Heat a pot and rub it with olive oil. Add the prawn shells, cook for ten minutes and mix well.

2. Add the miripoix, peppercorns, bay leaves and thyme, and mix well.

3. Flambe with brandy, then add the white wine and reduce the liquid by around three quarters.

4. Add the fish stock, bring to the boil and simmer for four hours, removing any impurities.

5. Remove the liquid and pass it through a fine strainer.

6. Return it to the heat, add the cream and reduce the liquid by three quarters again. Taste and correct the seasoning, before adding the unsalted butter and serving.

Sabayon

Ingredients
3 eggs
10ml truffle juice
20ml of dry martini
30ml of water
Sea salt
Milled white pepper

Method
1. Break the eggs into a stainless steel bowl, mix with a whisk, season and add the truffle juice, dry martini and water.

2. Whisk over a hot hob until light and cooked, then serve.

Garnish
Six baby artichokes, cleaned and blanched. Cut in half, season and finish off with olive oil.

To serve
1. Arrange the veg on the plate.
2. Add the sauce to the plate and spoon over the sabayon.
3. Place the cod fillet with potato topping on the sabayon and serve.

Kevin Thornton is a Michelin-starred chef and owner of Thornton’s Restaurant on St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. www.thorntonsrestaurant.com

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