Peel some new potatoes and cook until tender. Mix some fine bread-crumbs with grated Parmesan cheese and chopped parsley. Beat 2 eggs with salt and pepper; dip each potato in beaten egg and roll in the bread-crumbs. Fry in deep hot lard until brown. Serve hot.
August 3 — No. 3
Spanish
A simple crumbed-and-fried potato, and the whole thing hinges on getting the boiled potatoes dry enough for the coating to grip. The original assumes small new potatoes cooked whole.
- QuantitiesNo amounts are given beyond the 2 eggs. For 1.5 lb of small new potatoes, figure about 1 cup fine dry breadcrumbs, 1/2 cup grated Parmesan and 2 tablespoons chopped parsley. Serves four as a side.
- Dry the potatoesBoil them in salted water until just tender, drain, and let them steam dry in the hot pan for a few minutes. Egg will slide off a wet, warm-damp skin and the crust will fall away in the fat.
- Size mattersChoose potatoes no bigger than a walnut so they stay whole through dipping and frying. Larger ones should be halved and handled gently; a waxy variety holds together far better than a floury baker.
- Deep hot lardLard was a common frying fat of the period and gives an excellent crust, but any neutral fat works. The recipe gives no temperature; around 350-360F suits, as hotter risks scorching the Parmesan in the crumbs before the potato heats through.
- Frying timeThese are already cooked, so you are only browning the shell. Two to three minutes in the fat is enough; longer dries the interior out.
- Cheese and saltParmesan is salty, so go lightly with the salt in the egg. Season the crumbs rather than the potato itself for more even flavour.
- ServingDrain briefly on a rack, not paper, so the underside stays crisp, and serve at once. They soften within ten minutes and do not reheat well.
This is one of the daily entries in a book that assigned a nation to each dish of the year, at a time when American cooks were being introduced to "foreign" cookery in small, manageable doses. The "Spanish" label here is loose: crumbed and fried potatoes of this kind belong to a broad southern European habit of egg-and-breadcrumb coating, the same technique behind cutlets and croquettes, and the Parmesan points as much to Italy as to Spain. What is genuinely of its period is the deep lard, the assumption that new potatoes are a seasonal August pleasure worth a dish of their own, and the vagueness about quantities, which is left here to the cook's judgement.