Home › A Calendar of Dinners › Anna Potatoes
Anna Potatoes
Peel, wash and drain 4 good-sized, sound, raw potatoes. Slice them with a Saratogachip potato machine. If none is at hand, slice them as fine as possible. Grate 2 ounces of Parmesan or Swiss cheese. Heat 2 tablespoons Crisco in a small frying pan, remove pan from fire and cover bottom with light layer of potatoes. Mix teaspoon salt with 2 saltspoons white pepper, sprinkle a little over potatoes, spread a little cheese over potatoes, and place few bits Crisco over cheese. Arrange another layer of potatoes--and so on till all are employed. Cover pan, place on moderate fire for 5 minutes. Turn them over with cake turner; let them cook again 3 minutes, then place in hot oven for 10 minutes. Turn on hot dish and serve.
Spinach, Martha Trim off stalks of 3 quarts fresh spinach, discarding stale leaves if any. Thoroughly wash and drain, plunge in gallon boiling water with 1 tablespoon salt and boil for 10 minutes. Take them up with skimmer, drain on sieve, press out all water, chop finely, place in saucepan. Cut 3 slices bread in 1/3 inch square pieces, place on plate, pour over them 1 tablespoon vinegar, then brown them in small frying pan with 1 tablespoon melted Crisco to golden color, add them to spinach, with 2 hard-cooked eggs cut into 8 pieces each, 1 tablespoon Crisco, salt, sugar, grated nutmeg to taste, and 4 tablespoons cream. Mix well with wooden spoon and cook 10 minutes, lightly mixing once in a while, dress on vegetable dish and serve.
Mackerel, Cold, Vinaigrette Select fine mackerel; clean, leaving head on, wrap in piece of cheesecloth, and boil in strong solution of vinegar and water until tender, taking care that it does not cook too long. 15 to 25 minutes should be sufficient. Make a vinaigrette sauce with 1/2 cup tarragon vinegar, 1 cup melted Crisco, 1 teaspoon made mustard, 1 teaspoon chopped parsley, 1 teaspoon chopped shallots, and 2 teaspoons chopped capers. Put vinegar into basin, add mustard, little salt, stir in Crisco and chopped ingredients. Mix well together, lay mackerel, after removing from cloth, on long platter, pour over vinaigrette sauce and let marinate thoroughly, putting in refrigerator as soon as cool. Serve ice cold in bed of parsley, garnished with lemon slices, and pass vinaigrette sauce with it.
Puree, a I'Indienne 2 large apples, 4 tablespoons Crisco, 1 large onion, 1 large carrot, 1 turnip, white 2 leeks, 1 stalk celery, sprig parsley, 1 bay leaf, 1 tablespoon cocoanut, juice 1/2 lemon, 1 tomato, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon red pepper, 1 tablespoon curry powder, 1 teaspoon curry paste, 1/2 cup cream, some boiled rice, and 2 quarts of water.
Melt Crisco, cut up all vegetables (prepared) into rough pieces, fry them a little in hot Crisco, add also curry powder, and fry it. Do not peel apples; simply wipe, cut up and add with vegetables. When fried for 7 minutes, add all ingredients except cream, simmer till soft, then rub all through fine sieve, return to pan to reheat, and gently add cream. Serve rice on paper mat, as croutons are served with most soups.
A cheese-laced version of the French potato cake, written for a shortening-company cookbook. The method is sound but the timings are optimistic, and one small omission in the original will decide whether the cake holds together.
- Do not rinse the sliced potatoesThe original says to wash the potatoes before slicing, which is right; do not wash them after. The surface starch is the only thing gluing the layers into a cake, and a rinse or a soak leaves you with a pan of loose chips.
- Saratoga-chip machineThat is a hand slicer, the ancestor of the mandoline. Aim for slices about 1/16 inch — thin enough to bend, thick enough to keep their shape. A food processor with a 2 mm blade does the same work.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so 2 saltspoons is 1/2 teaspoon of white pepper against 1 teaspoon of salt. That is a peppery cake by modern standards; halve the pepper if that is not what you want.
- CriscoThis book was written to sell hydrogenated shortening, and Crisco appears in every recipe here whether it belongs or not. Pommes Anna is traditionally made with clarified butter, which browns the crust and flavors it; use about 4 tablespoons, clarified so the milk solids do not scorch.
- Oven heat"Hot oven" in a book of this period is usually reckoned somewhere around 400-450F. A "moderate fire" on the stovetop is medium -- hot enough to set a crust in five minutes without blackening it.
- The timings are shortFive minutes, three minutes and ten minutes may not cook 4 large potatoes through, especially if the slices are on the thick side. Allow up to 8-10 minutes per side on the stove and 20-30 minutes in the oven; the cake is done when a knife slides through the center with no resistance.
- Pan and turningUse a heavy ovenproof skillet, 8 to 9 inches, so the layers pack tightly. Rather than flipping with a cake turner, slide the cake onto a plate and invert it back into the pan, or press it down firmly and unmold onto the serving dish at the end.
- The cheeseTwo ounces of Parmesan or Swiss is not part of the classical dish and it does make the cake richer and more likely to stick. Press the layers down hard as you build them and be generous with fat on the pan bottom.
- YieldFour good-sized potatoes in a 9-inch pan serves four as a side dish. Serve immediately; the crust softens within minutes of leaving the oven.
Pommes Anna is a Second Empire Paris dish, generally traced to Adolphe Dugléré at the Café Anglais and said to be named for one of the celebrated demimondaines of the 1860s — Anna Deslions is the name most often given, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. It was enough of a set piece to have its own vessel, a lidded copper cocotte à pommes Anna designed so the cake could be turned in its own pan. By the time it reached this book it had become a piece of restaurant French repackaged for the American home cook, cheese added and butter quietly swapped for the shortening the publisher was in business to sell.