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Potato Farci
Cut uncooked potatoes into halves; scoop out the centers with a vegetable scoop into the form of a cup. Mince some cold cooked meat, season it with salt and pepper, and pour over it a small quantity of melted butter, say 1 tablespoonful to each ½ pint of meat. Put this into the potato cups and bake in a moderate oven until the potatoes are done. When done, take from the fire, add 1 tablespoonful of boiling stock to each and The portion of the potato scooped out serve. may be used for mashed potatoes or made into potato croquettes.
A stuffed-potato dish built to use up yesterday's roast. The main thing the original does not tell you is how long the baking takes, and that raw potato shells need help to cook through.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is usually taken as about 350F. At that heat, halved raw potatoes filled with meat need roughly 50 to 70 minutes depending on size, and they are done when a knife passes through the wall of the shell without resistance.
- The half-pint of meatMinced meat is measured by volume here: a half pint is one cup, roughly 5 to 6 oz of chopped cooked beef or lamb. One tablespoon of melted butter per cup is the stated ratio.
- Choose the right potatoUse large, evenly shaped baking potatoes, halved lengthwise, so each half sits flat and holds its filling. A melon baller works as the vegetable scoop; leave the wall about half an inch thick or the shell collapses.
- Cover, then uncoverBaked dry and uncovered from raw, the exposed potato rim dries and hardens well before the flesh softens. Covering the dish for the first two-thirds of the time and finishing it open gives a cooked shell and a browned top.
- Reheating cooked meatThe filling is already-cooked meat, so it is being reheated rather than cooked. It should come to steaming hot throughout in the finished dish, which the long bake handles easily; do not shorten the time to keep the meat pink.
- The spoonful of stockThe boiling stock added at the end is there to moisten filling that has dried out in the oven. Add it hot, off the heat, and serve at once, or it simply soaks into the potato.
- YieldFigure two halves per person as a supper dish, one alongside a larger main. A cup of meat fills about four halves.
- The scooped-out fleshRaw potato trimmings darken quickly in air. Drop them straight into cold water and boil them for mash or croquettes while the shells bake.
Farci is simply the French for stuffed, and kitchen French here dresses up an economy dish made from cold leftover roast. Stuffed vegetables of this kind were one solution to the question of what to do on Monday with the Sunday joint. Meat was the expensive item, so a cupful of it was stretched across several potato shells, and the recipe itself directs that the flesh scooped out be used for mashed potatoes or croquettes rather than wasted.