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Potatoes in the Belgian Manner
Take some slices of streaky bacon, about five inches long, and heat them in a pan. When the bacon is half-cooked, take it out of the pan and in the fat that remains behind fry some very finely-sliced onions till they are brown. When the onions are well browned, put them in a large pot, large enough for all the potatoes you wish to cook, adding pepper, salt, and a coffee-spoonful of sweet herbs dried and mixed, which in England replace the thyme and bay-leaves used in Belgium. Add sufficient water to cook the potatoes and your slices of bacon. Cook till tender.
A one-pot braise of potatoes in bacon-and-onion broth. The instructions assume you know what the finished dish should look like, so the two things worth settling before you start are how much water to add and what to do with the half-cooked bacon.
- The hinge: water level"Sufficient water to cook the potatoes" means barely covering them, not swimming. The liquid should reduce to a scant, glossy sauce by the time the potatoes are tender; too much and you have a thin soup with the bacon fat dispersed through it.
- The bacon goes back inThe bacon is pulled out half-cooked and then listed again in the pot — return the slices with the potatoes so they finish in the braise. Cut them into lardons first if you would rather not fish out long strips at the table.
- Streaky baconThis is British streaky, i.e. ordinary American belly bacon, sliced fairly thick. The recipe does not specify smoked or unsmoked; heavily smoked supermarket bacon will dominate the pot, so a milder cure suits the dish better.
- A coffee-spoonfulRoughly a teaspoon, and less rather than more. The "sweet herbs dried and mixed" is what the text says stands in England for the thyme and bay-leaves used in Belgium — if you have thyme and a bay leaf, use those instead: two or three thyme sprigs and one bay leaf for about two pounds of potatoes.
- Potato choice and cutA waxy or all-purpose potato holds its shape in the braise; a floury baking potato will collapse and thicken the liquid, which is not necessarily wrong but is a different dish. Halve or quarter them into pieces of even size, about 1½ inches.
- SaltThe recipe salts early, with the onions and herbs. Between the bacon and the reduction there may be enough already, so go lightly and correct at the end.
- Timing and yieldSimmer covered 20 to 30 minutes depending on the size of the pieces. Two pounds of potatoes, one large onion and four or five slices of bacon feeds four as a supper dish, more as a side.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled by Mrs. Brian Luck in 1915 from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had come to England after the German invasion of 1914 — which is why the text stops mid-recipe to explain that English "sweet herbs" must stand in for the thyme and bay-leaves the cook would have used at home. That small aside is the whole book in miniature: displaced cooks reconstructing familiar food from unfamiliar shops. The dish itself belongs to the large family of Low Countries potato braises built on rendered pork fat and browned onion, and sits near the Flemish stoemp and hutsepot dishes, where cheap fat, one aromatic vegetable and a pot of water do the work that stock does elsewhere. Nothing here requires an oven or a joint of meat, which is much of the point in a year of shortages and improvised kitchens.