Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Potato Straws
Potato Straws
Wash a pint of potatoes, peeling them very thin, slice to about a quarter of an inch in thickness and place them in boiling salted water, and boil until they are tender, say about ten minutes or so. Turn them into a colander with good-sized holes and let the water drain off until the potatoes have become quite dry, sprinkle over a teaspoonful of salt and a quarter of a saltspoonful of pepper, hold the colander over one end of a large dish as the potatoes are pressed through it, so that the potatoes may fall in rows, moving the colander from one side to the other. Wipe the edges of the dish with a clean towel, set it in the oven for two or three minutes to heat the potatoes thoroughly, and serve.
Despite the name, these are not fried shoestring potatoes but boiled potatoes pushed through a colander into loose ropes -- essentially riced potatoes plated for looks. A few of the measures need translating.
- A pint of potatoesA volume measure, most likely taken before peeling and slicing, somewhere in the neighbourhood of a pound, or two large russets. It serves two to three as a side.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so a quarter of one is a scant pinch of pepper -- very restrained seasoning by modern standards.
- Quarter-inch slicesCutting the potatoes thin is what makes ten minutes enough. Whole or halved potatoes at this size want twenty-five to thirty.
- The hinge: dry them properlyWet potato collapses into paste as it goes through the holes rather than holding a strand. Drain thoroughly and let them steam dry in the colander for several minutes before pressing.
- Use the colander, or a ricerA potato ricer with a coarse plate does exactly this job and gives more even strands; the large-holed colander is the 1896 equivalent. A fine sieve will not work -- the holes are too small and you get purée.
- Choose a mealy potatoRussets or another floury variety break down and extrude cleanly. Waxy potatoes turn gluey when forced through holes.
- The oven stepTwo or three minutes in the oven is only to drive off surface moisture and take the chill off the platter; the recipe gives no temperature at all. Longer and the strands dry into crusts.
- Serve at onceRiced potato loses its shape and its heat quickly. This is a dish assembled at the last possible moment; the recipe has you wipe the platter rim, give it a brief reheat, and serve.
Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maître d'hôtel whose name fronts this 1896 volume, was not a cook -- he ran the Waldorf's dining rooms -- but this is a good example of the plating-minded side of the book. The name is sometimes said to borrow from pommes paille, the deep-fried straw potatoes of French service, though the technique here is the older one of forcing boiled potato through a coarse sieve. The point is texture and appearance: pushed through in rows across a long dish, the potato arrives light and open rather than packed, and a hotel could produce it in quantity with nothing more than a colander. It belongs to a period when a side of potatoes was expected to be visibly arranged, not merely spooned.