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Potato Noisettes
Peel four large, sound raw potatoes. Scoop out with a small Parisian potato scoop as many pieces as possible. Place them in a saucepan with a quart boiling water and a teaspoon salt and boil for eight minutes. Drain well. Heat in a frying pan a tablespoon butter, place the potatoes in the pan and fry until they have obtained a golden colour, tossing quite frequently. Season with half teaspoon salt and one teaspoon chopped parsley. Mix well and serve.
A short French garnish potato, and the only real difficulty is equipment and the fact that four potatoes yield surprisingly little.
- The Parisian scoopThis is what is now sold as a melon baller or Parisienne cutter, usually 20-25 mm across. Press it into the raw potato and rotate a full turn to release a clean sphere.
- Yield and the trimmingsFour large potatoes will give perhaps 40-50 balls, enough for three or four people as a side. Well over half the potato is left as offcuts; keep them for mash, soup or hash rather than discarding them.
- Potato choiceA firm, waxy or all-purpose potato holds its shape under the scoop. A very floury baking potato tends to crumble at the edge of the cut and breaks up in the pan.
- The parboil is the hingeEight minutes in salted boiling water sets the outside and cooks the centre through; the frying is only for colour. If they are still hard when drained they will brown before they are cooked, so test one at seven minutes.
- Dry them properlyDrain and let the steam blow off for a minute or two before they go into the fat. Surface water stops browning and makes hot butter spit.
- Butter alone will scorchA tablespoon of butter over the surface area of fifty potato balls is thin, and butter solids darken quickly at frying heat. Use clarified butter, or add a spoonful of neutral oil, and keep the pan at a steady medium-high with frequent tossing.
- Seasoning at the endThe half teaspoon of salt goes in off the heat with the parsley, as the recipe directs. Serve immediately: noisettes soften within a few minutes of leaving the pan.
Noisette is French for hazelnut, and in kitchen usage it describes anything cut to roughly that size and browned to roughly that colour — hence pommes noisettes, small spheres of potato fried golden. They belong to the family of scooped potato garnishes codified in professional French cooking, alongside the slightly larger pommes parisienne, and the tool itself carries the Paris name. A dish like this exists less as home cooking than as a plate garnish, something to set beside a roast or a grilled cutlet where a spoonful of mashed potato would look careless. The generous waste it involves is itself a clue to its origins in a kitchen with a stockpot and a staff to use up the trimmings.