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Potatoes, Bellinzonaise
Boil four medium, sound potatoes in a quart water with a teaspoon salt for thirty-five minutes. Peel, then cut into even quarters. Place in a frying pan with half ounce melted butter. Season with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons white pepper; sprinkle over them one teaspoon fresh, finely chopped parsley. Gently toss while heating nicely for five minutes. Dress on a hot dish and serve hot.
A plain sauté of boiled potatoes, and the only real technique is in the handling. Everything hinges on cooking the potatoes whole in their skins so they stay intact when quartered.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two of them make half a teaspoon of white pepper. That is a generous amount for four potatoes; taste as you go if you are not used to white pepper's musty heat.
- Half ounce butterOne tablespoon. For four potatoes in a wide pan that is barely enough to coat them, and adding another tablespoon will not hurt the dish.
- Thirty-five minutesTimed for whole potatoes cooked in their skins, which is a long boil by modern habit. Test with a skewer at 20 to 25 minutes; a waxy potato boiled to collapse will break apart in the pan.
- Peel while hotThe skins slip off easily straight from the water, which is why the recipe boils first and peels after. Hold them in a towel rather than letting them cool.
- Choice of potatoUse a waxy or all-purpose variety. Floury baking potatoes will crumble at the tossing stage.
- Gently tossThe five minutes is for heating through and glazing the surfaces, not for browning. If you want colour, leave the quarters undisturbed on one cut face for a few minutes first, then toss.
- YieldFour potatoes serve four as a side dish. The parsley goes in with the seasoning rather than at the end, so add a little more raw off the heat if you want it bright.
Filippini's International Cook Book attaches place names to dozens of its garnishes and side dishes in the French manner of the professional kitchen — he was long associated with Delmonico's in New York. Bellinzona is the capital of Ticino, the Italian-speaking canton of southern Switzerland, though the label bellinzonaise is essentially unattested elsewhere in period cookery, so nothing here is documented as local to the town. The pattern matters more than the place: boiling potatoes whole, then finishing them in butter with chopped herbs, was a quick way of getting a hot vegetable to the table during service, and giving each variation a distinct name let a kitchen list the same potato a dozen ways on a dozen menus.