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Potatoes, Chateaubriand
Neatly peel and wash eighteen of the smallest potatoes obtainable. Give them queen olive forms. Heat two tablespoons leaf lard in a frying pan, add the potatoes and fry to a nice golden colour, tossing occasionally, which will require about fifteen minutes. Then place in the oven for ten minutes. Remove, drain off the fat. Dredge over half teaspoon salt, adding half teaspoon chopped parsley and a very light tablespoon butter, toss them well and serve.
A simple turned-potato garnish, cooked in fat on the stove and finished in the oven. The only real technique is the shaping.
- "Queen olive forms"Trim the potatoes with a small knife into smooth barrel shapes about the size of a large olive; modern kitchen practice generally cuts such shapes with about seven sides, though the recipe asks only for the olive form. Use a paring or bird's-beak knife, and keep the shapes uniform so they brown at the same rate; the trimmings go into soup or mash.
- Potato choiceWaxy or all-purpose potatoes hold the shape better than a floury baker, which tends to crumble at the edges as it fries. Very small new potatoes can simply be trimmed rather than fully turned.
- Leaf lardRendered fat from around the pig's kidneys, mild and neutral. Any good lard, clarified butter or duck fat works; the point is a fat that will take a golden colour without burning.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. A hot oven of 400-425F for the ten minutes finishes the centres while keeping the crust; the pan goes in as it is, fat and all.
- Fifteen minutes on the stoveThat is for potatoes the size of an olive, over moderate heat, tossed so they colour on all faces. Larger pieces need longer or they will be brown outside and raw within; test one with the point of a knife before the potatoes go into the oven.
- Finishing butterThe butter and parsley go on after the frying fat is drained off, off the heat, so the butter coats rather than fries. Salt at this stage too, as salting earlier draws moisture and hinders browning.
- YieldEighteen small potatoes works out at four or five apiece for a small table, and the dish is intended as a garnish alongside the steak it is named for rather than as a dish on its own.
The name comes from Chateaubriand, the thick cut from the head of the beef fillet, which in classic French service was sent out with a sauce and a garnish of small shaped potatoes and watercress; the cut is generally traced to the household of the writer and diplomat François-René de Chateaubriand, whose chef is traditionally credited with it in the early nineteenth century. Turned potatoes of this kind carry a whole vocabulary of sizes in French kitchen practice — cocotte, château, fondante, and the olive shape called for here — and the shaping was a standard test of a young cook's knife work.