Potato Straws
These are raw potatoes cut into match-like strips and fried in deep smoking hot fat. They should be drained for a moment on unglazed paper.
A garnish rather than a dish, and given in the shorthand a 1900 cook would have understood. Two details carry it: dry potatoes and fat at the right temperature.
- Dry the potatoes firstCut the strips, rinse them in cold water to wash off surface starch, then dry them thoroughly on a towel. Wet potatoes dropped into deep fat will spit violently and steam themselves limp instead of crisping.
- "Smoking hot" is too hot"Smoking hot" is hotter than you want -- Aim for 350-375F: hot enough that the strips seize immediately, cool enough that the fat is not breaking down. Fat well past its smoke point will taint the flavour.
- Match-like means thinAbout 1/8 inch square, the thickness of a wooden match, and as even as you can manage. Uneven strips give you burnt threads and raw centres in the same batch.
- Small batchesA large handful at once drops the fat temperature sharply and the straws absorb grease. Fry a loose single layer at a time, two to three minutes, until pale gold; they darken a shade after they come out.
- Unglazed paperMeaning brown butcher's or grocer's paper, which absorbs. Paper towel does the same job. Salt them the moment they leave the fat, while the surface is still hot enough to hold it.
- Choice of potatoA mealy, high-starch potato such as russet gives the crispest result. Waxy salad potatoes hold moisture and stay leathery.
- YieldTwo medium potatoes make enough to garnish four plates. They are meant to be served straight from the pan; they soften within the hour and do not reheat well.
Potato straws sit in the Game section because that is where they belonged on the table, not because they have anything to do with game itself: a heap of shoestring potatoes was often said to accompany roast grouse, partridge or venison in the late nineteenth century, along with bread sauce and a tart jelly. They are the finest cut in a family that also produced pommes frites, pommes allumettes (matchstick) and the lacy pommes paille, straw potatoes, of French restaurant cookery — the last being what this entry translates almost literally. Potato straws appear in American general cookbooks around the turn of the century as an everyday garnish rather than a chef's flourish. The instruction to drain on unglazed paper is a reminder that the alternative, glazed or coated paper, would simply have let the fat pool.