If you slice waxy-fleshed potatoes so thin you can almost see through them, then bake them slowly in duck fat or cream, the result is both humble and luxurious. The potatoes should almost melt into the fat, and that relies very much on your dexterity with the knife. A mandolin slicer is the piece of kit I really need for this, but I don’t like them, even those with a safety guard to keep blade and fingers well apart. Instead, I battle on with a freshly sharpened kitchen knife.
The earthy sweetness of a potato is accentuated by salty flavours, so I layer my “almost” transparent slices with grated Comté cheese, effectively making a side dish into a main course. (We eat it with a wintery salad of shredded white cabbage and chicory, tossed with a vinegar-sharp dressing.)
My second potato recipe of the week involved duck, a jar of duck fat and a long, slow oven. The fat and potatoes became one, and the duck legs, cooked astride the layers of tatties, crisped neatly. To slice through the unctuous fat I put a jar of pickled red cabbage on the table.
These are potato days: the wet, cold nights when a spud is invariably our answer to everything. Baked, their flesh scooped out and mashed with shards of crisped bacon; beaten to a fluff with smoked mackerel and parsley, or stirred through with sour cream and lumpfish roe. Once, arriving home soaked to the skin, I couldn’t wait for a baked potato’s skin to crisp up, so I steamed then mashed a couple of Maris Pipers with slices of Tunworth cheese and a little cream, so the flesh was soft enough to eat with a spoon, then spread it on hot toast. A spirit-lifting celebration of carbs if ever there was one.
If I have a choice I buy dirty potatoes, where the soil clinging to their skin is still damp. But this week I came home with some yellow-skinned spuds as clean and shiny as a freshly bathed toddler. I’m not sure it mattered once they were sliced and baked with cream. It was a cold day, so I infused the cream with slices of smoked garlic and bayleaves. As they baked, the kitchen slowly filled with the scent of far-off bonfires from the softening smoked garlic.
I do think it is worth infusing the cream (or stock if you prefer) with garlic, bay and cloves, and maybe black pepper and cinnamon. The aromatics need 20 minutes or so in the liquid in order to work their magic, but lend a warm, mellow quality to the dish that makes the delay well worth it.
Potatoes with smoked garlic and Comté
Should you not be able to get hold of Comté, a semi-firm cheese such as Fontina or Emmentaler will work just as well.
Serves 6
smoked garlic 7 cloves
double cream 500ml
bay leaf 1
cloves 2
full-fat milk 200ml
Comté 150g
potatoes 4 medium, waxy fleshed (yellow)
butter 30g
Peel the smoked garlic and cut it into paper-thin slices then put it into a medium-sized saucepan with the cream, bayleaf, cloves and milk. Bring the cream and milk mixture to the boil, turn off the heat, cover with a lid and set aside to infuse. Set the oven at 160C/gas mark 2-3.
Coarsely grate the cheese. Peel the potatoes and slice them as thinly as you can, using a mandolin cutter if you have one.
Butter a large, shallow baking dish or roasting tin. Place a single layer of potato slices over the base then add a handful of the grated cheese, scattered evenly over the surface. Add salt and black pepper and a little of the sliced garlic from the infusion, too.
Continue with more potatoes and the remaining cheese until you have used them all up, seasoning each layer as you go.
Pour the infused cream over the surface, then bake for 1 hour and 50 minutes to 2 hours, until the top is appetisingly brown and the potatoes are meltingly tender.
Duck with duck-fat potatoes and pickled cabbage
The potatoes should be cut very finely here, so that they almost melt into the duck fat. A sharp accompaniment, such as sauerkraut or the pickled cabbage, below, is essential to balance the gloriously duck fat-rich potatoes.
Serves 4
baking potatoes 3, large
duck fat 180g
rosemary sprigs 4
duck legs 4
For the pickled cabbage:
red cabbage 400g
white wine vinegar 125ml
cider vinegar 100ml
coriander seed 1 tsp
soft brown sugar 4 tsp
Set the oven at 175C/gas mark 3. Slice the potatoes as thinly as possible (using a mandolin cutter if you have one). Melt the duck fat in a small pan. Spread 2 tbsp of the duck fat over the base of a roasting tin, then place a layer of sliced potatoes over the surface, season generously with salt, pepper and some of the rosemary leaves, then repeat until all the potatoes are used.
Place the duck legs on top of the potatoes and roast them for 1 hour and 15 minutes, until the duck legs are crisp and the potatoes almost falling apart.
Make the pickle: shred the red cabbage and place it in a stainless steel or heatproof glass bowl. Put the vinegars, coriander seeds and the sugar in a small saucepan, then bring them to the boil. Pour the pickling liquor over the shredded cabbage and toss the mixture gently, then cover and set aside. Leave it overnight if you can, or a good couple of hours if not.
Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @NigelSlater
