Saturday 31 January 2015

Recipe - Potato Pavé

This is the beta run of a side dish I'm serving tonight when we're having some friends over for dinner.

I've had similar dishes in restaurants over the years and thought I'd give it a go. Guests tends to get a little bit embarrassed if you go completely batshit mental if the dish doesn't work out so I thought I'd give it a go one weekend early.

It worked out quite nicely, even if I say so myself, the only thing I'll probably do different is add a bit more chopped rosemary and some more seasoning - but that's very personal so you might think differently when you try your own version.

To me pavé means cobblestones, especially the mythical ones in the Paris - Roubaix cycling classic. Having googled it, it seems that pavé is used to describe rectangular or square  serving of food, normally sized for one portion.

As I was setting this up I couldn't be bothered to bring out the Magimix or try and find the mandolin, I hand sliced it. With varying thickness of the slices as a result, but all in all it worked fine. If you want to be a bit more precise - the mandolin is probably the way forward.

I know it might seem a bit faffy, having to wait for it to cool down and get pressed and all that, but it is worth it. It looks quite impressive and tastes really nicely. If you make a bigger batch you can always freeze the extra ones and use at a later stage.

As you can read above, I was mainly happy with the taste of the dish. The photo though - not so much. During the time off from this blog I've still been cooking so that's still up to speed but I do feel that I need to get my photography back up to scratch again. I had my spidey-senses tingling as I was shooting this but I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong. Now that I have had a chance to analyse it - wrong lens, getting myself too close the baking tray. Well, I guess I live and re-learn...

When this post goes live I will probably be serving, or be very close to serving, this dish so let's have a look at how it is cooked.

Ingredients (serves 4)
1 kg potatoes (I used Red Desiree ones)
175 ml double cream
2 - 3 sprigs of rosemary, leaves picked
30g unsalted butter
Salt
Freshly ground pepper

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180c. Line a oven safe pan/pyrex container with parchment paper, making sure to have enough overspill to cover it later.

Thinly slice the potatoes, preferably with a mandolin. Finely chop all the rosemary leaves and the butter.

Start layering the potatoes. Add some cream, rosemary and seasonings every second layer. Finish with a layer of potatoes.

Fold over the parchment paper and cover with foil. Bake in the oven for about 90 minutes. Uncover and cook for another 30 minutes or until nicely golden.

Remove from the oven and allow it to cool. Recover and put another pan on top with some heavy cans in it - or weigh it down using another method of your own choosing - and pop in the fridge over night to set/compress.

Next day, pre-heat the oven to 200c. Remove from the fridge and turn out on to a chopping board. Trim the edges and cut four, roughly, equal sized squares.

Put into the oven for roughly 10 minutes, or it starts to turn golden. Turn over and repeat.

Enjoy!

2 comments:

  1. Mike, this sounds good. I love potatoes, love cream, gotta love this!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you! It's a bit faffy but well worth it. It is quite good as a prepare ahead dish if you're having people over but might not have time to cook on the day. Make a big batch and freeze some and have as a backup is also another option.

      // Mike

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// Mike