Comments | emilia_romagna: Pommes Fondant

emilia_romagna

Pommes Fondant

Apr 03, 2009 21:54

I'm thinking about making pommes fondant tomorrow for dinner. I just learned about them tonight on Hell's Kitchen (see? its edutainment!). Apparently, you cut potatoes into little barrel shapes, stick at the bottom of a deep sided pan, cover them halfway with broth, season, slather butter on top, and then bake until the broth has reduced by half ( Read more... )

recipe, food

Comments 8

serendipity17 April 4 2009, 05:25:47 UTC

Save yourself time and agony and simply cut the potatoes in eighths or sixths rather than barrel-shapes (seven-sided is standard, and you only get four per Russet). The whole point of fancy-cut potatoes is to show that you can afford to throw away all the parts you aren't eating and that you have servant man-hours to waste on artsy-prep.

emilia_romagna April 4 2009, 05:45:09 UTC

See, this is why I love you. Thanks! We'll skip the artsy prep then :)

serendipity17 April 4 2009, 06:15:54 UTC

I came out of cooking school fully intending on sharing the knowledge with my community. Personally, I despise tourneeing potatoes.

Fondant potatoes (Fondre=to melt, same verb origin as fondue) sound like a braised potato. Unlike boiling, there will be minimal liquid bubbling with vigor against the potato pieces, so breakage should be minimal.

mmm... fondue... emilia_romagna April 4 2009, 06:29:08 UTC

From what I've been able to find online, it looks like they are braised. I haven't been able to come up with enough information to suit my tastes (searching on "fondant" by itself leads to the expected sugar/ frosting).

I hadn't thought about breakage - but I think you're right, and that the smaller pieces (at least, I'm picturing 8ths of potatoes to be smaller than the barrels in the pictures) wont get too mushy.

Also, out of curiosity, which culinary school did you go to?

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