Potatoes Anna

I don't know who Anna is, but she must be really chubby if she eats this very often. This dish is over the top. I can eat half a black forest cake for breakfast, but this one almost put me in the grave. But man, is it good.

This dish comes from the book Seven fires, a must have for any of you kindred souls out there who love to cook with fire. Just so you know the seven fires in the book are the parrilla (grill), the chapa (a huge cast iron griddle), the infiernillo (a crazy oven-type grill that has live fire below and above the food), the horno de barro (clay oven), the rescoldo (in the ashes), the asador (iron cross), and the caldero (the cauldron). It's also the only book I know of that tells you how to cook una vaca entera (you guessed it, a whole cow -- the instructions begin at 7 pm the day before when you start the fire using 20 large logs...).

Surprisingly, this is not just a book about meat. It covers it all. There is a great empanada recipe, there are breads, desserts, and several vegetable dishes too. This potato dish caught my eye because it looked so nice and I happened to have a couple of peeled potatoes lying around that I had to do something with.

To make this dish, you'll need butter (I used about half a cup, the recipe calls for a whole pound!), 4 potatoes (these are stunt potatoes, the ones I used were already peeled), some herbs (thyme, chives, oregano, sage, whatever strikes your fancy), some lemon zest, and salt and pepper. Start by heating your oven to 350 (the book, of course, suggests using your horno de barro but the oven inside is fine too).

The first thing you have to do is clarify the butter. There are three main things in butter: fat, water, and milk solids. (The water is what makes butter sizzle when it hits a hot pan -- it starts to boil out.) The goal of clarifying is to get the milk solids out. This lets you use the butter at higher temps since the solids are prone to burning. The first thing to do is get the butter in a sauce pan over low heat.

When it's melted it will look like this. The white foam on top is composed of milk solids.

Underneath is the butter fat, then on the bottom of the pot is another layer of milk solids.

So, you skim the white stuff off the top, then gently pour out the fat trying to leave as much of the remaing white stuff in the pot.

You should end up with something like this at the end. You can see that I have just over 1/3 cup of clarified butter here, and trust me, it was plenty.

Chop your herbs of choice (I used oregano, thyme, and chives) and zest your lemon.

Then slice the spuds: the book says 1/16 of an inch thick. Good luck with that. I just sliced as thinly as I could with a thin, sharp knife.

OK! Ready to roll. Pour about a tablespoon of the clarified butter in a skillet (this one is about 8 inches). The book suggests making this in 4 individual ramekins, but I can't see how you could pull that off with out it getting really fussy.

Put down a layer of overlapping potato slices. (Leave a hole in the middle.)

Then add a sprinkling of your herbs and lemon zest. Season lightly with some salt and pepper too, and drizzle two tablespoons of clarified butter on top (you can see where this is going).

Repeat these layers until you are out of spuds. Make sure you have some butter on top, and then give the whole stack a gentle press to make sure they are all nice and smooshed down together. Now pop that puppy in the oven for about 50 minutes. (It's probably a good idea to have something else in there too, like maybe a chicken in a pot?)

Cook until they are nicely browned on top.

Then ease a thin spatula under the spuds and around the edges to loosen them up. They must not be stuck anywhere, because now...

...you're going to flip them over onto a plate. In retrospect it may have been wise to try and drain off some of the bubbling, molten butter, but, oh well. Drained or not, you need to put a plate over the skillet. You should have gloves on both hands (to protect you from the freakin' hot handle and all the molten butter that's about to fly around). Then, firmly holding the plate to the skillet, grab the handle, lift and flip in one deft butter flinging motion and...

...voila!! Let me here ya say "OH YEAH!"

I recommend serving with a slotted spoon, since having too much butter going with the potatoes is heart attack city. I'm serious. I needed a dose of Unicum after supper just to make sure I'd see the dawn, and even then I had my doubts (and that's saying something!). But, man, was it good. Francis, you're a genius.

¡Buen provecho!