Pommes de terre Dauphine

This is one delightful way among millions to serve the ubiquitous potato and it’s a specialty of the French province, Dauphine, an area centered around Grenoble. The result is bite-sized, tender and very tasty croquettes of potato making use of a standard puff pastry recipe.

Yield

If there’s plenty else to eat, this will serve 6-8; otherwise 4.

Ingredients

Puff Pastry
50 grams butter
1 decilitre water
120 grams white flour
2 eggs
salt
 
Potatoes
500 grams potatoes (a bit more than a pound of reds)
1 tsp salt
pepper (if desired)
nutmeg (if desired)

Preparation

1. Boil the water, butter and salt. Lower the heat slightly and add the flour and work with a spoon or scraper to mix until the dough pulls away from the sides of the pan. Remove from heat and carefully and quickly incorporate, one after the other, each egg mixing until a smooth dough is obtained.

2. Boil the potatoes 35 minutes, peel, mash and mix with the puff pastry. Using two spoons, fashion little balls of potato dough. Fry them until golden brown in oil and drain on a paper towel.

3. Serve with meat and its drippings or a gravy, or by themselves. However, their true role is to absorb meat drippings when accompanying a nice cut of meat on the plat.

Variations

To spruce these up, dip in an egg batter (beaten egg), then roll in a chapelure (fine bread crumbs or Panko).