Let me introduce you to the classic: Pomme Anna, also known as Anna potatoes, a popular French dish. Pomme (de terre) means potato, and I have no clue who Anna was. With some quick research, it shows that she was a little scandalous, but who cares, the lady must have had style, as she was named after such a beautiful, classic, yet simple dish.
Pomme Anna is a French side dish with thinly-sliced potatoes layered into a cake of beautiful rings. Cooked briefly on the stove and finished off in the oven, Pomme Anna features a crisp exterior and a very soft and buttery interior. It looks and tastes beautiful and will definitely be the center of attention at your dinner.
Start by peeling the potatoes and slicing them as thin as possible. To make Pomme Anna as symmetric as you can, cut out circles from the potato slices with a round cookie cutter. Use the leftovers to make mashed potatoes or a soup the next day.
Once you’ve melted the butter in the pan, make sure to remove it from the heat so you don’t burn yourself when you stack the potatoes. Layer the potatoes around the plate in the skillet of a large circle. Once you come back around to the beginning of this circle, continue stacking with the second layer, but this time, layer around in the opposite direction, as this will give more stability to the dish. Repeat layering in circles in each direction until you have around 5-6 layers. To make it look as symmetrical as possible, make sure you pile the circles along the borders of your skillet. There are a lot of recipes that layer potato slices in the center of the circle as well to make a kind of a potato cake, but I like to leave the inside empty in order to create a nice, round, donut-shaped circle.
The tricky part of this recipe is flipping the potatoes over, and there is only one way: decisively, quickly and with confidence. You’ve got this!
Since Pomme Anna is pretty impressive, you’ll need a strong counterpart to go with. I suggest you serve it with a good piece of meat, like with my Filet Mignon with Peppercorn Sauce. I’m sure Anna would have liked that.
POMME ANNA – ANNA POTATOES
INGREDIENTS
Pomme Anna
- 40 g butter plus about 20 g for the boarders
- 1 kg big waxy potatoes
- 1 tsp salt
- 0.5 tsp white pepper ground
INSTRUCTIONS
Pomme Anna
- Peel the potatoes, cut into very fine, about 1 mm slices with a knife or the help of a mandolin. Using a cookie cutter of approx. 6 cm in diameter, cut out the potato slices into symmetrical, round slices.
- Preheat the oven to 200° Celsius (390° Fahrenheit).
- Melt butter in a non-stick, oven-safe skillet. Remove the pan from the stove top and arrange the potato slices in it in a donut-shaped circle, making sure each potato slice overlaps half of the one before it. Once you come back around to the beginning of the first circle, continue stacking the second layer on top of the first layer, but this time, layer into the opposite direction. Arrange about 5 layers. Season every layer well with salt and pepper before continuing on to the next layer.
- Put the skillet back onto the heat, fry on medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add a little butter along the borders of the pan. Cover the skillet with aluminum foil, bake on the middle rack of the preheated oven for 10 minutes. Remove aluminum foil and continue to bake for approx. 10 more minutes, until the potatoes are golden brown.
- Remove from the oven, cover with a flat serving plate a bit smaller than the skillet, but big enough to fit the entire dish into it. Ready, set, go; flip the Pomme Anna onto your serving plate.
