Throwback Thursday: Fondant potatoes

Fondant potatoes are pure luxury. They couldn’t be further from an everyday potato dish. They need to luxuriate in a bath of nothing, or little, more than pure butter in order to turn so gloriously, sinfully desirable.

The purest of purists may argue that they need only that butter (plus thyme, garlic and time) to achieve fondant perfection. But it is more common to poach them in both butter and stock (chicken or vegetable). For me, butter is all they need, other than a small amount of water, but I do need to say that this is a treat I do not and cannot indulge in often at all. I used, perhaps shockingly, nearly a third of a brick of butter.

The fondant detour I went on this week was informative. I clearly remember making them more than a decade ago, following a recipe by Marco Pierre White, in which there is mostly butter and a little water, but no stock, whether chicken or vegetable.

The potatoes were completely immersed in three parts butter to one part water, in the little copper pot my daughter bought for me in Paris all those years ago. And I used that pot again for them this week.

Many recipes today call for the potatoes first to be browned in oil (not even butter, a thought I dismiss), then poached in both butter and a ladleful of stock being added now and then. The argument is that, without that initial browning, they will not caramelise.

I disagree. If the potatoes have been poached long enough at a low enough temperature, they will caramelise at the bottom perfectly. They can then be turned over very carefully (using two round-edged wooden spoons) for the other side to brown. The difference is time. Just cook them longer.

The result you are looking for is potatoes that are (sinfully, shamefully, embarrassingly) meltingly tender with ridiculous depth of flavour. You don’t want less than that given the price of butter today; the butter in that pot has set you back 30 bucks.

My chef’s academy trained friend advised me to use a biscuit cutter to get the right shape. This means that the potatoes should be big enough for the cutter to do its work. My biscuit cutter has a serrated edge, so I used a potato peeler to trim them into neat, smooth rounds; easy and quick. Then you simply slice through the rounds at either end to make them flat.

This, unavoidably, involves a certain amount of waste. You could plan to make a soup the next day, and keep the leftovers for that. And you can keep the leftover thyme butter once the fondants are cooked for browning your onions when making that soup. 

For a simple dish, there are many variations in how fondant potatoes can be cooked. When you google fondant potatoes, Gordon Ramsay comes up all over the place. I don’t normally seek his views out (not because I don’t respect him; I’ve just had an oorvloed of him over so many years and am well past saturation point) but had a look out of curiosity. Ramsay calls for the oven to come into play. They’re in there for just 12 to 15 minutes after being browned in oil, with butter and chicken stock added along with garlic and herbs. Having read this, I watched his video, in which he doesn’t even shape the potatoes correctly; he just uses peeled halves. Then, he tells you, “fondant basically means cook with stock”. No it doesn’t. It means melting, from the French fondre (to melt) which in turn comes from the Latin fundere (to melt).

Correctly, he advises using a “really nice robust” potato that won’t break down, though here in the Karoo the only variety of potato we can get is “potato”. If you’re in the city and do have more potato options than I have, look for waxy varieties such as Charlotte, Desirée or King David. Best you get yourself down to the Woolies or Pick n Pay potato aisle and see what they have. Don’t use the ones marked suitable for roasting; they tend to be fluffier varieties.

Ramsay first browns them in olive oil to get colour on the potato, then turns them over and adds chicken stock, and just a couple of knobs of butter. Then they go into a 200℃ oven for “12 to 15 minutes”. They look like wonderful potatoes and I might even cook some that way, but they are not fondant potatoes, which require poaching in butter as at least the core method of preparation.

This morning I unearthed my copy of Canteen Cuisine by Marco Pierre White and had a eureka moment when, on Page 208, I found his recipe that I had used in the little copper pot. He uses their French name, Pomme Fondant, and he is not all that purist about it. The traditional shape for a fondant potato is perfectly round, and flat at the top and bottom. MPW, however, says you can “cut the potatoes into different shapes – into ‘banana’ shapes or thickly, into circles”.

He places four suitably shaped potatoes onto 100 g of melted butter in a 15 cm pot, seasons with salt and pepper, and adds 50 ml of water. Then, he says, cook them on a low heat for about 15 minutes on either side (so, just 30 minutes of cooking). It’s not like me to question my food hero, which he is (sorry Gordon), but I deeply, honestly, prefer my way. But take all of the above into account when making your own choices; it’s not as if these guys don’t know what they’re doing.

That sounds just too fast for my liking; I want the butter to seep into every atom of those potatoes. The key difference between MPW’s method and mine is time, in order to achieve that caramelisation and wicked depth of flavour. In a restaurant, you don’t have the luxury of it; maybe that’s why he devised that method. 

Felicity Cloake, in one of her excellent pieces in The Guardian, offers her recipe for “perfect fondant potatoes”. She starts by putting them flat side-down in a suitably large frying pan with “barely enough water to cover them”, with garlic, thyme and, she insists, clarified butter. They’re brought to the boil then cooked “over a high heat” until the water has evaporated and only the clarified butter remains. What this misses, dare I suggest, is that if you start with whole butter, it will clarify while the potatoes are simmering away, and at a certain point you can, if you wish, scoop off any excess curds. Having said that, I did not do so myself.

Like White, I used butter and water, no stock at all. 

Here’s how I did them.

Ingredients

4 potatoes, fairly large

4 thyme sprigs

2 garlic cloves, peeled and bruised

200 g butter, or less (there must be enough to just cover the potatoes)

Salt and white pepper to taste

Water, sparingly

Method

Peel the potatoes. If you have a suitably large biscuit cutter (i.e. one that fits the roundest circumference of your potatoes), push it down firmly so that the sides fall away. Neaten the edges with a potato peeler to make them smooth and even; you’re looking for them to be nice and round. Slice off the tops and bottoms.

Put 150 g of the butter, thyme and garlic in a pot on a low heat and let it begin to melt. Add the potatoes. When the butter has all melted, add about 50 ml water and assess whether any more butter is needed. If the butter/water covers the potatoes, it may be enough; if it’s short, add more butter and let it melt. Season with salt and white pepper; if you use salted butter, salt carefully; more if unsalted.

Let it simmer on a very low heat, with no lid, until the potatoes are tender and their bottoms browned, at which point turn carefully using two wooden spoons and let the other flat sides brown too for about 20 minutes. Mine took an hour to an hour and a quarter to become beautifully tender and caramelised.

Fondant potatoes are a side dish, so while they’re cooking you can rustle up whatever your main event is going to be; a roast chicken perhaps, or a steak or lamb chops. DM/TGIFood

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Champion 2021. His book, foodSTUFF, is available in the DM Shop. Buy it here. 

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