Serves: 4 to 6
Ingredients
For the mashed potatoes
- 2lb. (1kg) potatoes
- Scant ½ cup (100ml) milk
- Scant ½ cup (100ml) crème fraîche
- 7 tablespoons (100g) unsalted butter
- Salt and freshly ground pepper
- Freshly grated nutmeg
For the blood sausage layer
- 1 ⅓ lb. (600g) blood sausage
- 2 teaspoons (10g) butter
- 5 shallots, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 15 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- 2 Granny Smith apples
- 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons (25g) salted butter
- 1 ¼ teaspoons (5g) sugar
- 1oz. (25g) light breadcrumb
Directions
1First prepare the mashed potatoes. Cook them in boiling salted water and mash them with a potato ricer or food mill. Using a spatula, stir in the milk, crème fraîche, and butter. Season with salt and pepper and add the nutmeg (run the nutmeg over the grater about 3 times).
2To prepare the blood sausage layer: melt the butter in a sauté pan. Add the chopped shallots and garlic and cook over low heat without allowing them to brown.
3Remove all the skin from the blood sausage and place it in the sauté pan. Leave to cook for 5 minutes over low heat, mixing the ingredients. Remove from the heat and add the chopped parsley.
4Peel and core the Granny Smith apples and cut each one into eight pieces. Sauté them in the salted butter with the sugar, leaving the pieces to cook for 2 minutes on each side. Remove them from the pan and reduce the butter and sugar until a very light caramel forms.
5Using four pastry rings, with a 4-in. (10-cm) diameter and height of 2 in. (5 cm), assemble the Parmentiers as follows: a layer of mashed potatoes, a layer of blood sausage, and lastly, another layer of mashed potatoes. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs.
6Just before serving, place them under the broiler for 5 minutes, keeping a careful eye on the temperature and their color. Then top each one with a few pieces of apple and a spoonful of salted butter caramel. Serve with a generous helping of green salad.
A DASH OF ADVICE
This is a real rough-and-ready bistro dish, and like all rough-and-ready guys, it doesn’t give a hoot what anyone says about it. So, it’s just as comfortable being served with a nice lively, easy-drinking red wine, like iconoclastic and inspired winemaker Thierry Puzelat’s pinot noir, as with Dard et Ribo’s white Saint-Joseph. In the latter case, the dish becomes truly Parisian, served at the bar as an early lunch.
IMAGE © CHRISTIAN SARRAMON
Extracted from French Bistro: Seasonal Recipes by Bertrand Auboyneau & François Simon (Published by Flammarion).
