Fabulous Comfort Food: Pommes Toupinel

September 15, 2009 4:53 pm

Fabulous Comfort Food: Pommes Toupinel

Fashion Week is heating up in New York. To celebrate, Behind the Burner is sharing recipes from top fashion designers all week long. Each recipe comes from ASSOULINE's new American Fashion Cookbook: 100 Designers Best Recipes.

Below, Carolina Herrera shares her Pommes Toupinel recipe. This comfort food incorporates a twice-baked potato containing a poached egg. Herrera first tasted this dish at the age of twelve with her future sister-in-law, and now the dish is a multi-generational family favorite.

Ingredients:

6 large potatoes
6 poached eggs
1 cup of milk
1/4 stick of butter
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Thinly grated Parmesan cheese
Ground pepper
2 cups of Béchamel sauce

Béchamel sauce ingredients:
2 tablespoons of butter
3 tablespoons of flour
2 cups of milk, just at the boil

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Wash the skin of each potato well. Wrap each potato in aluminum foil and bake in the oven for two hours at 350 degrees until flesh can be peeled easily with a knife.

2. While potato is baking, prepare béchamel sauce and poach eggs.

3. Once the potato is almost done, remove from the oven and unwrap foil. Cut off the top of the potato 3/4 way up.

4. Scoop the inside of the potato with a spoon without cracking or damaging the shell.

5. Prepare it into mashed potatoes adding: 1 cup of milk, 1/4 stick of butter, a pinch of salt, and a small amount of white pepper and mix with finely ground Parmesan cheese. Save 1/2 cup of mashed potatoes.

6. Put mashed potatoes inside the potato shells, leaving room in the center for the poached egg. Place poached egg inside the potato filled with puree, and then season with salt and pepper.

7. Spoon a little Béchamel sauce over the potato and on top of that, add a little more of the mashed potatoes and use a spoon to lift the inside. Sprinkle potato with Parmesan cheese, broil in the oven for three minutes until the top is brown and crisp.

Béchamel Sauce Instructions:
1. Heat saucepan. Melt butter over low heat. Sprinkle flour over butter and stir with a whisk.

2. Cook slowly for about three minutes. Do not let this turn any color. Lower heat as much as possible and add hot milk little by little.

Poached Eggs Instructions:
1. Boil water in a saucepan until reaching highest boiling point. Eggs are done in batches of two or three in the sauce pan with water boiled, turn heat off.

2. Place eggs gently one by one and let there for exactly three minutes under cover. Take the eggs out with a slotted spoon.