Chatelaillon-Plage (Charente-Maritime)-Poitiers (Vienne), 09/09/2020
* During the Tour de France, combining two of my passions, biking and cooking, I will try to present (almost) every day a recipe from the route followed by the peloton.
The Tour de France
arrived yesterday in Poitiers, a massive and hectic sprint won by the
Australian Caleb Ewan, with the declassification of the Slovakian Peter Sagan
for a quarterback move!
Poitiers is this
type of French anonymous cities: except for those born or living in the area,
people know its name, know that it was the theatre of a famous battle… in 732,
in the best case scenario know where it
is located, but rarely know much more about this city. In fact, Poitiers is a go-through
city. Located on the Seuil du Poitou referring to a low altitude area constituting a gap
between the ancient mountain ranges Massif Armoricain (Northwest) and the
Massif Central and the meeting point between the important Paris (Northeast)
and Aquitaine (Southwest) sedimentary basins. Because of this strategic
position, Poitiers was an important military place -hence the
famous abovementioned battle where the Frankish army of Charles Martel defeated the
Umayyad forces about to invade Gaul- and a no less important political place,
since it was the residence of the Dukes of Aquitaine, including the famous Eleanor
of Aquitaine, successively spouse of the King of France and of the King of
England, bringing by the same token the duchy to the English crown! Less strategical,
I may have passed through (before the highway was built) or by the city
hundreds of times since I was a kid on my trips to the Southwest of France
without stopping in the city…
In fact, and
although the city features some very interesting historical sites, it is most
known for the very successful technological theme park (2 million
visitors/year) built in the 80’s 10 miles in the North of Poitiers, the Futuroscope!
Instead of the Tourteau
Fromagé, one of the region’s culinary specialty… that I have been unable to perfect so far, I would like to pay a tribute to a très grand chef born in the
city and deceased 2 years ago, Joël Robuchon, and to his iconic purée de
pomme de terre, the one that a lot of his clients used to order a second
time in lieu of a dessert! Just this tells a lot!!!
I had the chance and the great
honor to know and to meet Joël Robuchon, first as a client of his Poincaré restaurant
in Paris, where I tasted for the first time the famous purée, and much
later, when he was the guest of honor and a partner of my Gourmet Media
festival in 2004. We shared then several meals together, in his
restaurants and during my Festival, and I was able to know a bit more the man
behind the chef. You see, generally speaking, grands chefs’ signature dishes
are generally “bling-bling” and/or flamboyant dishes, featuring luxurious ingredients:
Paul Bocuse’s poularde en demi-deuil studded with truffles, Gordon
Ramsay’s beef Wellington and other dishes involving caviar, lobster… Could you
imagine that Joël’s signature dish is a simple as mashed potatoes, an everyday
staple dish!!! I know, you will answer me that, of course, there are truffles,
foie gras or other fancy stuff into it? NO, NOT A SINGLE OUNCE OF FANCY,
EXPENSIVE, EXOTIC AND/OR RARE INGREDIENT AT ALL. Just potatoes (OK, I admit it,
really good potatoes), (a "little bit" of) butter and milk (added
progressively). And no sophisticated equipment either, just a simple potato mill similar to the one that your grandmother
probably had and a manual whisk.
In fact, his purée totally
represented his personality, a mix of extreme simplicity and perfectionism. He was also very keen to transmit to others,
and to learn from others: during my festival, he discussed and spent time with
all the exhibitors, from France and from all over the word, to get to know them
and to understand their products. Always fishing for new ideas. Was this the
consequence of his first religious vocation?
His recipe can be made at home. Honestly, I was figuring out that his secret was the quantity of butter, finally almost reasonable, or the addition of crème fraîche, but there is none at all. His purée has been copied, including by other “grands” chefs. And those grands chefs thought that, because they would put a lot of butter, much more than the ratio potato/butter of 4:1, they would replicate Robuchon’s purée. I even saw a 2-star chef recommending a ratio of 1:1. Ridiculous! Robuchon had no problem to give us the secret of his purée: a 8-buck fine mesh sieve that he used to “force through” the mashed potatoes.
Here is his recipe, or exactly my humble attempt to replicate it:
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Ingredients 4 servings § 1 kg of fingerling potatoes of similar size § 250 g of salted butter § 20/30 cl of whole milk § S&P |
Instructions § Cook the potatoes (of a similar caliber, or otherwise, it is required to adjust the cooking time according to the different sizes) in salted water, with their skin (so that they are not “waterish”), till you could easily studd a knife into them. § Then, peeled them when they
are still hot (sorry for your sensitive fingers) § Rice them through a
classical mechanical potato mill. § Put to boiling around 30 cl
of (raw if possible) whole milk. Little tip: fill up first the pan with water
and empty it. The remaining film of water will avoid that the milk
sticks at the bottom. § While the milk is heating,
put the potatoes in another pan, on low temperature and add progressively
pieces of cold salted butter (altogether, around 25% of the potato weight)
while stirring vigorously. § When you start to get an
unctuous texture, add progressively small ladles of hot whole milk, stirring
with a wooden spoon, then whipping with a whip as soon as the texture allowed
it, vigorously and during at least a couple of minutes. That’s the physical
part of the recipe… just to eliminate in advance all the butter you are going
to absorb!!! § Then, the crucial moment,
further straining the purée that was already looking more than nice, in the
tamis sieve, using a bowl scraper and/or a spatula to force it through the
mesh. § You obtain an unctuous purée
that you will warm up again, adding, if need be, a little bit of milk to
obtain the targeted texture. |
Gallery
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| Joël Robuchon receiving his prize at my Gourmet Voice festival |
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