The word Parmentier has to do with potatoes. But why?
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 6 € pp)
- Salt
- 800 g beef shoulder
- 2 small onions
- A bay leaf
- EV olive oil
- 50 ml red wine
- 500 ml vegetable or beef stock
- 400 g potatoes
- 400 g sweet potatoes
- 80 g butter
- 80 ml milk
- 40 g parmigiano reggiano
- 100 g small green peas
- Coarse black pepper
- Very fine breadcrumbs
I am sure that you have already heard the word Parmentier. Do you know what exactly means?
According to Wikipedia “Antoine Parmentier was a French pharmacist and agronomist, best remembered as a vocal promoter of the potato as a food source for humans in France and throughout Europe”. After his death many preparations with potato have taken his name, in order to indicate that potato is one of the main ingredients of the dish. Among these preparations we find soups, creams and of course the famous hachis, which is braised beef with gratinated purée on top. Let´s prepare one.
We first of all have to cook the meat.
We cut it in pieces and we brown it in oil to create some Maillard aromas. We deglaze with the wine and we add the onions, peeled and cut in halves. We continue frying gently for 2-3 minutes, we reduce the heat to minimum, we add the stock, a bay leaf and some salt and we cook the beef till very very tender. Extremely tender. We mince the meat with a knife and we let in the sauce to soak.
Meanwhile we prepare the potatoes. I chose to use both potatoes and sweet potatoes. Why? The sweet potatoes have a special taste and an attractive colour too. But they are too sweet for some people. So I decided to reduce their sweetness, preparing a purée made of potatoes and sweet potatoes.
We peel and cut them in pieces and then we steam them till very tender. Separately, as the common potatoes need more time. Steaming the potatoes instead of boiling them, we enhance their aroma (what the fuck Parmentier do we prepare?) and we also make them less moist. We make them a purée when still hot. We add the butter, the milk, the parmesan and some pepper, we check the salt and we keep aside.
We also blanch the peas for 2 – 3 minutes in very hot salted water. We add the peas to the meat. We preheat the oven at 200 Celsius degrees.
We grease four individual clay cooking pots. We put some fine breadcrumbs on the bottom and we add the meat. we press it lightly to secure a stable construction and over it we add the purée. We level their surface with a palette and we cover them with fine breadcrumbs.
We bake the parmentiers for about 30 minutes, we take them off, we wait 5-10 minutes and we serve.
