How to make Potato rosettes, croquettes and bird nest for Christmas | French Cuisine

Now if you're looking at a potato side dish for Christmas, then the pomodoro is a really good choice. It is based on the duchess potato, this is the thing you see on the screen, this lovely kind of rosette, which in fact is just a mashed potato enriched with egg yolk, and in this case we're adding cheese into it, so you've got a cheesy potato mixture. What we're going to do with this, well we're going to create the rosette that you've seen on the screen, it's going to be the first side you can do. With the same mixture we're going to make potato nests that you can fill with a garnish like mushroom, whatever, and serve alongside a roast or even on a plate, and we're going to be using again the same mixture, and I'm going to show you how to make instant cheesy potato croquettes that takes only three minutes to cook. All of this can be paired with all of your roasts, turkey, chicken, lamb or beef, so you have plenty of choice for Christmas. Let's get ready and let's cook! Now are you ready for that no-fuss recipe? Three options, using again the same mixture, and this is sometimes the magic of French cooking. So for the pomme d'or you're going to need some starchy potatoes, good quality, about up to four egg yolks, good quality butter, good quality cheese, I'm using a Gruyère cheese on here, yes you can use Comté if you want, worst case you can use a cheddar. Salt, pepper, there's going to be a bit of grated nutmeg in here for your stencils, very important. Piping bag with a star tip, potato ricer or vegetable, meal, and that's about it. We're going to start here by peeling, cutting and cooking the potatoes, it's a very important step this. So as I said this is very very important, the cooking of the potatoes, because a duchess potato mix needs a mash that has a minimum amount of moisture. The easiest way to do this is like this, you cut your potato in half, start in cold water, two tablespoons of coarse or rock salt here it's called, and we're going to cook them until they're just about cooked. We don't want them to be soggy or absorb too much water, otherwise it's going to be making a runny mixture that we can't use. You can use other methods, if you want you can cook the potatoes with their skin on, that's going to protect and avoid too much water absorption, but in which case you're going to have to peel them after when they're hot, which is not really super simple. The ultimate way if you want to do it like the professional, you have to bake the potatoes in the oven on a bed of salt, like a jacket potatoes or baked potatoes, and then scrap out the flesh. This is the best way to avoid any water coming into your potatoes, but I'm giving you the easy way here. We're going to bring this to the boil, we're going to keep this to cook for about I think 10 maximum 15 minutes, and that's it. I'll show you the result exactly when they're just perfect. It's been 17 minutes and my potatoes are ready. Usually you know when it's ready when you prick one of a knife like this and it falls on its own weight, putting the heat off and immediately I am going to scoop out the potatoes and put them in my colander. So as you can see even for large potatoes, large chunk, just about 17 minutes, but I would say that roughly speaking 15 minute time after boiling is the sweet spot. When they're ready, you need to leave these first to drain like this, just for three to four minutes. After three minutes, you transfer your potatoes onto a tray and what we're going to do here, we're going to just do a rough kind of breaking of the potatoes because I'm going to have to put them in the vegetable meal, and we're going to put this into the oven at 200 degrees for about three minutes, same thing. After three minutes, you take the potatoes out of the oven, they are nice and dry, and now you can start the ricing. I'm using here a vegetable meal and we pass all the potatoes. I'm all done and I've put my potatoes now to a medium heat because it is quite moist still, even after all the drying. The reason for that is that I'm using box standard supermarket floury or starchy potatoes, I label as potatoes for mash. To give you an idea of what happened, if you don't have quality potatoes, you're going to end up with these potatoes that tend to absorb way too much water. This is the big problem. If you're in America, you can go with the potatoes you use, creamy, yellow flesh, the king of mash, the binge, the Dutch variety for Europe, even in Australia you can find it, or otherwise you can use the King Edward's or the Pontiac potatoes. That will make a heck of a difference. So here what we need to do is to have the heat on and spend four to five minutes mixing gently, heat up the whole mix and drain out that moisture out. Perfect, so after a few minutes you have that consistency, that kind of paste-like consistency, this is what you want. We can add the seasoning, so that's the taste. So pepper, a little bit of salt because the cheese is salty, so we'll add some more later. And I'm going to add about 30 grams of butter to start with. When the butter is in, you're going to mix it in, make it melt, and we're going to check the consistency. All done, the butter is melted. I'm going to use a good 70 grams of cheese here to start with. Okay, and same thing, the heat is on, on medium, and I'm going to melt everything in. Perfect, if you want something richer to finish, you add the rest of the butter, and you mix it in, and that's going to be it. When the butter is incorporated, you turn the heat off, and this way you can add the egg yolks. Now keep in check, it's very important that paste, when it's still like a paste like that, it's fine, but when you add the egg yolks, it can get runny. So what we're going to do is like one tablespoon at a time, I break the egg, and I'm going to mix it in. This is off the heat, okay? Then you check the color, you check the consistency, and you add more. So once you've got your egg yolks in, I've added my last one for four, you put this back on a gentle heat, and you add the final touch, which is the salt, a bit of more pepper if you want, and a tiny bit of butter if you need. The sign of success, look what happened. I've got a dough, like a choux pastry, that doesn't stick to the pan anymore. It's a coherent mass, it's not too runny, you see? It's got just the right amount of eggs, butter, and everything, okay? So this is ready. We can put it in a tray, leave it to cool down a little bit. Well done! You've done it, you've done the mixture to make the pomme mondeur, which is the duchess potato mix with cheese, and you're going to put this into a shallow tray. As you can see, it's not deep at all, and we're going to put a plastic wrap and leave this to cool until it's lukewarm, and we're going to be ready to start making the rosette and have a bit of fun with our piping bag. As soon as your mixture is ready, when it's cool enough, you're going to put it into a piping bag. Now if you want to do the croquette, you can divide it in half or more. Now my bag is ready, it's been filled, we're going to make the little rosette. If you're not sure, you don't use a piping bag very often, what I advise is you can use like a little plate like this, and you can train to see exactly what you're going to make. So you can make small ones, big ones, but that's roughly the shape we're going to use, okay? So the size, it's up to you. Do you don't want too big, too small? Okay, so we're just going to go, and you want to kind of favor something a bit high. I don't like when they're too, you know, kind of too low kind of thing. It's better, but anyway, you keep on going like this. Rosette, rosette, and rosette. So these are the rosettes, but I did mention that potato nest kind of thing. So what you can do is, you use like a food ring. I put some water on this, just to have a mark. You won't see it, but I know roughly the size I want, and it's just two circles of pastry. I always think it's kind of a choux pastry. Okay, so you do one mouth like this, and then you're going to do another one on top. So we're going to seal it here. You don't want to make it too large or anything like this. You can touch the interior with a knife if you want to make sure there's a nice opening, and this is perfect if you want to have something, that's what it looks like inside. You know, we're going to fill some mushroom in there. It's a great addition on a roast or on the side, because people wonder, what is this? You can put it on a little nest. That's great. Now, when it's done, if you really want to go the extra mile, you can melt some butter and do some clarified butter, and you can add a little bit of it on the top of your potato boudoir. Okay, and that's it. It is ready. Now, if you want from the pomodoro, the ultimate is a sprinkle of cheese, but I want to show you how it cooks just as is, but feel free to add some cheese on top as an extra. This is typical of the pomodoro. It's going to add more cheese, more fluffy. So now that is going to go into the oven, 200 degrees Celsius for about, you know, can be 15 minutes, something like that, or what we want is a nice coloration, and that's it. Now, if you want to keep on watching that video and look at how to make the potato croquettes, of course, keep on watching. The first thing you're going to have to do is whatever mixture you have, you're going to put this into the freezer to accelerate the cooling, and we're going to want to have this absolutely cold, not frozen, just cold. Okay, so we can start to make this croquette by hand. So very quickly, when your mixture is cold for the potato croquettes, we're going to be working with our hands, so make sure you clean your hands. Typical workshop for the breading. We get the flour, we get an egg, we get some bread crumbs. We're going to start by beating the egg together. So when you're done, you're grabbing some of that mixture, you're rolling it into a ball, so you shape it like this, roll it into the flour on here a little bit, right again, so you remove the excess and don't overdo it. Then you can put this into the egg, so roll it around. Don't use your finger because you're going to, you know, it's going to lose the shape, and then from there into the breadcrumbs, okay, and you're going to roll this into there, and that's it. You've got a simple, easy to do potato croquette ready to go. So you're going to repeat the same process for all of them. As soon as the croquettes are ready, you're going to need a deep fryer, of course, 180 degrees Celsius. I'm going to do one or two at a time, and about three to four minutes is all it takes. That should be about ready. That's what it looks like, so I'm going to let them drip a bit and then put them into a plate. So these are the pommes monde, which is the duchess with cheese in a standard form, the rosette, the little nest that we're going to dress up with some sautéed mushrooms to show you how it looks like, and the croquettes. Of course, this is the raw form, and now Kate is going to make us a little Christmas-style table, and all the magic is going to happen. And here we are. So what do we have? With the monde mixture, duchess potato with cheese, you can make number one, the rosette, which is like a duchess potato. It's a piece of potato that you serve on the side. Instead of a mash, it's got this nice shape. It's a bit burned on the side. It's beautiful. The nest, you do this kind of circle, and you can fit in some garnish. So here, I've sautéed some mushroom, a piece of sage, and you can imagine pouring some nice sauce, like a Madeira sauce or anything like this, with a slice of roast on the side, and it could be an individual serving. The croquettes on here are actually lovely. You can see how super easy it is to make, and look inside. I've just ate half of it, and look how fluffy it is. I think the croquette is my favorite. Really, really nice. It's crunchy, it's soft, and it will all go perfectly with any kind of dishes that you have. A turkey, a chicken, a piece of lamb, a piece of beef. These are your three options that you can use as a side for Christmas. So sorry about the long video, but I really wanted to give you the option, and keep in mind that the quality of the potatoes you're going to be using are going to change the quality of all of these things. But that's it for this week. I hope you enjoyed the video, and I'll see you all next week for another Christmas French cooking video, and wait for the jumping, because it is coming!