How To Make Potatoes Anna – take 1

This is a great example of why it’s good to see pictures with recipes. What you see here was incredibly simple and really tasty but, it turns out, not quite how potatoes Anna traditionally comes out. I’ll try the traditional version next time I’m looking to impress guests, but I think for myself I’ll stick with this … deconstructed version. (Makes it sound intentional when I say it that way, doesn’t it?

Ingredients

1 baking potato per person
2 tablespoons butter per potato
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

You can peel the potatoes if you want to. I like the skins, so I just wash them. Slice about a quarter-inch thick.

Arrange slices, overlapping, in a pie plate.

Melt butter and pour over potatoes.

Season with salt and pepper.

Cover tightly with foil.

Bake at 400° for 30 minutes.

Remove foil and bake for another 20 minutes, until the tops of the potatoes start to char.

You can speed this process up by putting it under the broiler for a minute or two. If you go for this quick method, don’t walk away. Once the top starts to bubble, it can shoot through “char” to “charcoal” in about eight seconds.

Serve with bacon-wrapped beef tenderloin and broiled asparagus.

Or, you know, with hot dogs if you want.

Now, remember where I said this isn’t the way this dish is traditionally done? I was following what I thought was a family recipe, named after some relative named “Anna”. Turns out this is a classic French dish — Pommes Anna — from the time of Napoleon.

The classic preparation is to slice the potatoes very thin, like on a mandoline slicer, and make a sort of potato cake … very similar to tarte tatin, actually. Here’s a version from Cooking Light (via My Recipes) showing what it’s “supposed to” look like.