These are another item from the Bromberg Bros. Blue Ribbon Cookbook, which I’m finding to be an awesome source for elevating what TV’s Jack Donaghy would call ‘Peasant Food’. Like most good Americans I love French Fries, and consider them to be in most cases the true barometer of a restaurant. Danielle is often saying things like “Yeah, lets go there, they have good fries”, or “I don’t want to go there, they’re fries suck.”
When I looked at the method for these I thought it was crazy, but just crazy enough to work. You’ll need:
• 3 nice size potatoes
• 1 1/2 inches of canola, soy, or peanut oil
• frying pan
• frying or candy thermometer
• salt and pepper
Cut the potatoes down into slivers, here’s where the type of person you are comes into play: are you a steak or a shoestring?
Heat the oil to 350 degrees and fry the fries in batches for about 2 minutes. Its hard to get the temperature just right because it goes way down when you toss the fries in, so this phase may take longer. Pull one of them out and blot it dry, pick into the corner and try to peel the skin back, if you can, take them out.
Raise the temperature to 375 and fry them for 2 minutes until they start to get golden. Take them out for 1 minute, and then fry them another 2 minutes, when they start to turn brown, they’re done. The Bromberg Bros. have something in the back of their book they call Perfect Sauté Seasoning, its a stupidly fancy name for salt and pepper, but I’ve been using it for a number of things and I’m convinced that its the perfect proportions for a great many uses. This makes a bunch so you can try it out in all kinds of things:
• 1/4 cup plus 2 Tb Salt and 1 tsp of Pepper (fresh ground or otherwise)
Toss your fries in some of this and serve.
