[Sca-cooks] "decadent alternative to butter in smashed potatoes"

[vicki shaw]

exactly right!  But better than cholent.

I have scanned the recipe from the book, but it is in French (silly me I
forgot) and I dont have time to xlate.  But you might find it interesting to
know that servant girls/women carry the heavy pots on their heads to the
oven (around 3 or 4pm on Friday) where a rabbi paints a number on the lid to
your pot, dips strips of clean cotton into a flour, egg water batter and
then puts the strips around the edges of the pot where it meets the lid.
This seals the pot so you lose little or no moisture.  The rabbi gives you a
piece of cardboard with the number of your pot on it.  Then you go down a
very narrow stairway into a room hot as hell.  There a young brawny man in
just trousers and shoes (topless) is managing the pots.  The floor is
already covered with other pots.  He wields a huge spatula with a six foot
long handle, picks up a pot and places it inside an oven big enough to seat
a dozen people.  Now, if you tip him well, he will keep moving your pot
around to the best spots.  We love the potatoes to be caramelized and if you
place them along the inside periphery of the pot, they will become
caramelized on one side.
On Saturday, the maids go back to the oven to fetch their pot.  And around
noon we eat.



Angharad ferch Iorwerth; MKA Vicki Shaw