Pommes de Terre Maire

Pommes de Terre Maire (potatoes in reduced cream) is a lesson in reduction, not richness for its own sake. The potatoes enter the pan already tender, so the cream's work is to concentrate around them until it clings without boiling the slices into collapse. Before you touch a pan, know this: the final two minutes decide the dish.

The book gives Maire the same treatment as Pommes à la Crème. Unlike entries that leaned on a saucier, a stock never off the fire, or a salamander, this one assumes only freshly boiled potatoes, a wide sauté pan, and a cook free to watch the reduction. At home, six potatoes and one broad skillet reproduce that quick evaporation honestly, scaled for four. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The brigade's holding pans and batch service are scaffolding, so they can go. Boiling the potatoes whole, slicing them evenly, reducing the cream patiently, and loosening it with uncooked cream are the dish, so those steps stay. Watch the sauce rather than the clock, and stop while it coats every slice but still moves.