Erdäpfelschmarrn

Every Austrian farmhouse kitchen knows what to do with leftover boiled potatoes. You grate them coarsely, drop them into a screaming hot pan with a generous amount of butter, and leave them alone until the bottom turns golden and crisp. Then you tear the whole thing apart with a spatula or two forks, the way you'd tear a Kaiserschmarrn, and let the fresh edges crisp up all over again. The result is a pan full of ragged potato pieces, some crunchy, some soft, all of them tasting like butter and salt and the kind of cooking that doesn't need a recipe so much as a good instinct.

Gretel always said that the best Austrian dishes came from not wanting to waste anything. Erdäpfelschmarrn is proof. You cook too many potatoes on Monday, and by Tuesday you have something better than what you started with. The cold potato grates differently than a raw one. It holds its shape in the pan instead of turning to mush, and the starch on the surface crisps in the butter the way a raw potato never could. This is why you must start with yesterday's potatoes, boiled and cooled overnight in the fridge. If you try to rush it with potatoes you just cooked and cooled for an hour, they'll be too wet and you'll end up with something closer to a Rösti than a Schmarrn.

I grew up eating this with a green salad dressed in pumpkin seed oil, which is the Styrian way, or with a fried egg slid on top, which is the way my grandmother Eva did it in Kent because she said a fried egg made anything into supper. At my restaurant in Salzburg, I serve it alongside braised meats or on its own with sour cream and chives for lunch. It's the kind of dish that belongs wherever you put it.