Hachis Parmentier Recipe

During a very relaxing weekend at my parent’s house over Christmas, Dr. Fiance and I took advantage of some much needed down time. She spent some time knitting her first scarf while I spent some time reading mom’s cookbooks. The one that I spent the most time flipping through that weekend was Around My French Table, by Dorie Greenspan.It is a simply gorgeous cookbook, and each delicious recipe has a short anecdote about French living to accompany it. These short stories are aimed at giving you a real feel for the French table, and they certainly do the trick. And of course the photography by Alan Richardson is amazing.

One of the recipes that caught my eye was for what seemed to me to be the perfect cold weather dish. Hachis Parmentier is a French version of the shephards pie. It is a simple mixtures of meat in bouillon, covered with mashed potatoes and cheese and baked. Apparently this is a late night, post-dinner-service meal preferred by Daniel Boulud. It sounded amazing and I vowed to try making it at home. Coincidentally, a few days later on the second half of our holiday vacation, when out to dinner one evening at Bistro 61 and there on the menu was Hachis Parmentier. So of course I had to give it a shot. It came out piping hot from the oven and our obsequious and condescending waiter implored me to “be very careful, zee deesh is veeeery hoot. Veeeery hot, you vill burn yourself from zee steam. And zee dish is hot also.” He wasn’t lying, of course. When I punctured the smooth potato topping a gush of steam poured forth and I had to sip my wine for a while while it cooled. I know, what a hardship. When it was cool enough to eat, I dove in and found it to be perfect. Although very similar to a shephard’s pie, hachis parmentier has a more subtle flavor and somehow feels lighter.

With the St. Louis temperatures barely getting above 20 for the last few days I was certainly in the mood for some warm, comfort food. I’d originally envisioned some sort of pot-pie (because I feel it’s time for me to tackle pie crusts again) but then I remembered the hachis parmentier!

There are three steps to creating this dish, but it’s not as intimidating as it sounds. No part of this recipe is fragile, so it can be made one step at a time, and it can be made in advance and baked just before you’re ready to serve it. I ended up making the bouillon in the morning, then the filling in the afternoon, and the topping in the evening just before dinner.

I used cross-cut steak for the beef element of the dish. You can also use beef chuck cut into small pieces or even ground beef in a pinch. I think that the cross-cut steak helped give the dish more texture than you would have otherwise as it tends to hold up better through-out the cooking process. Since you are making bouillon out of it, you need the connective tissue of the steak. It also isn’t infused with all of the extra fat that comes ground beef. If you do go with ground beef, I think it would be a good idea not to try to make the bouillon because your meat will just dissolve and lose all favor and texture. Skip that step and go with a store-bought beef stock.

The bouillon portion of the dish is quite simple (and quick). Simply add the meat, vegetables and some water (see recipe below) into a large pan and simmer for an hour or so. You can add half a beef bouillon cube to the mixture halfway through if you feel it’s necessary, but I found that my bouillon was quite lovely and needed nothing additional. Afterwards, you separate the meat from the vegetables and strain the broth. I found it kind of difficult to remove all of the vegetables in an efficient manner, so I ended up leaving a lot of them in the mixture to no ill effect.

The recipe also calls for sausage to be added to the filling. I chose a fairly standard hot Italian sausage, and it worked out perfectly. The touch of additional spice gave the final dish just the right amount of kick.

After Action Report

I made a few changes to the original recipe to make it slightly less high calorie and a little easier to deal with. First, I substituted 2% milk and half and half for the whole milk and the heavy cream that the recipe calls for. Sure, those things would make the potatoes even more amazing, but that’s a special occasion holiday thing, not an every day dinner kind of luxury. As a side note, I often swap half and half for heavy cream simply because I generally have it on hand for my coffee.

Additionally I used a regular potato masher, while the original recipe called for the use of a ricer or food mill. I don’t have a ricer or a food mill, and my old-fashioned masher did just fine. The ricer would give a smoother texture, but wouldn’t affect the taste.

Finally, the original recipe called for adding parmesan on top of the gruyere. Again, this seemed like an extra indulgence in calories that could be skipped. I didn’t miss it at all. Overall, despite the fact that I swapped a lot of these indulgent ingredients, this was an amazing dish. And as I said at the beginning of this post, the recipe looks intimidating but it’s very simple. I used my dutch oven for the whole dish, so only one pan to clean!

Despite my changes to the ingredients, this is still a very rich dish and should be served with a nice green salad. I served just a bowl of mixed greens with a diluted cracked peppercorn dressing, which worked perfectly.