Fondant potatoes

 I'm always looking for new ways to make potatoes. This one is fun to make, fun to look at, and the result was great --much better than I expected. I made this as a side dish with some redfish from the oven, which worked perfectly together.

Mine didn't look as nice as these, but they tasted awesome.

To start, you need to create a bunch of roughly cylindrical pieces of potato, all the same height (about 5cm/2in) and similar width (that of a medium potato):

• To achieve the same height, create one piece, then use it to "measure" the height of all the other pieces. 
• To achieve the same width, use potatoes that are roughly the same thickness. (I ended up having to halve some cylinders.) If you want to get real fancy (and wasteful), get yourself a round cookie cutter shape to make little towers of perfectly identical widths.

Keep doing this until you have enough potatoes for the amount of people who will be eating this.

Submerge all the towers in a bowl of water for 5 minutes to get rid of the starch, then remove and dry with kitchen paper. Heat a good amount of neutral oil (I used sunflower oil) in a big ovenproof skillet, then place the potato towers upright in the pan. Season and fry on a medium-high fire for a good 6–10 minutes to make the bottoms crispy brown (mine veered toward black). 

Meanwhile, start boiling a good amount of stock, about 250 ml/1 cup. I made veg stock with 1/3 of a stock cube.

When the towers' bottoms are brown, turn them upside down, season again and do the same for the other ends.

Start preheating the oven at 425 F / 220C.

When the towers are brown on both ends, turn down the heat. Tilt your skillet and use a piece of kitchen paper held with tongs to get rid of (most of) the oil. 

Add a good 30g (about 2 tbsp) of butter, along with some aromatics. I used crushed unpeeled garlic cloves and some branches of thyme. When the butter is melted, use a spoon to baste the tops of the towers a bit. The butter will start to brown quickly --when it does, add the stock. Wait for things to settle down, then place the skillet in the oven, and leave it there for 30 minutes.

When you take it out, the stock will be gone. Take the potato towers out and pour the buttery sauce over it.