Tony Jackman’s potato scallops cooked in an air fryer. (Photo: Tony Jackman)
The potato scallops that are battered and deep-fried tend to be a little thicker than the ones I made this week. They’d be, perhaps, 7 ml thick, because they need to be more substantial to hold the batter they’re dipped in before frying.
If they’re underdone, which they often are in my experience, they’re always a disappointment. The trick with them, like chips or when you deep-fry fish, is to get the temperature right at 160℃, as any higher than that and the batter will brown too quickly while the potato within remains undercooked, and any lower than that and the batter will either disintegrate for lack of sufficient heat or become fat-soggy and unappetising. Or both.
These are sometimes called potato cakes, but they would be even thicker than the British and Australian battered scallop, to warrant that term. In our times, the American notion of a hash brown has overtaken scalloped potatoes, especially as a breakfast item. Hash browns actually date as far back as the 1890s, though only recently have they become ubiquitous, thanks in part to franchises such as Wimpy.
Scalloped potatoes, when sliced almost paper-thin, can be layered on top of an oven bake (such as a fish pie) to create a scaled effect and turn into a golden, crunchy topping. Potato “scales” on a fish fillet is a classic French tradition.
But there’s no batter in my recipe. It’s very simple and is all about a pleasingly crunchy flat chip, as it were, something like a potato crisp of the Simba or Willards variety but thicker. So, somewhere between a potato crisp and a chip, then.
You need to have a steady hand to slice them so thinly, and a good eye.
(Serves 2 as a side dish)
Ingredients
3 or 4 medium potatoes
Cooking oil spray
3 Tbsp cooking oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Method
Peel the potatoes and splice them carefully and slowly into slim rounds of about 3 ml to 5 ml. Lay them out on kitchen paper, put more paper over them, pat them down, then remove the paper.
Spoon the cooking oil into a bowl. Grind some salt and black pepper in and stir. Add the potato scallops and toss well to coat.
Preheat the air fryer to 160℃ for 5 minutes.
Spray the base
Turn them over, put the heat up to 200℃, and cook for another 5 to 7 minutes or until, whenof the basket.
Lay the scalloped potatoes out on the bottom and cook at 160℃ for 10 minutes you check, they are pale golden and crunchy. Taste and add more salt if needed. DM
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This dish is photographed in a bowl by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.