Franglais: Boursin Smashed Potatoes

Boursin Smashed Potatoes

This is one of those recipes I love–effortless, but addictive.

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This is a back pocket recipe.  Think of all the things that live in your back pocket.  You wallet.  Your iPhone.  Maybe a comb, if you’re the Fonz.  Back pocket items are the bare bones of necessity.  When you need to pay, when you need to communicate, when you need to comb your incredibly slick hair, you reach for the back pocket.  This recipe is like that.  When you need to eat, it’s there, ready, willing and able.

If you’ve never had Boursin, know two things about it: you can find it any supermarket, and it tastes amazing.  It’s a soft, crumbly Gournay cheese, spiked most commonly with garlic and fines herbes, which are the soft herbs like chives, parsley, chervil, and tarragon.  Its savoriness is its greatest quality—it is so overwhelmingly and delightfully flavorful, tempered by a slight tang, almost of a chèvre.  Normally, I stuff it messily into a crusty baguette (which I highly recommend you do as well), but this week it plays an Oscar-winning role in creating the world’s best smashed potatoes.

What could be easier?  I boil one sack of white fingerling potatoes.  Drain them, and smash them with the Boursin and a touch of cream or milk.  The small potatoes are sweetly tender, their skins are rustic and delicious, and all of the flavor you need is already packed into the little puck of white cheese.  I can think of nothing better with a summer-grilled steak, or alongside a side of salmon, or under a roast chicken.  These smashed potatoes are the kind of food that fills you up, satiates a hungry crowd, warms your cheeks and heart.  It’s just hearty, good food.

Plus, not to sounds like a salesman, but Boursin also comes in black pepper and shallot and chive flavors that allow you to smash these potatoes any way you want.  So your back pocket turns into a Mary Poppins bag of wonder.