If ever I need to retreat to a happy place, I can turn to my well-thumbed copy of "The Renaissance of Italian Cooking" by Lorenza de'Medici. Her roasted baby potatoes, each with its own blade of bay leaf riding high across the top like a dorsal fin, makes me smile. I believe this was her first cookbook (I got it in the '80s) but I peeked on Amazon and it seems like Lorenza has been busy, there have been quite a few books after this one. Hope the dear woman has earned herself a title — with that surname, don't you think Marchesa, at the least, would be in order?
Back to the book: it's all about the photos. The elaborate constructions of the extraordinary meals artfully arranged on heirloom platters, chased silver cutlery laid out on rich tapestries are set amidst time-worn banquet tables in rococo rooms, salubrious breezes flowing in from the incomparable Italian countryside stretching to the horizon. If Merchant and Ivory did food porn, this is what it would have looked like.
You know how the old masters took care to lavish exacting details on all the peripheral people in the background? Think of these baby reds as your own cherubim flitting happily around the Saint or Madonna that will be the center of your holiday platter.
This one isn't rocket science — nor should it be, what with its renaissance roots.
Take small red new potatoes and slice 3/4 the way through, the long way if the potatoes are oval. Role them all around in a goodly amount of olive oil, salt and pepper. Then take a bay leaf, dredge it through the oil in the pan (both sides) and slip it into the slot in the potato. Roast in a 350° oven for an hour, basting every 15 minutes or so with the oil in the pan. Usually you'd roll the potatoes around to crisp up the skins evenly, but you can't do that here lest you break the bay leaves.
Fit them snuggly in a shallow roasting pan because some are going to want to fall open and their neighbors will hold them upright.
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Use a new jar of bay leaves — chances are the one you have is old and the leaves do lose their color and pungency.
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