We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
When she’s in New York City, Liza Minnelli’s favorite restaurant is Patsy’s – which, perhaps befitting the Broadway star’s lifelong showbiz career, is located just one block from Carnegie Hall. Patsy’s serves elevated Italian comfort food, and comfort food is a very big deal to the Tony and Oscar award-winner. Her own go-to comfort food is an elevated take on a classic baked potato.
Minnelli’s recipe for Potato Shells appears in Johna Blinn’s 1981 “Celebrity Cookbook,” which is now out of print. But, Minnelli first gave her Potato Shells recipe to journalist Blinn for an article in The Victoria Advocate newspaper published in 1970. When Minnelli’s craving comfort food, she’s whipping up crispy baked potatoes filled with a generous slathering of butter, salt, and pepper, garnished with sour cream and a heaping scoop of caviar. As a final touch, two shots of vodka are splashed on top of the whole thing.
“You can’t taste the vodka, what it does is take away the salt from the caviar and blend everything else in. You eat it like a hot dog. It’s comfort food, I’m telling you,” Minnelli told Blinn. For optimal hot-dog-style-eating, instructs Minnelli, opt for long, slender potatoes. Rub the outer skins with fat, then bake ’em at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for a full hour and 25 minutes. From there, scoop roughly half of the plush insides out of the potato, and top with butter, salt, pepper, ¼ cup of sour cream, a scoop of caviar, and a slug of vodka on top.
Liza Minnelli is all about baked potatoes topped with caviar and two shots of vodka
“I love savory foods! I love comfort foods!” an enthusiastic Liza Minnelli shared in the interview. “Comfort food is anything you just sort of, yum yum yum [smacks her lips] and takes a while to swallow. It’s good and very savory!” As the newspaper notes, Minnelli’s Potato Shells can be served as finger food during cocktail hour. If you go this route, martinis would pair fabulously with this rich comfort food. We recommend using potato-based vodka for a richer, more savory martini. Or, to complete the meal, Minnelli tells Blinn that she serves her Potato Shells with biscuits, gazpacho, and liver pâté. “Everyone waddles away from the table,” says Minnelli, laughing, “but they know they’re going to get something good. I just sock it to ’em.” To help unaccustomed home cooks sock it to ’em, we have a few tips for nailing the ultimate baked potato to help you out.
“My mother taught me to cook,” Minnelli tells Blinn. “She used to love to cook.” Indeed, Minnelli’s mother Judy Garland also had an unusual favorite comfort food: shepherd’s pie made with a three-pound leg of lamb and two whole chicken breasts. In an earlier 1967 interview with The Evening Sun newspaper, Garland calls daughter Minnelli a “terrific” home cook, raving, “When both my daughters [Minnelli and Lorna Luft] and I get into the kitchen, it’s like one of those Pillsbury bake-off things.”
