Home: The Humble Potato

We eat a lot of potato, or at least we eat potato lots of ways, there is a good reason it is a dietary staple.

Our current favorites are:

• Mashed
• Rosti
• Farl
• Gnocchi
• Baked

Although looking at this list I suddenly see that they are favorites because all of the cooking methods use butter (anther of our favorite foods) in varying degrees.

Mash

Although mash is simple it is also probably the most versatile here.

Wissy peels the potatoes, I don't - this is a personal preference / laziness thing, but chop them into manageble chunks and keep them at a rolling boil until a knife slides in smoothly - if you left the skin on it should be lifting away from the potato.

A sturdy masher is essential, a flimsy mashing tool means you will soon be buying another, and the design is important, it needs to be easy to clean, or get a dish washer, pretty mashers with nooks and crannies are soon regretted.

Add butter - a knob - and milk and start mashing, you don't want to much at first as you can't take it back and you don't want to make potato soup!

Once it is the correct consistence, some where between crushed and light and fluffy - your call, you can start the fun part. We often add chilly powder or mustard, but you can go wild - cheese, ketchup, horseradish, whatever compliments the food on your plate!

Rosti

I prefer this for breakfast but it works for a evening meal just as well.

Grate the uncooked potato roughly, then squeeze out as much moisture as you can with your hands. I then fashion this into patties, about 3 inches across and 1/2 an inch thick and (although they can be baked) mine go into a lightly oiled pan.

Once in the pan add butter around the edges of the rosti, this will keep the pan cooler and add rich colour and flavour. As it cooks and colours up flip them over and repeat on the other side. Keep the butter coming it is important.

Like burgers the colour of the outside is important but you also want them in the pan long enough to be cooked, the potato in the centre needs to be warm and translucent in that sort of cooked potato way.

Once done put on the plate, add ketchup and enjoy.

Farl

This is a fairly new edition to my potato repertoire, Farl, or Irish Potato Cake, and a god choice to use up left over mash.

Start like the mash but at the point of adding the extras add plain flour instead, keep mixing and adding flour until it all sticks together with a constancy like dough (bread dough or play dough are both good references depending on your cooking experience/age), at this point I have added chopped spring onions, diced left over bacon would be good too.

Once you have the potato dough, roll it out on a flat cool surface dusted with flour, into a circle and chop into quarters - this is apparently traditional but it also makes cooking easier if they are a manageable size. The Farl shouldn't be much more than 1/2 an inch thick.

Into the oiled frying pan, of course using butter to help the cooking process and once one side is brown flip and repeat.

Serve straight away, job done.

Gnocchi


These are good for impressing people but are simple to make, Gnocchi are italian potato dumplings.

Starting with a basic mash, cooked and ready to go, like the Farl add flour until you get the dough consistency. A this point instead of rolling them out flat shape them in your hands into little dumplings, about 3/4 of an inch long and 1/2 an inch across.

Once you have all the gnocchi prepared they are dropped into boiling water, cooking time is easy, once they are cooked they helpfully float scoop them off the surface and serve. They don't take long, normally about 2 minutes so don't walk away...

Any sauce you cook for pasta will work for gnocchi too

Baked

I have left the humble baked potato for last, there are too many ways to cook these, on a BBQ, wrapped in foil, par boiling first, the most important thing to know is that once you have decided on a method - and ours is often an hour in the oven wrapped in foil - the important part is poke it with a skewer to make sure it is cooked through, it should slide in easily.

To serve cut it in a cross at the top push open and add butter (of course)

I know this isn't an exhaustive list of potato recipes but they are our favorites...