The great potato saga

I read a bit in the Daily Telegraph today on how Christie’s had held an auction of old cookbooks. While some interesting volumes sold – like one by Thomas Muffet, who told his readers how curds and whew was made, perhaps the same recipe used for his daughter Patience, aka Miss Muffet, the arachnophobe! – one, written by a German, did not. It was the first known that explained how to cook potatoes. Which is a good thing to do; after all, potatoes being the food of life!

The first time I ever cooked potatoes was when I was about 12 years old. I spent a fairly long time talking my fond mother into allowing me to use the stove without constant supervision. Then, acting on my creative instinct, which was indeed most creative at that time of my life, I sat on the kitchen counter and grated my way through what seemed to be an endless pile of spuds. It was not without incident. After having peeled off bits and pieces of my own skin, I proceeded to grate more of my fingers into the heap of potato, very painfully and, regrettably, red-tingedly. Oh, well, I reasoned, we were all not pure vegetarians and it was family blood, so it was okay.

But the rest of the culinary adventure was not even as successful as this, albeit rather less painful. I chopped up some garlic, ginger and onions, macerated tomatoes and cleaned a heap of green coriander leaves. The plan was prepared for. All that I had to do was cook. I had a nebulous idea of how I would go about making what I could see as the end product, and took a deep breath before splashing some oil into a pan and lighting the gas.

That is as far as the theory went. In practice, after sautéing the spices and browning the onions, the potatoes went in. they were supposed to cook soft, then go slightly crunchy at the edges, keeping the basic shape and size of the shreds intact, even as they got completely cooked through. But my culinary skills didn’t quite match my conceptive ones and something went a little off. By the end of the process, I had this wonderfully fragrant and, I must admit, delicious mess. The problem was that it was just that: a mess.

As I got older and played more in the kitchen, I became fairly good at managing my potatoes. A few days ago, I boiled some almost completely done, then did a quick last minute sauté in a touch of butter, sloshed in a little red wine, some mustard and a sprinkle of thyme and let it cook down until the spuds were soft and smelling divine. Then a moment or two on high heat and the edges were crisp, a deep golden bordering the pinky-brown of the body. Matched with julienned zucchini sautéed in olive oil with paprika and broiled chicken breasts, it was not bad at all, even though I say so myself.

Maybe my favourite way with potatoes is the South Indian style. Chopped into cubes, sautéed crisp in a little oil tinged with sputtered mustard seeds, sprinkled with curry leaves and cayenne powder and finished with a squeeze of lemon, it is failsafe and delicious, ideal with the standard concoction of dahi chawal or dal and rice. Try this with sweet potatoes, avoid the salt and add some pepper instead of chilli powder and you find heaven in a pan. Try it. And if you know any interesting recipes I can play with, do tell…