`This book is the result of a long love affair with the world's favourite vegetable," writes Lucy Madden in her book, The Potato Year. It has been not merely a lengthy affair, but also a passionate one, conducted with wit and style. While the book ostensibly offers 365 recipes for cooking potatoes, one for each day of the year, Mrs Madden offers a glimpse of herself, and reveals what is a clear, sharp intelligence married to a curious mind. Just think, for a second, of what it takes to source and cook 365 recipes featuring potatoes. Everything from Colcannon to Pommes Anna to Jansson's Temptation to Salt Bloom Potatoes with Garlic and Mascarpone Sauce to Quilted Giraffe Potato Sushi, to hundreds and hundreds of other delightful, evocative and involving inventions and concoctions.
"I've been doing the book for years," she says, "in fact probably ever since I came to Ireland and wondered why people weren't more adventurous when it came to cooking potatoes. Why did people only ever boil spuds?"
The Potato Year succeeds in revealing the vast culinary potential of the tuber. She has been helped by having to cook professionally herself - she and her husband, Johnny, have been taking guests in their country house, Hilton Park in Monaghan, for some years. While she has stepped back from exercising total control in the kitchen in recent times, I have always found her cooking not merely delicious, but imaginative. As well as her own work, many guests who came to stay helped with her explorations:
"We had a CIA colonel who put me in touch with the Potato Museum in Washington, for example, and there were a lot of people who helped me. Also I read a lot, and when you are interested in a subject you suddenly see it everywhere, in novels, in poetry."
Fiction and poetry and masses of quixotic facts about spuds punctuate the recipes in the book. Did you know that Thomas Jefferson is credited with introducing french fries to the US, and was criticised for so doing, his enemies reckoning he was "putting on airs by serving novelties". Or that the rare "Lumper" potato was said to have "tears in his eyes" for the Irish who died in the famine. Or that grated raw potato applied under the eyes is said to reduce puffiness. There is a mighty universe surrounding the spud, and Mrs Madden has explored it completely. Here are three of her favourite recipes.
Cinnamon Potato Buns
"The result is a cross between an Eccles cake and a croissant. Perfect for brunch parties (the quantities given make about two dozen buns), hot from the oven, and for committed gluttons, a slit made in the centre and fresh butter put inside. Sometimes I use half the dough for buns, and make a loaf of bread with the other half (it freezes well) cooked in the normal way for bread.
8 oz (225g) potatoes, cooked and pureed
4 oz (110g) butter
3 and a half oz (90g) sugar
half pint (275ml) milk
2 teaspoons salt
2 eggs
2 and a half lbs (1 kg 125g) flour
1 packet quick-action yeast
The dough is quickly made in a food processor. I doubt if I should have the patience to make it without one. Place the butter, sugar, salt, milk and potatoes in the bowl and mix well. Add the beaten eggs, the flour and the yeast and enough tepid water to make a pliable dough. Place in an airtight container in a warm place overnight.
Filling: 4 oz (100g) butter
4 oz (110g) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
4 oz (100g) raisins
4 oz (110g) light brown sugar
4 oz (110g) chopped walnuts
Divide the dough into two parts. Roll each part out into a thin rectangle about quarter of an inch thick. Mix the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over the dough. Add the raisins, brown sugar and nuts. Drizzle the butter over the whole surface and roll up as for a roulade. Cut into half inch slices and place side by side in a well greased pan. Allow to rise again. Bake at gas mark5/375F/190C for 20-25 minutes. Irresistible!
Potatoes and Mackerel Salad
Ideally, this should be made with fillets of fish straight out of the sea. This recipe comes from France, is simple and elegant, and is a change from the more usual dressings for potato salads.
2lb (900g) potatoes, peeled, cooked and sliced
6-8 mackerel fillets
1 large onion, finely chopped
A glass of white wine
2 large very ripe tomatoes, finely chopped
1 tablespoon tomato puree Chopped parsley
Steam the fillets of mackerel. Put together with the cooked potato slices in a wide bowl. Mix the onion and one of the tomatoes with the tomato puree. Stir into the wine and disperse over the fish and the potatoes.
Arrange the other tomato around the edge of the salad, sprinkle with chopped parsley.
Garlic Potato Puree
2lb (900g) potatoes
6 fat cloves garlic
2oz (50g) butter
1 tablespoon flour
A little grated nutmeg
half teaspoon French mustard
half pint boiling milk
2 oz (50g) butter
3 tablespoons cream
Blanch the garlic heads for one minute in boiling water. Drain and peel. Boil or steam the potatoes and while they are cooking melt 2 oz (50g) of butter and add the garlic cloves. Crush them with a wooden spoon in the butter. Let them soften over a gentle heat for about seven minutes and then stir in the flour, nutmeg and mustard. Pour over the hot milk blending to make a smooth sauce.
Puree the cooked potatoes, stir in another 2 oz (50g) of the butter and, spoon by spoon, mix in the garlic sauce.
The Potato Year, by Lucy Madden is published by Milu Press, £9.99.