The Humble Potato

Many years ago, before a trip to Ireland, I asked a friend who had lived there about the cuisine. “What are some of the authentic foods?” I asked. Without hesitation, and with a smile in his voice, he replied, “The Potato.”
 
He wasn't kidding. After a long bus ride to Galway from Dublin, our first meal on the island was at a quaint gray-bricked building on Market Street called Finnegans. I ordered the Irish Stew, or simply referred to as “stew” by the locals. When my plate arrived, not only did my stew contain chunks of spud, but it came with a side of two boiled red potatoes and and a pile of mashed! This pattern continued throughout our stay on the Emerald Isle.
 
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, it was Ireland that depended on the tuber so heavily that when the crop failed in the mid-1800's it created a famine that killed over a million people. Leading up to the “Great Hunger” was a period when Irish peasants were forced onto smaller tracts of land to allow room for grazing cattle of the British. The potato became the staple of their diet, growing well in less favorable soil. It is said that roughly 40 percent of the Irish ate no other solid food other than potatoes. When the blight first hit in 1845, it is estimated that over three million Irish were totally dependent on the potato. The result was death by starvation and disease, as well as a mass migration to other countries, including the United States.

The potato, or Solanum tuberosum, originates from the Andes Mountains in South America. The natives grew them on terraced slopes where it wasn't uncommon for each village to have a dozen different varieties. Some of the tubers contained toxic compounds which were neutralized with clay or dirt that was made into a paste and eaten with the potato. Much as we do, the Andean people ate their potatoes roasted, mashed or boiled, but also dried, fermented or frozen.
 
The first known Europeans to come across the potato was a group led by Francisco Pizarro, who landed in Ecuador in 1532 among the Incas. Within a few decades, farmers in the Canary Islands were growing them in great enough quantities to ship to mainland Europe. During the next century, the Solanum tuberosum would find its way around the world as part of the Columbian Exchange.
 
In our modern world, the potato is the fifth most important crop, surpassed in harvest volume only by rice, sugarcane, wheat and maize. According to Charles Mann's book, 1493, “The potato can better sustain life than any other food when eaten as the sole item of diet. It has all essential nutrients except vitamins A and D, which can be supplied by milk.” This is how the Irish, whose meager diet consisted of potatoes and milk, could survive remarkably well.

Patatas a lo pobre from Granada, Spain.

Nowadays you can find tortilla de patata in Spain, borsch in Poland, and massaman curry in Thailand, all using a descendant of the South American potato. In my own culture in the American Southwest, a very revered dish is "dutch-oven 'taters." When the Mormon pioneers moved westward across the plains, they brought cast iron pots which they used to cook their food. That tradition has carried on, and now, no serious meal while camping would be complete without frying up bacon and onions, and baking slices of potato in a dutch oven over coals.
 
About fifteen years ago I visited my friend, Billy, and we were in his back yard admiring his garden. I noticed the wide furrows and plants growing from the banks of earth. “What are these?” I asked, not recognizing the leaves. “They're potato plants,” he responded. “We can dig some up and you can take 'em home.”
 
The idea of growing potatoes in a garden had never occurred to me. The following spring I bought some Red Pontiac potatoes from a catalog and cut each tuber so that each section contained at least one eye. We planted two rows that first year, and I was surprised at how easily and green the plants grew.
 
I have planted potatoes every year since then, occasionally experimenting with different varieties. It has easily become my favorite crop. It grows easily, not only the ones you plant, but also the volunteer plants that germinate from leftover spuds. When harvest time arrives, I love that there is no rush to dig them up before the first frost, but that you can leave them in the ground, protected from the cold. Storage is simple. All I do is keep them in a tote with no lid in our storage room in the basement. They stay good until spring. The quality of my own potatoes exceeds that of what is available in the store, and lasts much longer.
 
And most of all I like to cook with them. I know that potatoes are basic and cheap to buy, but when we have a whole container in the basement, we tend to use them more, and it brings down the price of our groceries. We eat them in soups, stews, or mashed, fried, baked etc.
 
Now it is harvest time again and tomorrow I have to go out with shovel-in-hand to dig up tubers. I will admit that it is a little difficult when you haven't kept up on the weeding to distinguish the potato plants from the pig weed. But I will continue digging down the line, on each side of the furrow until I reach the end. Sometimes I am disappointed when I dig and uncover just a handful of small spuds. But when luck would have it that I dig and lever the shovel and overturn a plethora of fat Red Pontiac, then I feel as if I've just won the jackpot! ♠ 

Dutch-oven potatoes.