My favourite two piece and spuds!

I thought of spoiling the boys with their favourite supper, three cheese MacCheese, but they had other ideas. I was informed that sausages and mash were on the menu and that I was to bring home the potatoes.

I have a thing about potatoes. I love them. Not only because they are a perfect blank canvas on which to place just about anything else delectable, but they can be good and tasty in their own right. However, they must be treated with respect. In my opinion, noble potatoes deserve to be selected individually off the shelf and used straight away so that they are able to give their best flavour. No bags of mixed quality for me (ok, not so much Woollies tatties, but I have another THING about Woollies foods that I will regale another time) that end up making eyes at me a few days later from the veggie rack. I am lucky enough to have a Spar two blocks away from work which is en route to home which is another four blocks on, so I can get reasonably fresh stuff everyday. Or I can go to the corner Woollies near gym on the days I go there. So a veggie rack is actually obsolete in my kitchen. A luxury I truly enjoy.

But back to potatoes. Potatoes are an international food, and in each country there are some variations in their cooking. In Holland I have been served stew and boiled potatoes. I always manage to fuss enough with my serviette, or chat away as others start serving themselves meals presented in a way I am unfamiliar with, so that I can see what they do before I make an absolute eejit of myself. The boiled potatoes were placed in the centre of the plate, everyone then crushed them a bit with their forks and then spooned gravy rich stew over the top. Delish! I was served Limburg Zuurvleis, a traditional Southern Dutch stew, in a lovely boutique restaurant on Rijnstraat in Amsterdam on thick potato wedges, a variation on the way the stew was served in my hostesses home previously. Also YUM. In Sweden I was introduced to mashed potato their way. Potatoes are boiled and then pushed through what is now known in my home as my favourite two piece. Blog problems at the moment so I cannot post a pic but go to www.wakefield.gov.uk/.../TheHome/foodprep.htm to see what I am talking about. My hostess squished the potato through the masher onto the plates and all we added was salt an pepper. The texture was light and airy and I fell in love with her masher. The next week in between lectures in Linkoping I dashed off to a kitchen supplies shop and spent the GDP of a small African country on one of these for myself. And carried it all the way home, only to find them in Boardmans a few months later.

I use this handy little machine every time I mash potatoes and the mash is guarenteed to be creamy. Other potato mashers, no matter how fancy they look, are a waste of time. Depending on the meal, this basic potato cream can then be supplemented with all sorts of stuff. I have added tinned white beans, garlic, parmesan, a host of different herbs to compliment the rest of the dinner, but almost always milk and butter. Last night we added fresh rosemary and olive oil instead of milk and butter and had it with chicken sausages and steamed veggies. Sometimes the simplest foods are the most delightful.


PS - the best potatoes I have ever tasted were grown in the Lamberts Bay area.