How do you take yours? Few foodstuffs can be transformed into such a cavalcade of mouthwatering delights as the potato
IT didn’t start well. ‘Many people thought potatoes a dangerous foodstuff, or at least a coarse one and at best suitable for pigs,’ sighs Alexandre Dumas in his Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine. Officially banned by the French parliament in 1748, on suspicion of causing leprosy, potatoes were also believed to carry syphilis, another unwanted import from the New World. Protestants in the north of Ireland initially refused to plant them. Not only were potatoes omitted from the Bible, but they matured underground, not even grown from seed. Infamy of the most devilish kind. The poor spud was accused of everything from inflaming the passions to encouraging flatulence. Even the most gastronomically enlightened thought it a bore. ‘I appreciate the potato only as a protection against famine,’ sneered that great gourmand Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. ‘Except for that, I know of nothing more eminently tasteless.’
Equally damaging was a dodgy relative. Just like the tomato (another ingredient that was initially reviled), the potato is a member of the genus Solanum, alongside the highly toxic deadly nightshade, which didn’t exactly help its reputation. As Dumas points out: ‘Absurd prejudices prevented it being duly appreciated for a long time.’ But now, we worship this mighty vegetable, with a recipe for every whim, mood and desire, from the puritanical to the deeply sybaritic. Boiled or baked, roasted or mashed, chipped, fried, scalloped and sautéed. The potato is, after maize, rice and wheat, the fourth most cultivated staple food crop in the world. An ingredient as varied as it is versatile.
Denne historien er fra March 02, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra March 02, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
