Mashed potatoes - simple or fancy?

I remember you as you were when I first fell in love with you, whipped to a waxy cloud with masses of butter, pure and simple. Nigel Slater

My own first memories of mashed potatoes are not happy. Well some of them aren't. The ones my mother cooked were yummy and voraciously consumed, but the ones we got at primary school for lunch were revolting. I think our school lunches were cooked elsewhere and brought to school in tins and just reheated somehow. Anyway the mashed potatoes were not smooth. They were lumpy which shouldn't have mattered really and I don't think it would bother me now if I had lumps in my mashed potatoes - just call them crushed or smashed and they're delicious. But the ones we had at school made me gag. I think also, that at times, post-war we were restricted to powdered potatoes which you then reconstituted. Also not a good taste sensation. As for butter - we didn't have much of that. 'Masses of butter' was not a possibility.

And when I was looking for appropriate illustrations for this post it was difficult to find any photographs that didn't look like invalid food. Institutionalised food anyway. And this taint means that lots of people do not like them. My husband for one is not a fan and refuses to have anything to do with them whether at home or in a restaurant, although, curiously, he will mash boiled or other kinds of potatoes into his stews. And he doesn't mind the mashed potato on the top of shepherd's pie, or in fish cakes either, or gnocchi come to that. There is no logic. Maybe he has similar bad memories but hasn't got over them.

As I said, my mother made lovely mashed potatoes with milk and a little butter using an old-fashioned potato masher. But when I went to France I was introduced to purée de pommes de terre which is another thing altogether. Here the potatoes are put through a mouli - or a potato ricer as it is known in America - and probably here - which takes out all of the lumps and then they are beaten up in a saucepan with the aforesaid masses of butter - French butter, which is different - and milk - sometimes cream. Pure and simple as Nigel Slater says and very very delicious.

But alas, then everyone in the cooking world gets on to it and there was a time there when everything on your plate in a restaurant was piled high with, most often, a base of mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes were probably chosen because things would stick to them and the whole tower of food would not fall down. I do love mashed or puréed potatoes but not with everything - and not with fish in particular. I remember one French holiday during which almost every restaurant seemed to serve their fish with puréed potatoes. Nigel Slater maintains this doesn't happen these days - but I don't think he is right - my crispy skinned salmon from Melissa's last night came with mashed potatoes - though I did persuade them to change this to chips. A posh restaurant would decline to do that I'm sure.

The other thing they did (and still do) was add things to the potatoes. Wasabi, I gather, was a big thing, though not so much these days. Today I think you are more likely to get a sweet potato mash when they are trying to be fancy. And I bet quinoa finds its way into them somehow.

"I don't want wasabi in my mashed potatoes. I don't want chipotle in my mashed potatoes. Horseradish? Nope. Sundried tomatoes? God, no. Butter, cream, maybe garlic. That's it. Mashed potatoes are delicious -- keep that other crap out of them." Besha Rodell, L.A. Times

I'm not sure I really agree with this. I probably don't want some of those more exotic things, but I am perfectly happy with carrot, or garlic, or herbs of some kind.

You could write several books on what you can do with mashed potatoes but I thought I would keep it simple and just deal with the basic product. But a final word on the one fancy thing my mother did with them. I don't count shepherd's pie, fish cakes or bubble and squeak as fancy, but she would sometimes make some cheesy duchess potatoes. This consisted of mixing in some grated cheese, piping it into swirls on a baking sheet and baking them in the oven until crusty and golden. We loved them. They were a special treat and really, now that I think about it, quite a curious thing for her to have done, because they are sort of restaurant food really. Most often used as a garnish rather than as real vegetable.

But I will just finish with two really 'out there' things done with mashed potatoes.

The first is mashed potato bars at your wedding reception! Only in America I would guess.

The idea is that you have large dollops of mashed - or rather puréed potatoes served up in martini glasses and a selection of toppings on the table - or bar. You help yourself to the different toppings, thus making your own personal dish. Weird don't you think? Do you then stand around dipping your spoon into your mashed potatoes? Is it an entrée, a main, a post main thing? I don't think they have come here yet, but I could be wrong.

The second is, in a way, nothing to do with food. In England, in Carlisle, the 2-Sisters Food Group has opened up a power plant using waste from mashed potato and pie production to produce bio-fuel. The company says, "The bio-refinery is a world-first for the food industry, using a new type of super-efficient technology to generate energy from potato waste" and they are hoping to reduce their carbon footprint by 20%. Which would be good. This was back in 2015 and I can find no mention of it on their website today - though I did see a reference to palm oil (BAD). So maybe it didn't work. Maybe it did. Anyway - an interesting idea.

So that's it for mashed potato. I shall revisit them from time to time in some of their many guises. I'll finish with the Nigel Slater Kitchen Diaries III quote and his recipe of the day, that started me on this.

"Dear Mashed Potato. I don't see you much any more, but I still think of you. I imagine you sitting in fat clouds on a white plate, a pool of shining gravy lapping at your edges. Heavy with butter, maybe hot milk, or cream or olive oil, you always were my go to food, the reecipe that sorted me out, put my world to rights, tucked me in at night."

The recipe that followed his fanciful letter to mashed potato was for Cumberland sausage, shallot and Cheddar roast potato mash. It's a bit difficult to see the mashed potatoes properly. They look a bit more like crushed potatoes to me. You can find the recipe on the web. Here is the mouth-watering description of the dish in his imaginary letter to mashed potato.

"Today we shall once again meet up, as you are folded with roasted caramelised onions and the sort of matured Cheddar that makes your lips tingle. Better still, you will be made not from boiled or steamed potatoes but from roast. The mash will be soft and fluffy, but with pieces of crisp roast potato crust in there too."

A bit over the top I know, some would say cringeworthy, but I liked it. Sounds good to me.