Hurrah for heritage potatoes!
Andrew Webb visits a restaurant that’s built a menu around the terrific tuber, before unearthing some great heritage varieties.
Mashed, fried, roasted, boiled, sliced, diced, and chipped... there are few things as versatile as spuds. However, a nose round the average supermarket or even greengrocers reveals flowery Maris, waxy Desiree, king Eddies, and perhaps Baby New potatoes. It’s a small choice from the over-80 varieties grown commercially in the UK.
The Potato Merchant
The comparisons will surely come. There hasn’t been a business built around the potato since Spud-u-Like opened its doors in Edinburgh in 1974. But Potato Merchant on Exmouth Market, London is an entirely different concept. "We don’t do baked potatoes for a start!" laughs co-owner Ronnie Truss, a former chef turned restaurateur. What he and Head Chef Dave Minney do offer is potatoes practically every other way: mash, Jersey Royals, dauphinoise, pommes Anna, tartiflette, chips, fries and patatas bravas. And those are just the side dishes; plenty of foods on their main menu feature potato as an ingredient. Think of a bubbling fish pie, crunchy crab cakes, and the legendary food of the gods that is bubble and squeak.
It’s not just about recipes; it’s the type of potatoes used too. “We favour heritage varieties from Carroll’s in Northumberland and Morghew Gourmet Potatoes in Kent,” Ronnie tells me. “We were inspired to set up Potato Merchant because we think the potato has been much overlooked. We want to inspire people to share our excitement in rediscovering or finding new dishes to try.” They even have a couple of spud guns for folk to muck about with.
The apple of the earth
The French call the potato 'the apple of the earth', and like the apple there are some fantastically named specimens. Pink Fir, Red Duke of York, Salad Blue and Dumbarton Rover sounds like the starting line-up at the 3:30 at Doncaster. At least some of these will be available for sale at The Potato Merchant, from their grocery area to the side of the restaurant. Of course you can also get your hands on them direct from the suppliers via mail order.
Potato desserts
Head Chef David even finds room for potatoes in his dessert menu - the lemon drizzle cake uses potato flour, and the bread and butter pudding uses potato bread. These guys aren’t the only ones at it... if you’re in the Birmingham area on April 26th, David Colcombe, Executive Head Chef at Opus restaurant, will be offering a special menu featuring Carroll’s heritage potatoes. Last year he created potato doughnuts.
Staple crop
It’s great to see heritage spuds so rightly celebrated. Potatoes are one of humanity's great staple foods, able to provide a large amount of our daily dietary needs. Potatoes are easy to grow and produce more calories per acre than any other crop in any climate – no wonder they're popular. In 2007, potato farmers harvested more than 325 million tonnes on an estimated 193,000 sq km of farmland – the equivalent of all the world’s potatoes being grown on land about the size of England and Scotland put together. Potatoes were also the first vegetable to be grown successfully in space, fact fans. They’re cheap, too: Morgews offers a 25kg sack of budget potatoes for £3, collection only obviously.
The patriotic potato
There’s even a spud that’s red, white and blue. Mr Littles's Yetholm Gypsy. This variety was apparently bought by William Little, a shepherd in the village of Yetholm, from a gypsy at the first Yetholm Fair in the 1940s. It's unusual because it's the only potato to show red, white and blue skin. Lucy from Carroll’s potatoes recommends boiling or steaming them with the skin on to show off the colours, which remain bright even after cooking.
So if you’re after something unusual, tasty, and different on your plate, you could do worse than a heritage potato.
Have you ever tried any heritage potatoes? Maybe you grow your own? Talk to us in the comments below...
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