3.24.26 | No Potato Unturned

You should have seen the one that got away

Becca and Jellybean do the majority of the gardening at our house. Jellybean digs the holes and Becca drops in the seeds. Bing, bang, bong, you got yourself a garden! I stick to hot peppers myself (probably why I fell pot over teakettle for Becca). Some years I'll grow basil, cilantro (or sometimes coriander if I neglect it), weeds, poison ivy, and brambles. I like a garden full of items I find useful when we're planning a Sunday dinner. If it's in the yard, the correct hue of ripeness, and isn't full of creepy crawlers then it ends up in the Sunday pot.

I have hopes for what Becca grows, mainly because I am too lazy to grow it myself and I don't want to make requests of her leisure time for my personal gain … but if you're reading this, Becca, and you're not quite sure what you might want in the garden this summer, some light suggestions might be greens, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, yams. I'll eat ‘em. Especially potatoes: Kennebecs, russets, Yukons, reds, fingerlings, purples, petites, purple petites. There is no such thing as a bad potato. Apples? Absolutely. Why do we still see Red Delicious at the grocery store when everyone knows it's an inferior apple? I said it! And I will die on this hill.

Becca has grown potatoes in the past and they are part of many, if not every, weekend meal. In the words of Samwise, “Boil em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew.” Fry em in a pan, add some poblanos, garlic, and yellow onions, finish with some fresh chopped cilantro (or ground coriander if, again, you neglect your plants like I do) a little S&P and you’ve got yourself some breakfast burrito filling. Put an egg in there and we're doing breakfast for dinner.

Becca, being thick-skinned and full of sugar, enjoys sweet potatoes and making sweet potato fries, and I sometimes reap the benefit of her sweet tooth. She comes whirling through the house into the kitchen with a plate of dirty sweet potatoes that she has no doubt squirreled away in some dark recesses to cure. A little rinse, a dusting with the Penzys Arizona Dreaming spice my sister gifted us for Christmas (thanks, Jamie), a drizzle of Meg's good good olive oil and in the oven they go. Ranch and sweet potatoes! (I need that on a bumper sticker.)

Okay, well, as the growing season comes into bloom and my newsletter goes to bolt, I realize I started off wanting to write about the therapeutic effects of gardening, the mini-getaway, and the how-tos of enjoying our days off. But instead it looks like I have just written a love letter to potatoes. 

Dearest sweet potato, 

let me count the ways in which

I wish to cook you

                   and eat you.

Amor,

Chef Matt