Whether boiled, baked, mashed, quartered, or fried, potatoes star in everything from Italian potato gnocchi to Mexican soups and salads, to African potato stews.
With nearly two-dozen varieties, potatoes are the fourth largest crop of fresh produce grown throughout the world.
Potatoes were widely grown in the United States during the early 1700s, although most Americans considered them animal food until the mid-1850s. Pre-Columbian farmers, however, first cultivated this versatile food approximately 7,000 years ago. Spanish conquistadors encountered potatoes, which became a shipboard staple when they realized that sailors who ate them did not suffer from scurvy.
Potatoes are especially prominent in French cuisine. Le Passage French Bistro, in Carlsbad, Calif., serves potatoes prepared several different ways including Pomme Frites, French fries made with shoestring potatoes; and Pomme Dauphine, mashed potatoes blended with pastry dough. Salade Nicoise, a French salad, features red potatoes, cooked green beans, hard-boiled eggs, black olives, anchovies, tomatoes, and tuna.
“Potatoes are quite a staple in France,” says Shaun Hagen, a server at Le Passage. “Pomme Frites and Dauphine are classic French items. We serve Pomme Frites with all of our lunch entrees and as appetizers. Pomme Dauphine is served with all dinner entrees.”
Gerry McDermott grew up in Ireland with potato dishes regularly served with fish or ground beef stews. Today, McDermott manages Hibernian Restaurant and Pub in Raleigh, N.C., whose classic Irish fare includes mashed potatoes, potato salad, fries, quartered red potatoes, and mashed potatoes used as a topping for shepherd’s pie.
“I don’t feel like I’m full if there’s not a potato dish [with dinner],” he says.
Other classic Irish potato dishes include boxty (potato griddlecakes) and colcannon, a dish with potatoes, bacon, and cabbage.
Italians make chicken and potato piccata, while many Canadians eat a fast-food dish called poutine — a combination of French fries, cheese curds and brown chicken gravy. Germans and Russians have multiple uses for potatoes including potato salad.
In Columbia, you might enjoy a pot of chicken, corn and potato stew, while residents of Ecuador may serve potato cakes with peanut sauce. At Sabor Latino in Denver, South American dishes include Lomo Saltado, a combination of stir-fried sirloin, salt, pepper, garlic, cumin, tomato, and onion, with fried potatoes placed on top before flipping the dish over for serving.
Therefore, the next time you eat potatoes, remember that you are enjoying one of the world’s most popular vegetables.
Recipe: Idaho Potato Cheesy Ale & Cheddar Colcannon
(Adapted, courtesy of Idaho Potato Commission)
Makes four servings
Ingredients
6 (80-count) Idaho® Potatoes
1/4 lb. smoked bacon, chopped
1/2 head of green cabbage, julienned
1/4 lb. butter
1 cup half & half
8 oz. Wisconsin smoked cheddar, shredded
1 bunch green onions, diced
6 oz. Ale
2 rosemary sprigs
Directions
1. Peel potatoes and cut into 1/4-inch thick slices and place in boiling water until potatoes are soft.
2. While the potatoes are cooking, dice the bacon into 1/8-inch pieces and cook in a sauté pan until crispy. Add the julienned cabbage. Cook until cabbage has become soft.
3. Drain the potatoes. In a mixing bowl, mash potatoes and add butter, half & half, cheese and green onions. Fold in the ale, as well as the bacon/cabbage mixture.
4. Garnish with 2 rosemary sprigs.
To learn more see these books:
Totally Potato Cookbook by Helen Siegel, Carolyn Vibbert and Karen Gillingham, Ten Speed Press, May 2000;
Ultimate Potato Book: Hundreds of Ways to Turn America’s Favorite Side Dish into a Meal by Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough, HarperCollins Publishers, June 2003;
Potatoes by Gisela Allkemper, Silverback Books IL, February 2005