THE OLD Irish verities are dying. We used to vote Fianna Fáil. We used to go to Mass. We used to drink in pubs. And now we scarcely do those things any more.
More importantly, it would seem we have turned our backs on an even more fundamental symbol of Ireland: we aren’t eating potatoes the way we used to.
Larry Zuckerman in his book, The Potato, writes that "No European nation has had a longer, more intimate partnership with the potato than Ireland."
But now, we don’t want to be intimate. We don’t even want to be friends.
"Ireland has become the classical, though adopted, home of potato culture, and in no other country can its influence on the domestic and economic life of the people be studied to greater advantage," wrote Redcliffe Salaman in his masterly book, The History and Social Influence of the Potato.
If we keep going the way we are going, there soon won’t be anything for the successors of historians such as Dr Salaman to study, and for a simple reason: potato sales in Ireland have been declining by an average of 10 per cent per annum in recent years. Since 2002, sales of fresh potatoes have halved, so the decline is increasing in recent times. More and more, we are getting our carbohydrates from rice and pasta.
This seems bitterly unfair to a tuber which has changed the course of human history, and not just once, but twice, according to the great historian William H McNeill. It was potatoes that built the Inca Empire in South America, and potatoes that fed the conscript Andean miners who unleashed a flood of silver into the Old World, leading to worldwide inflation and the altering of traditional social patterns.
And it was potatoes that fed northern Europe, thereby allowing it to acquire the industrial, political and military muscle to dominate the world between 1750 and 1950. From little tubers grow mighty empires.
The problem seems to be we have forgotten both the history, and the virtue, of the potato. We may be the adopted home of potato culture, but do we have a Government-sponsored National Potato Day? We do not, though the private vegetable and potato firm, Keogh’s, did organise its own National Potato Day and held a little shebang in Merrion Square in August.
Similarly, when given the perfect opportunity to celebrate our potato culture – when the UN declared 2008 to be the International Year of the Potato – we didn’t seem to manage any street parties with multi-course potato menus or the like.
Our inability to celebrate the potato, and our seeming determination to take it for granted, may reflect its ambiguous position in our history. Yes, it fed us for centuries, it allowed our population to multiply, and then it let us down, with catastrophic consequences.
Even today, says Michael Kelly of Grow it Yourself Ireland, “the blight issue does scare people off growing potatoes, although it is still one of the top five vegetables grown by gardeners”.
Research by An Bord Bia has also shown that people see potatoes as awkward and time consuming, so they are the antithesis of the modern domestic trend where everything we cook should ideally be both simple and fast.
Blighty. Difficult. Declining sales. It all looks bad for the potato in Ireland.
But talk to people who sell potatoes, and another picture emerges. Manfred Wandel of Fruit Hill Farm in west Cork is finding he is “selling less seed potato to commercial growers, but much more to private gardeners”.
“Our figures are up and up, and I think it’s partly a psychological thing – people like to have some potatoes growing in the garden in hard times – but also they are very happy with the quality of their own potatoes,” he says.
Kelly also sees the positives. “People spent €20 million on seeds and seed plants last year, and this is the most dynamic sector in the whole horticultural sector,” he says.
It’s estimated 5 per cent of this was spent on seed potatoes, but as Kelly points out, “with €15 of seed potatoes you could grow enough to feed a family for six to seven months. And to avoid blight we advise people to just grow early potatoes, so just steer clear of the problem.”
Hans Wieland of the Organic Centre concurs: “Sales of seed potatoes are up, and especially early potatoes for planting in the polytunnel, as people want to have a crop early in the year when new potatoes are expensive and imported.”
The pleasure of growing your own isn’t the main reason to prefer potatoes over other carbohydrates, however.
As John Reader points out in his book, Propitious Esculent: The Potato in World History, the potato has so much vitamin C that when men were dying of scurvy during the Klondike gold rush, potatoes sold for their weight in gold.
And what else makes the spud worth its weight in gold? Well, the potato’s ratio of carbohydrate to protein means that eating them for energy also means you get sufficient protein.
Along with B complex vitamins, they have calcium, iron, phosphorous and potassium. Their protein content may be low, but it is of high quality, and is rich in the amino acids that we must ingest ready-made.
The potato doesn’t have as high a biological value as eggs, but it is streets ahead of maize and wheat, and even ahead of soya.
And not only is the carbohydrate in a potato not fattening, but the carbs are released slowly, giving a steady stream of energy.
When it comes to balanced nutrition, the potato can’t be beaten. So neglecting the potato is foolish, for they are a superlative health food. They are worth their weight in gold.
SCALLOPED POTATOES
This is the simplest version of the classic potato dish, and it is the essence of potato. It’s not fast, but it is unforgettable, a sublime alliance of Irish potatoes, Irish butter and Irish milk. Don’t forget to rub the dish with the smashed garlic: it makes an enormous difference.
750g peeled potatoes
1 large clove garlic
600mls milk
25g butter
salt and pepper
1. Pre-heat the oven to 190ºC.
2. Smash the garlic clove with a knife and rub around the surface of the casserole dish. Let it become dry and tacky, then remove the bits. Butter the dish.
3. Slice the potatoes with a sharp knife. Layer the potato slices, slightly overlapping, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper.
4. Heat the milk just to boiling point, pour over so it comes up to the level of the potatoes.
5. Dot the thin slices with butter and bake for one hour, when the top should be browned, the interior fully cooked, and the milk absorbed.
