The delicacy of the season's new potatoes transforms us into timid cooks, with good reason. When the little tubers are so small and fine, their flavour so starchy and fresh, you can do little better than to simply steam them and then split them in half and slap on a knob of butter. But there is another side to the character of the new potato, one which we rarely explore, but which pays delicious dividends. For it is a truth, rarely acknowledged, that the new tuber is excellent at absorbing complementary flavours, its starchiness slowly soaking in external tastes and spices, and being transformed into something extra special.
I first became aware of this some years back, when I cooked a potato dish from Alice Waters's first book, The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. The dish is New Potatoes In Parchment, and it is simplicity itself: a pound of very small new potatoes is salted and then sealed in a double-layer parchment case with four tablespoons of butter and two sprigs of thyme, and nothing else. The package is placed in an oven preheated to 425F, for about half an hour.
I opened the package at the table, and the dish was a revelation, a classic example of culinary alchemy, in which the flavours had melded and transformed each other into something magical. The potatoes were rich and intensely thyme-scented, and I suddenly realised there was a whole lot more to the new potato than just a simple steaming and a slap of butter.
An acolyte of Alice Waters, the brilliant chef Deborah Madison, then took the dish a step forward, adding four or five unpeeled cloves of garlic to a parchment package containing four or five new potatoes, and she also used olive oil in place of the butter. The technique was the same, otherwise, and the result was brilliant, with a rich scent of garlic now clinging to the spuds. You sliced the potato in half, popped the oozing garlic out of its overcoat, and slathered it on the potato. Bliss.
Alice Waters then paid tribute to Madison's innovation with a dish of Roasted New Potatoes With Garlic And Thyme, in her book, Chez Panisse Vegetables. Here, the potatoes were cooked in a baking dish, with garlic cloves scattered in a drizzle of olive oil and a splash of water, along with the sprig of thyme. The dish was covered in foil and baked in an oven heated to 400F for about 40 minutes. The advantage of this style of cooking is that you don't have the hassle of making the parchment package, but if you are dextrous, then I recommend the technique. Capturing the steam inside the package and then opening it at the table seems to me to give a mix of flavours superior to those from the foil, and it is in the infusing of the tiny potatoes with the flavours of oil and garlic that the dish becomes magical. And once you get turned on to the idea that new potatoes afford you the chance to be culinarily courageous rather than cautious, you find that there are numerous combinations which work brilliantly with fresh little potatoes.
Here, for example, is a rather funky and fun dish in which Asti Spumante, together with some lemon zest and fennel seeds, is used to boil potatoes, which are then briefly cooked - once again - in parchment. Yes, I know it sounds very much like a Celtic Tigerish sort of thing to do, to sacrifice pricey bubbly to cook spuds, but remember we don't think twice about using wine for a sauce, so try to see the dish in that light, and the most you will use will be half a bottle. The result is, quite truly, one of the most sophisticated and sublime potato dishes I have come across. The idea comes from Viana la Place's book, The Unplugged Kitchen.
New Potatoes In Sweet Wine
12 small new potatoes, about 1 lb
Asti Spumante or other sweet wine
1 tablespoon fennel seeds
A few strips lemon zest
Fine sea salt
Unsalted butter
Scrub potatoes clean. Bring Asti Spumante (enough to cover potatoes generously), fennel seeds, and lemon zest to a boil. Salt generously. Add potatoes. Cook, covered, at a simmer until potatoes are just tender when pierced with a thin, wooden skewer. Drain, saving strained liquid for another use.
Lavishly butter two sheets of parchment paper. Distribute boiled potatoes between sheets of buttered parchment. Seal edges of paper by making small, overlapping folds along length and width of paper until well sealed. Place on baking sheet. Bake at 375 for 10 minutes.
To serve, open parchment envelope and roll potatoes in the melted butter. Serve immediately, sprinkled with a little salt.
The Irish passion for potatoes is well known, and it is a devotion we share with the people of Bengal, according to the writer Chitrita Banerji, and she writes that, "Next to the Irish, Bengalis are probably the largest potato eaters in the world . . ." As you would expect from such a distinguished cuisine as that of Bengal, their methods of adorning the flavour of potato is complex and multi-dimensional.
"At no other time does the Bengali do as much with the potato as in winter, when the small new potatoes are available in addition to the old ones," writes Banerji, and the following recipe for Alur Dam comes from her book, Life And Food In Bengal. "Alur dam transports even the most carnivorous Bengali to celestial bliss," she says. When you taste this sublime sour-sweet stew of potatoes and spices you will understand why. Beam me up! Life And Food In Bengal has been out of print for some years but those who are as captivated by this recipe as I have been - and who also like the style of the prose - will be glad to know that a new edition of the book will be published by Serif later this year. I process the onions and garlic used in the recipe to a pulp in the food processor, which is a lot less work than grating them, and I also use a standard garam masala (garom mashla) bought in Asian stores. I also find the recipe works well using only vegetable oil, and doesn't need the ghee but if you want to use it, it is similarly available in Asian stores. Remember that in cooking a dish like this, you must brown the onions and garlic to get the authentic flavours.
Alur Dam
Banerji writes: "To make Alur Dam for four, I take 500 g (1 lb) of potatoes, boil and peel them and cut them into cubes. New potatoes are left whole. I also get together three medium onions, grated, 10-12 cloves of garlic, pasted, 1 1/2 teaspoons of tamarind extract mixed with 250ml (8 fl oz) of hot water, 1 1/2
teaspoons of red chilli powder, one teaspoon of turmeric powder, salt and sugar to taste and garom mashla (three cinnamon sticks, four cardomoms, four cloves) and two bay laves for phoron (flavouring). Then I heat 60 ml (2 fl oz) of oil mixed with one tablespoon of ghee, fry the garom mashla and bay leaves in it and add the grated onion and the garlic. When these are browned, I add chilli and turmeric and after a minute, the potatoes. These are stirred briskly until they turn brown and the spices cling to them. Then I add the tamarind water, an extra 120 ml (4 fl oz) of plain water, salt to taste and three or four teaspoons of sugar, bring it to a boil and simmer over low heat until the flavours blend and the sauce thickly coats the potatoes. Finally, I check and make sure that the sweet-sour-salt balance is right. If not, I adjust it." Mixed with lots of other punchy ingredients, new potatoes can form the backbone of a satisfying salad, and here is a cute idea from Annie Nichols's new book, Potatoes - From Gnocchi To Mash. I think this roast potato salad is improved by the addition of some finely chopped lemon zest, added in just before serving.
It's a dish which benefits from fine quality olives and capers also. This is a good brunchy-party type dish.
Roasted Warm Potato Salad
Serves 4-6
1 kg small new or salad potatoes
125ml extra-virgin olive oil
1 small red onion, finely chopped
25g pitted black olives, finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons capers, rinsed and drained
6 sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained and chopped
5 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper
Place the potatoes in a roasting tin, add two tablespoons of the olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt and toss well to coat. Cook in a preheated oven at 200C (400F, Gas Mark 6) for 25-30 minutes, or until tender, turning the potatoes occasionally.
While the potatoes are cooking, put all the remaining ingredients in a large bowl, mix well and season with salt and pepper.
Remove the potatoes from the oven, crush each potato slightly with a fork and cut in half. Toss the still-warm potatoes in the bowl of dressing, mix well and serve either warm or cold.
But let us end by bringing the new-spuds-and- melting-butter idea back home, and simply jazz the idea up a little by adding some finely chopped chives to the butter along with some sea salt and freshly crushed pepper. Ideally, serve this with some grilled salmon, and a bottle of oaky Chardonnay.
New Potatoes with Chive Butter
Serves 4
1 1/2-2 lbs of potatoes
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives
Sea salt and black pepper
Scrub the potatoes thoroughly, and then cook them by either boiling in salted water until they can be pierced with the tip of a knife, or else steaming them in a steamer basket above water until cooked.
To make the chive butter, cream the butter until it is very smooth, then stir in the chopped chives, sea salt and freshly crushed pepper. Taste for seasoning and adjust as necessary.
When the potatoes are cooked, transfer them to a warmed serving bowl, add the chive butter in pieces and toss gently until the potatoes are coated with the chive butter.