St. Louis, MO 63144
Ph: 314-862-COOK (2665)
Mon-Sat 9:30 am to 5:30 pm
Sun 12 to 5 pm
Today we dug up our potatoes. Cut a freshly-dug potato and they crackle and snap like a crisp apple. The taste of a fresh potato will spoil your taste buds against the commercial potatoes held in storage for months. Fresh potatoes, boiled until tender, are so creamy they hardly need butter, but, of course, I added plenty of Plugra butter and my favorite Australian pink sea salt just to gild the lily.
Potatoes are easy to grow and well worth the effort. In June, we planted four kinds of seed potatoes, which had not been sprayed to inhibite sprouting. They take about 90 days to grow. One piece of sprouted potato will yield four to eight potatoes of various sizes. After the plants died back, we started to dig them up. One red variety, norland, produced a bumper crop of monster-sized potatoes perfect for baking. The other red potato, durango, is a dainty creamer that we boiled. We also grew two yellow varieties, including a fingerling for potato salad and German butterball. We purchased the seed potatoes from Milk Ranch in Colorado.
Since the potatoes grow next to the garlic, I have always hoped that the garlic flavor would infuse the potatoes, but no such luck. Instead, roast the garlic and perfume the kitchen, then fold into the mashed potatoes!
Mashed Potatoes
- potatoes
- a little bit of milk
- a whole lot of butter
- salt and pepper
- garlic
Either scrub or peel the potatoes. Do not cut the potatoes. Place in a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil, and simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, peel the garlic, place in a ramekin, and cover with olive oil. Bake at 350 until tender, about 20 minutes, then mash. Drain the potatoes and press through a ricer (for creamy potato puree) or hand mash. Do not ever let an electric machine touch the potatoes or they will turn into wallpaper paste! Fold in the garlic (adding the olive oil is optional), a little milk, and a lot of butter. Season with salt and pepper. Don’t bother to cook anything else for dinner, because only the potatoes will be eaten.
store information
Mon-Sat 9:30 am to 5:30 pm
Sunday 12 to 5 pm
9011 Manchester Road
St. Louis, MO 63144
314-862-COOK (2665)
Stop! I’m drooling! I’d rather eat potatoes than cake! And I love cake!
There is nothing like a freshly dug potato. Yukon Golds are my favorite–I think they taste like they’ve been pre-buttered! I plant my potatoes much earlier, usually in March, and then I just leave them in the ground until fall, only digging up what we want to eat that night.
Even in raised beds and with our Missouri heat, I’ve found that in the ground the best place to store potatoes. I usually only lose a few to bugs and rot, whereas they’d have all sprouted and shriveled up after that many months in the root cellar. And sometimes the potatoes in the ground will sprout and give you a bonus double crop of tiny new potatoes!