Potato Quest Part 1: in search of the Thai potato

Not everything is as it first seems...

When we were planning a recent trip to Thailand I heard the same thing from almost everybody I spoke to, "the food will be amazing!", and they were right, it was. In fact, there's a lot about Thailand that's amazing: its history, its people, its ecology and yes, the food.

But if there's one thing that I did not have high hopes for when we decided to travel to Thailand, it was potato. Nevertheless, I resolved to keep an open mind and while we travelled around that beautiful country, I looked for my favourite vegetable wherever we went

Within a couple of days of arriving we visited the Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok. This market is huge and a great place to sample street food and pick up anything from clothes to cooking implements. It's the best market we visited in Thailand.

I thought I had struck gold when I saw this little fellow:

But what is it if not a potato? I'll tell you, it's a plastic potato! Purchased from this market stall selling plastic fruit and vegetables for shop and restaurant displays!

I bought one of course and it not has pride of place on our book shelf. My quest for the Thai potato was clearly not going to be as easy as I'd hoped.

There were further false-alarms. While staying in Bangkok's Sukhumvit district, a short Sky Train ride from the city centre, we had some of the nicest street food we ate in the country. I was intrigued by several market stalls selling what I initially thought were new potatoes:

Fooled again! These were actually rather tasty little fruit that were not too dissimilar to lychee!

It wasn't until we reached Chiang Mai in Thailand's north that I was able to speak to a real expert in Thai cooking and in doing so complete my quest. Eating amazing food when you travel to a distant place is one thing, but you want to be able to experience those flavours again when you get home. It was for that reason that we decided to do a Thai cookery course.

There are many places offering excellent cookery courses in Chiang Mai, and in Thailand generally. We visited The "Galangal Cooking Studio", which was brilliant. The school is very friendly and extremely well organised, taking you to a local market to buy your ingredients before teaching you to cook a number of dishes of your choice. Neung's expert tuition not only meant we ended up with a delicious meal, but she was also able to provide really helpful advice on suitable alternative ingredients where the dishes involved ingredients hard to source in Europe. If you're in Chiang Mai and interested in a cookery course, I would highly recommend this place: http://www.galangalcooking.com/

I opted for the Massaman Curry, on of my favourite Thai dishes that has Muslim origins. The strong flavours of the rich, spicy source and the meat are perfectly offset by wonderfully creamy chunks of luscious, refreshing potato.

I was delighted with the end result and this is a dish that I intend to spend a lifetime trying to perfect at home.

Thank you Thailand.

I didn't see much in the way of hummus Adam...

A New Year's resolution you can keep - to eat more potatoes!

So it's the start of a new year and people are busy putting those New Year's resolutions into practice. But how long will they last? It's so easy to let those pledges to do more exercise or take up new and outlandish hobbies slip.

So here's a New Year's resolution that I know you can keep - to eat more potatoes!

But even this simple pledge can seem a little daunting if you're new to potatoes. With thousands of varieties to choose from, and so many forms in which they can be enjoyed, entering the world of potatoes can seem quite bewildering.

Here's a little help getting started with potatoes...

So, before we get into complex recipes and fancy serving suggestions, let alone tips on how to grow the things, you'll probably be asking yourself "which potatoes should I buy?" Walk into any supermarket and the choice can be overwhelming. So many varieties and each with their own characteristics, pros and cons that ideally suit them to a particular meal.

Each potato will have its own subtly different appearance, texture, flavour, growing season...

Some make the crispest chips, while others the creamiest mash...

So, what about a spud for every day use? What do you go for? Here's my tip:

Forget worrying about specific varieties; when I do my weekly supermarket shop, that dash around the shop to pick up a few essentials when I've got no specific meals planned out for the days to come, I grab these:

Beautiful aren't they?

These four potatoes came from one of those little packs of four "baking potatoes" that you can get in every supermarket these days. The varieties used to fill these packets varies greatly, as do the sizes of potatoes that you'll get. It's a great place to start and here's why:

First, it's not too many potatoes. You can buy huge bags of potatoes, but unless you've got a huge family and have planned meals for the coming days to use them all, you'll end up having to throw potatoes away and nobody wants that. Four baking potatoes is fine however, you'll manage.

Second, it's the versatility. You can think of this little pack of four baking potatoes as "four portions of potatoes". Four baking potatoes, along with some toppings of course, is four meals! This is also four portions of chips, four portions of saute potatoes, four portions of rosti, four portions of mash...you get the idea.

So what's it not good for? Boiled potatoes. For good, flavoursome boiled potatoes you'll want to buy better quality, smaller potatoes specifically for that meal - we'll come onto that later.

But for most of your every day potato use, grab one of these packets next time you're in the supermarket and that's your next four portions of potatoes sorted!

Happy New Year!

Welcome to Way of the Potato!

So, "what's so cool about potatoes?" I hear you ask.

Answer: EVERYTHING!

The potato is one of the most versatile vegetables known to man. There are now well over a thousand different varieties of potatoes. And since it was first domesticated in the Americas nearly ten thousand years ago, the potato has gone on to become the world's largest and most important crop after cereal grains.

So why am I blogging about potatoes?

Well, first I genuinely wanted to share the joy of potatoes with as many people as I  possibly could. I eat  lot of potatoes in a variety of forms and I want to encourage other people to do the same. The potato is all too often overlooked as the "humble spud". But there is nothing humble about the potato. Like many people that eat potatoes, I have become lazy in how I use them, all too often treating potatoes as a mere side to go with my main meal, rather that taking the time to prepare them properly and treat them as a delicacy in their own right.

I will use this blog to record my journey through potatoes as I try out new ways of enjoying these amazing tubers.

A few recent experiences spurred my decision to start blogging.

First there is my colleague and friend Adam who has constantly been mocking me at work for eating jacket potatoes every lunchtime. Adam eats hummus every day - I mean a whole tub of hummus for lunch EVERY DAY - so I don't know who he is to judge. A jacket potato is a simple, yet highly nutritious, warming and highly adaptable meal that's ideally suited to the busy professional.

Then there was my boss at work, who recently stated that he doesn't like potatoes in ANY FORM. This is absurd. There's so much stuff you can do with potatoes I find this hard to believe.

So I was introduced to the idea of blogging by a successful travel writer I met recently and I thought that a blog could be a really cool way to share my passion for potatoes. Adam has already cast doubt on this idea, saying he thinks there's not that much you can say about potatoes. Well, we'll see won't we hummus boy!

Over the coming weeks, months and years I am going to use this blog to tell the world all there is to know about potatoes and what you can do with them. You can expect recipes and serving suggestions, potato-related anecdotes, growing tips, present ideas and potato-related travel stories.

I hope you enjoy Way of the Potato!