Ode to the Potato

This has been a long time coming, so sorry about the wait (small matters of finishing the PhD, marking essays, conferences etc. which clearly shouldn't be interfering with the might K'n'S). This time round I thought I should share my great love for the potato...

Potatoes are undoubtedly one of my favourite foods. If I had to, given the choice between this and your other basic carbohydrates - pasta, rice etc. - I would choose the potato. Every time. To honour this great love, I decided to take on a mini knife 'n' spork challenge, to make potato my main concern for a weeks eating. Every night (friday to thursday) I ate a different mode of potato, and it was lovely. So here it is:

Day 1.

Kicking the week off with a true classic: Egg, chips and beans (and as you can see, a cheeky slice of bread and butter).

Day 2.

Tonight was the turn of the mash, accompanied by a little ratatouille and roast aubergine.

Day 3.

This was a big one, potatoes thrice today. First up was breakfast: the leftover mash from the night before put to good use for bubble 'n' squeak, plus a poached egg. yum!

Next up. A sweet afternoon snack, incorporating potato? Yes. It's seed cake...made from grated potato (plus rice flour, ground almonds, eggs, sugar, caraway seeds and nutmeg). My first encounter with seed cake, and I'm not entirely convinced, but overall it was a success. Good light cake texture, and not a hint of potato taste. Intriguing.

And for dinner, we had seabream with fried potatoes, steamed greens and carrot. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but this was really tasty.

Day 4.

Tonight was the humble boiled potato, doing what it does best and playing a supporting role for something with gravy (unless its a new potato served with butter and mint...but 'twas not the season for that quite yet). Pie (lentil, bean and carrot), potatoes and peas.

One of the best things about tonight's dinner was the pie's crust, furnished with a little blog tribute:

Day 5.

A big crowd pleaser tonight: the baked potato. Possibly my favourite form of potato, I would happily eat this all the time. Make of that what you will....

This one had egg mayonaise in it. Totally delicious. fact.

Day 6.

The final night. To achieve as much range as possible, tonight's potato was roasted. It was the spicy potato wedge, served alongside one of Scott's excellent chillis. Not far from a chip in some ways, but still a roast potato.

It would be very difficult to choose my favourite meal (all except one, cooked by the talented Mr Donaldson), though maybe the baked potato might just tip the scales (even as I wrote that I was thinking, but wait, what about the wedge, the mash etc.)

So, are there any other conclusions to be drawn from this exciting potatoed week?

1. The experiment proved beyond a doubt that I love potato, in its many forms (one of the chief reasons for loving it so much).

2. I'm fairly greedy, and probably eat far too much carbohydrate (and quite a lot of egg judging from this).

3. mmmmmmmmmm potato.

Not very scientific, but there it is, my ode to potatoes.