Column

The other day I was invited to the Willingdon Club for dinner and when choosing the main course I plumped for fish and chips, the safest option. Instead I got a rather sorry looking grilled Gol fish served with mashed potatoes.

Apparently the club had run out of potatoes; at least that was the excuse offered to my host.This caused me to reflect on this most basic of potato preparations. In my childhood at school in England these were malodorous yellow globs drowned by brown sludge masquerading as gravy. These experiences gave me a visceral dislike of mashed potatoes.

I must confess that I have now overcome this prejudice and recognise that this, at best,
comfort food has truly morphed into a designer statement. Chefs like Joel Robuchon of Jamin (in Paris, where else?) have done extraordinary things with it, making it gourmet food of the highest order. To say these mashed potatoes are out of the extraordinary would be like stating that the Pope is Catholic. In his book Ma cuisine pour vous Robuchon candidly confesses to using half a pound of butter for every pound of potatoes. Given that in most cases this is only an accompaniment to even richer and
highly sauced dishes, this is not diet food; it is, in fact obscene. But let’s not be unduly detained by these excesses.

As far as mashed potatoes are concerned, there are two generic kinds, and I mean the plain ones, not flavoured with garlic, herbs, and so on. There is the British and there is the French, Anglo Saxon and the Gallic. The British prefer theirs mash fluffy and grainy, so the best potatoes to use are the floury ones. The French seek to make their mash creamy and smooth, rather like a puree and so prefer waxy potatoes.

To make good mashed potatoes, in the British tradition, it is vital to prevent them from becoming gluey; timing is critical. In either undercooking or overcooking, the starch in the potatoes will separate from the mass and create sticky and glueyness.Highly avoidable.The trick is to cut the potatoes into small pieces.

The next aspect is mashing the potatoes. Here there is a controversy. Orthodoxy would favour a potato ricer or drum sieve. One of my favourite English chefs Rowley Leigh of the Café Anglais insists that the mouli legume is fine and he makes serious mashed potatoes. The other trick to ensure that your mashed potatoes are never gluey, is to avoid using cold milk. The addition of milk should be hot rather than boiling.

One can go for any number of embellishments.In Bengal you have the “aloo maka”, in which the potatoes are mashed, grainy ones I suspect, but the mash is given a kick by the addition of herbs like coriander, chilles and the awesome intervention of raw mustard oil. Not for the faint-hearted. The classic English version involves
the addition of cabbage and you have such a thing known as “bubble and squeak”, one of the icons of the English cannon. Cheese is a reliable addition, particularly a good camembert or cheddar. My own favourite mash I must own is saffron and olive oil. Use saffron and enrich it with extra virgin olive oil and I cannot think of a classier accompaniment to a simple grilled fish.