Just when I think I have learned everything there is to know about the potato, my arrogance is checked. This is part of what makes life such a pleasure.
There it was. A new way to make mashed potatoes.
The Dear Husband loves potatoes in all sizes, shapes, forms, and methods of cookery. I myself like potatoes well enough, but do not find myself with a craving for them. (Unless maybe it’s for just made skinny french fries cooked in beef fat and sprinkled with sea salt, which is a dish I could never trust myself to make, being terrified of deep frying in all its forms. You always yearn for the one thing you can’t achieve, it’s so true.)
Over the years, I’ve become adept at potato cuisine. I once read a quote from a French lawyer, something to the effect that he had never seen a divorce between two people where one person knew how to cook the other person’s favorite foods. I suppose this stuck with me as the secret to a longterm relationship. Indeed, since we, the Dear Husband and I, have been through about forty years of best friendship, loverdom, marriage and its attendant cloudless days followed by stormy weather where you have to keep your life jacket on at all times, I think the divorce lawyer may have been on to something. Because I certainly do know how to cook all his favorite potato dishes. With the exception, of course, of chips, since they involve the deep fryer. But since we live a lot of the time walking distance from no less than five different restaurants that offer fish and chips to go, this has never risen to the level of a marital problem.
How many potato dishes can I cook? Let me count the ways. Baked. Twice baked, stuffed with the day’s choice of cheese, cream/yogurt/mayo/or sour cream, onions and the occasional anchovy. Pureed with potato cooking water, garlic, and a little olive oil. Hashed any number of ways: with onions, with garlic, with chiles, with greens and tomatoes. Sliced and baked as potato chips. Steamed and tossed with butter and parsley. Made into salads featuring every kind of dressing imaginable. Gratins. Cod, garlic, potato and cream gratin. Potatos and anchovies in all their many permutations.
Mashed.
This last had gotten to the point where it rather bored me. Butter. Cream. Or olive oil. Garlic. potato water. Although Alex liked them all ways, I found I was spooning them out onto his plate while leaving my own potato free.
Then I was idly thumbing through Mark Bittman’s vegetarian cookbook. And something caught my eye. Miso. In mashed potatoes.
I suppose I’d always skipped it before because the words ‘miso’ and ‘potato’ seemed to be on opposite sides of the foodstuff spectrum. But I did have a half used container of white miso in the fridge. And I did have a request for mashed potatoes for dinner. We were having sauteed albacore, and I was trying to think of a way not to be bored with the potatoes that were to go along with it. What the hell. What did I have to lose? Miso mashed potatoes it was.
I bet you know the end of this story. The miso mashed potatoes were splendid. A huge hit. A reenvisioning of what could be done with a mashed potato in our household. A matter for wonder and delighted dinner table conversation. A whole new way to avoid divorce.
Tasty. Very tasty. I recommend them to you from the bottom of my heart, or at least from the bottom of my stomach.
This is how:
For two people.
Take 3 good sized russet potatoes. Peel and chop into pieces of a similar size. Put in a pan, cover with water and a good glug of olive oil. Add a good hit of salt. Not too much since you’ll use the water in the pan, but not too little that the potatoes come out blandly either. Try a teaspoon full of Diamond kosher to start.
Bring to a boil. Turn down to a medium heat simmer until the potatoes are tender. You should by this time have boiled enough water so the potatoes show through. If there’s so much water that the potatoes look drowned, empty some of it into a bowl in case of need later. Now add another glug of olive oil. Add about a quarter cup of white miso. Mash in the pot. Too much liquid? Keep a low flame going as you mash, drying up the excess water, but letting the potatoes mash luxuriously in the olive oil/potato water/miso that’s left. Mashed to your satisfaction? Taste. Does it need salt? It definitely needs freshly milled pepper. Taste again.
Good, huh?
Thank you, Mark Bittman. A new potato dish is, as Brillat Savarin would have agreed, on the level with the discovery of a new star. Stars are awe-inspiring, don’t get me wrong, but at the dinner table, give me mashed potatoes and miso every time.
[And as a lagniappe: a few nights later we had baked potatoes. I put two leftover baked potatoes in the fridge against potato needs of the future. Then I scooped out the flesh, mashed it with olive oil and miso, stirred in minced garlic and green onion tops, slapped it into an olive oil covered ceramic dish, sprinkled paprika on top, and browned in the toaster oven at 400 degrees. Absolutely fabulous. Just saying.]