Sack of Potatoes

My father-in-law is one of my favorite long-term visitors.  He arrives with presents, eats whatever I place in front of him, walks my dog and plays with my kids.  In exchange, I get his good company:  great stories of the depression, forgotten French songs hummed in the car while we run errands and chauffeur children.  Half of my French vocabulary came through this man.  He spouts colliquialisms and proverbs at me.  He has one for every occassion. 

One of my favorites:  "A sack of potatoes is much nicer to look at as a gratin."  I have a sneaking suspicion he was talking about me, sitting next to him in my ratty jeans and favorite flannel shirt.  I smiled.  I am a Potato!  Who knew?  Do French woman grow up knowing, deep down, that they are a sack of potatoes, full of potential?  Was that a compliment, somehow?  After all, we've all sung the Meat and Potatoes song nightly.  Woman is clearly essential....

Potatoes appear to be our favorite vegetable.  Seventy-five percent of the vegetables Americans consume are potatoes.  Most of those consumed potatoes appear on our plates dressed as French fries.  (Am I, then, as an American, a French fry?!  The irony!)

Potatoes.  Pomme de Terre:  Apples of the Earth.  A staple, a starch, a tuber.  They are steadfast, those spuds.  They keep forever, sitting patiently in the dark, growing eyes.  The potato is a member of the nightshade family, forever associated with danger.  How like a woman!

Potatoes can be the simplest thing on the table:  toss some baby potatoes with olive oil and sea salt (kosher works, table salt doesn't...), throw them in your cast iron pot and slide those in your oven.  Forty-five minutes later, put your drink down and you have perfectly roasted potatoes with a crunchy exterior and fluffy flesh.  Grate some stinky cheese,  chop some salami, and put your ski sweater on.  Add some chopped garlic and parsly and roll them right next to your medium-rare steak.  Classic.

There are over 20 different kinds of potatoes.  We know russets, yukon gold, Finn, fingerling, sweet potatoes and yams, red and blue, baby whites.  Mash any of these.  Smash those little ones!   Add celery root to your russets and you've made the best mashed potatoes ever.  (I promise!)  Fold in olive oil and egg yolk to your yukon golds and your mashed potatoes become golden.  Stir in sour cream and parsley and pipe them back into their brown skins.  Sprinkle some bacon on top --you know it belongs there!-- and you've got sophisticated potato skins.  A mashed potato works with beef in any form, turkey, chicken, pork.  It's your little black dress:  a sure thing.

Pull out your mandolin, or your sharpest knife, and slice those Yukon Golds really thin.  Layer them in your casserole dish.  Add heated milk and cream, salt, garlic.  Let this meld an hour, an hour and a half in your oven, and you have a meal all by itself:  gratin.  Add some great grated cheese and you have gratin dauphinoise.  Use chicken broth instead of dairy and you have gratin boulangere.  These gratins make a mediocre meatloaf brilliant, overshadow your chop, inspire you to light candles and turn down the lights.  This is the potato with cleavage.  Yes, you can buy "potatoes au gratin" in a box:  dehydrated potato slices, a packet of something mixed with your own milk.  Not the same.  Don't do it.

Dice those russets.  Brown them in some oil and butter and add peppers.  Cook that egg on top and you've got hangover breakfast. (Party girl...!)  Add sweet potato squares to your russets.  Maybe some cubed apples.  Peter Brady was right.  "Pork chops and apple sauce!"  Make a quirkier marriage --menage a trois?!--with potatoes, apples, and quince.  (Find it.  Cook it.  It's lovely.) 

Am I a sack of potatoes?  Do I resent that little observation from my father-in-law?  I am grateful for this new friend I have through my French man.  I giggle and think of me on the couch with my fuzzy slippers and sweats.  I am a baked potato.  Simple.  Filling.  Comfort.  That's woman.  I smile and slip on my short little sweater dress with my over-the-knee boots.  I am "Potatoes Anna":  a crown of paper thin potatoes browned in butter.  Sexy.  Elegant.  That's woman.  So many facets.  So many looks.  All of them work for me.  Even fries!