Sam's Cookalong Diary Mr potato head

Date Published:

11/01/2008

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Sam ruminates on the humble spud, and along the way prepares thickly chopped potatoes for roasting the Gordon Ramsay way

Potato history

Perhaps you think I'm going too far in ascribing such significance to the humble spud. I've just re-read the previous paragraph and even I can see it teeters precariously on the edge of ridiculous. But I would still argue that the potato has always had cultural resonance. From its auspicious beginnings in this country as the emblem of the strange and miraculous fecundity of the New World as brought back by Sir Walter Ralegh, the potato bears a considerable symbolic weight.

In the 19th Century, the spud meant tragedy: from the horror and injustice of the Irish potato famine to Vincent Van Gogh's pinched and dun-coloured potato eaters. More recently potatoes highlighted the idiocy of Dan Quayle who, as then Vice-President of the USA, told a student that he needed to add an ‘e' to the end of the word 'potato'. It was, as Quayle himself later admitted, "a defining moment of the worst kind imaginable."

Now in 2008 we're entering what the UN has declared the "International Year of the Potato". The organisation tells us that potatoes “will provide the key to feeding the world's rapidly expanding population. The potato produces more nutritious food more quickly, on less land, and in harsher climates than any other major crop - up to 85 per cent of the plant is edible human food, compared to around 50 per cent in cereals."

A medium potato with its skin on contains around 50 per cent of our recommended daily minimum intake of dietary fibre and vitamin C. It also contains a healthy chunk of potassium and traces of vitamin B6, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, iron, phosphorous and magnesium. Healthy! Then consider the impressive UN claim that more than 300 million tonnes of the things were produced in 2006 and more are planted every year.

Finally, while I'm bashing spud facts, I was interested to learn that statisticians have calculated that Germans eat more potatoes per capita than anyone else. Can we read anything into that? Probably not. But it's something to think about while you're chopping.

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