Mashed Potatoes
Declan Chellar February 16th, 2009
Whenever I make mashed potatoes for guests, their initial observation seems to be, “Oh, you aren’t making them out of a packet.”
No. I make them out of poh-tay-tohs.
Anyway, in my munificence I have decided to share my recipe for scrumbalicious mashed potatoes with you.
Ingredients
- A fist-sized potato for each person (some people have bigger fists – they need bigger potatoes)
- Butter (preferably Irish, but whatever local muck you can find will do)
- Mayonnaise
- Some kind of grainy mustard, like Dijon
- Milk
- Ground black pepper
Optional ingredients are:
- Sautéed mushrooms
- Sautéed onions
- Chopped spinach (fresh, not canned or frozen)
- Grated cheese
Last night I went with chopped spinach and grated cheese.
Instructions
- Chop the potatoes into small chunks, this way they boil faster and you are going to mash them up anyway.
- Boil the potatoes until they are cooked through, but not too soft (test with a fork) – it should take ten to fifteen minutes.
- Drain the water then stir in the chopped spinach
- Place the pot on a very low heat and cover for five minutes – spinach just needs to wilt and it’s easy to overcook it, just let the heat of the potatoes do the job
- Stir in large knob of butter
- Mash the potatoes, but leave small chunks
- Stir in milk, mayonnaise, mustard and black pepper
- No, I don’t know how much of each. What am I? Gordon Fucking Ramsay? The picture below will give you an idea considering the pot contains two fist-sized potatoes.
- What do you mean, “Whose fist?” – mine of course!
- Yes, I know this dish isn’t for people who are on a diet. Did I say at the beginning this was low-calorie mash?
- Stir in a fistful of grated cheese (I prefer Emmental)
- Last night I served it with pan-seared wild salmon
- I say “pan-seared” because it sounds posher than “fried”
Sorry about the quality of the last photo. I didn’t realise it was slightly out of focus until this morning and by then it was too late to retake the shot, as I don’t own one of those fancy, medical cameras. Anyway, I had to sharpen the photo using Photoshop, so it is a little grainy.
And, no, I didn’t add salt. Did you see salt in the list of ingredients? That’s because I didn’t add salt.
Anyway, there you go. Stop complaining about the salt and just go try it.
That.Looks. Delii-i-i-i-i-i-i-cious.
That’s because it i-i-i-i-i-i-s!
Let me know how it works out for you when you try it.