Musings

Declan Chellar February 16th, 2009

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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.

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