Name a dish that isn’t improved, or unaffected, by the addition of a small potato? For this question to make sense, a bit of context would probably be useful. It started years ago, with thick soups and minestre, which my partner believes should always, always include a small potato. His reasons are two. Potatoes are wonderful! And they collapse as they cook, adding a starchy softness that thickens the soup Now, I agree with him wholeheartedly. However, I sometimes forget this important addition when making pasta and lentils or chickpea soup, meaning we now have a running (not very funny) joke that, when I do forget, we taste and invariably agree that it would have been better with the damned potato.
The damned potato became even more significant when testing recipes for my pasta book. There are several recipes – pasta with pesto alla genovese, pasta with walnut sauce, pasta with mussels (to name just a few) – that call for a potato to be cooked in with the pasta. As in a soup, the potato collapses (a bit or a lot, depending on the variety) and, as a consequence, gives out starch. Now, you’d be correct in thinking that, when it comes to cooking pasta, starch is hardly in short supply; masses of it seeps from the pasta as it cooks, as evidenced by the increasingly cloudywater. But add potato starch to pasta starch, even a small amount, and when you toss the pasta with the sauce and a ladle of the starchy pasta cooking water, things do come together even better.
Seeing how well it worked, I started adding potatoes all over the place, to pasta dishes that have nothing to do with potatoes, where it isn’t so much an ingredient, but a helping hand. Next thing we knew, we had a new running joke (that also isn’t funny), that every time a dish of pasta was not as good as I hoped, that was also because I had forgotten the damned potato. Things such as this are contagious, and soon any time anything wasn’t as good as I hoped, we concluded it was because I’d forgotten the potato.
And it isn’t just soup and pasta; I can confirm that ring cake, torta caprese, pizza dough, focaccia, muffins, shortbread, chocolate pudding and yorkshire pudding all benefit from the addition of a small boiled and mashed potato.
And so we come back to my original question. I was explaining the theory of the damned potato to a group of people, some of whom agreed, others who didn’t. One person who agreed pointed out that not only does a potato improve almost everything, but that the things it doesn’t improve, it doesn’t affect – you certainly can’t taste it. The moral being that you should always add a potato. Or, in the case of today’s recipe, 500g potatoes, which is what I now add to my pan flatbread – or Irish farl – recipe.
While you eat your potato cakes, see if you can name a dish that isn’t improved or unaffected by the addition of a small damned potato.
Potato flatbreads with anchovy butter
Prep 20 min
Cook 20 min
Makes 8
300g boiled potatoes, peeled
150g soft white breadcrumbs, soaked in 100ml milk for at least 30 minutes
50g plain flour
2 tsp salt
100g unsalted butter
2 tsp minced parsley
4-6 anchovy fillets
Mash or pass the potatoes through a ricer, then, working in a large bowl, mix with the soaked breadcrumbs, flour and salt, bringing everything together into a soft ball. Leave to rest for 10 minutes.
Mash the butter with the anchovies and parsley. If you like your butter cold, put it in the fridge; otherwise, leave it out.
Divide the dough into four, shape each quarter into a ball and flatten into a patty about 1cm thick. Heat a cast-iron or nonstick pan, then dry-fry each patty for three to five minutes on each side, or until golden with deep gold patches and cooked through.
Spread the anchovy butter lavishly on the hot flatbreads, cut into quarters and serve immediately, with fried eggs or sauteed greens, if you like.
