The Humble Potato

Potatoes are truly one of the most humble and underappreciated root vegetable. It’s often overshadowed by other more exotic and exciting produce like beets and parsnips, and is almost always cast aside as a simple, forgettable side dish. Potatoes are ugly and knobbly. Potatoes are bland, boring, unadventurous

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If you’re one of those who harbored such opinions on potatoes, allow me to enlighten you to the amazing, exciting wonders of the humble potato. First of all, did you know there are five thousand varieties of potatoes? Potatoes come in all sorts of sizes, colors, textures, and taste. You could make five thousand different potato dishes just by switching the variety alone!

But what I love most about potatoes is its versatility. This is when its less pronounced, milder starchy flavor actually works to its advantage, because you can prepare it in hundreds of different ways. You can: boil it, roast it, stuff it, bake it, grill it, mash it, puree it, sauté it, deep-fry it, braise it in soups, frittatas, casseroles, salads, wraps, sandwiches, pasta, breads, desserts, etc. There are seriously unlimited ways to jazz it up, and you can go into myriads of directions just with mashed potatoes as the base. It goes well together with practically every other food out there, but also taste delicious alone in its unadorned simplicity, seasoned with nothing but some good ol’ salt and pepper.

So today I demonstrate to you one of the millions of ways you can enjoy the humble potato by cooking up a rather elegant dish with two types of potatoes, the blue potato and the sweet potato: Two Potato and Apple Au Gratin. Okay, it’s not that elegant, but it’s got a French name so that kicks it up a class for me!

First I thinly-sliced two medium blue potatoes, two small Japanese sweet potatoes, and half a big Granny Smith apple:

Don’t you just love the color contrast? Already my appetite was getting titillated, and I hadn’t even started cooking yet!

Next I mixed together 3 tablespoons homemade whole wheat bread crumbs, about 1 heaping tablespoon of cinnamon, salt, black pepper, and a sprinkle of garam marsala:

I warmed up about 3/4 cup of almond milk then poured it over the dry mixture.

Then I layered half the potatoes and apples onto a baking dish and topped the first layer off with several slices of cheddar cheese:

Then layered the remaining potatoes and apples:

And finally, poured the milk mixture all over, then scattered a couple fistfuls of Parmesan cheese all around the top:

I popped this, covered with foil, into a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 40 minutes, then removed the foil and baked it for another 15 minutes. Here’s the result:

A close-up:

I had trouble taking a picture of this because of all the glorious steam! Seriously, the smell was awesome, almost like that head-spinning fragrance of apple pie what with all the cinnamon and baked apples, and my mouth was totally watering all over the place!

I sliced a big hunk of this gratin and made it into a meal with a fried egg, some mini chicken hotdogs and cooked cabbage, with a cup of iced mango green tea:

The verdict? The taste was even more incredible than the smell! I was pretty surprised at how much the minimal apple infused its tart sweetness into the whole dish. The cheese added a nice sharpness, and the bread crumbs, together with the almond milk and the spices, tasted like crumble topping to me! The texture was awesome, too! While the top layer was crisp and flaky, the insides were soft and creamy without being too mushy.

This dish truly hit and satisfied every of the senses taste-wise with all the sweetness (apple, sweet potato), tartness (apple and cheese), saltiness (egg and hotdogs), savory-ness (cheese, yolk, hotdogs, potatoes), and spiciness (cinnamon and garam marsala), and also texture-wise with all its crispiness, flakiness, creaminess, chewiness, and crunchiness.

I just love the slight char on the hotdogs…

It’s weird, but they totally inflate like a swollen balloon at first when cooked, then deflate into a wrinkly old prune after being cooled. I wonder why?

Well, I hope I’ve convinced you of all the overlooked splendors of the humble potato. Never take anything for granted! For me, it’d be a sad world without potatoes…

For afternoon snack, I pampered myself with double the portion of the best of both worlds:

Pancake and peanut butter! Yum yum~ It’s worth flying all the way over to Singapore just for this little piece of heaven~

The last bite of crumb is always a sad affair…

Alright, I’m off to chow down a massive bowl of oatmeal for my midnight snack, but I leave you with this question in mind of today’s post topic: What is your favorite kind of potato, and what is your favorite way to prepare and eat them?

Have a fabbity fab fab week, everyone!