Potatoes - exotic fare?

Spring is not quite bursting onto the allotment scene, but taking a few tentative steps. From our point of view it is not the emerging green tendrils or the appearance of hopeful buds that herald the arrival of spring, but the cluttering up of our household surfaces with egg boxes full of chitting potatoes.

What’s this cried a visiting friend? Are you incubating dinosaur eggs? I saw her point – each seed potato snuggled into its individual pod looked as though it might be harbouring a baby velociraptor or maybe even a ninja mutant turtle.

For me, the arrival of the seed potato order ushers in the new gardening year. I know some say you don’t have to bother with all the chitting nonsense, but we all need our seasonal gardening rituals – and this is one of ours.

Potatoes have really had a Renaissance recently. We used to just think of them generically as new potatoes or large whites. But these days we refer to them by their, often very charming, names: Charlotte, Anya, Vivaldi, Mayan Gold, Desiree, Cara. But these varieties are apparently a mere drop in the ocean – there are 5,000 cultivated varieties in the world, 99% descending from a species that originated in a small area of Peru. So this vegetable that we often think of as a bit of a boring adjunct to a more exciting food on the plate is really very exotic. Their origins may be exciting, but for most people potatoes spell comfort. You know all is right with the world when you ladle a mound of creamy potato on your plate or spoon some garlicky Potatoes Dauphinoise to nestle against a lamb chop.

The creator of Winne the Pooh, AA Milne, asserted, "What I say is that, if a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow." What he didn’t say though was that if you like them too much you’ll end up with a girth not dissimilar to his famous creation.