Greater Expectations

New Potatoes no bigger than golf balls.

It doesn’t look like we’ll be bringing home the wheel barrels of potatoes that we happily found ourselves with last year.  Half of our crop is already done.  We planted two varieties of potatoes, Charlotte and Rosabelle, and we are discovering the Rosabelle potato plants are sensitive to mildew.  They’re already done growing, even though it’s 3 to 4 weeks earlier than last year.  We always dig some up early and enjoy “new potatoes”, but this year’s crop will solely consist of them.  Potato plants end up wilting away by mid to late summer, signaling it’s time for us to dig to them up and see what we’ve got, but it looks like this is not the year for us to stock up on potatoes.  The Charlotte potato plants are still growing, so there is hope, but until then, it looks like we’ll be feasting on small new potatoes for some time.

It doesn't take a trained eye to see what plants are the Rosabelle and what plants are the Charlotte potatoes.

Pleasures of the Season: Breaking Ground

“Pleasures of the Season” is a series of posts which appear from time to time.  They focus on something special that occurs only seasonally, often fleeting, and something we anticipate.  In some cases, the season is quite short, other are longer.  The posts are sometimes food related, sometimes not, but highlight moments of what I’ve learned about living with the seasons since moving to Southern France.

It’s a pretty cool moment the first time every year when we notice the potatoes finally breaking ground.  The garden is vast, and for the last few months it has been fallow.  Tilling always stirs the excitement, but then there is a waiting time.  We wait for the rains to subside, the weather to warm, and for the right moment to plant the potatoes.  Then, we wait for them to finally push upwards to the surface, dotting the empty garden with green plants that quickly claim their space.

We planted the same two varieties as last year: Charlotte and Rosabelle.  Charlotte is extremely versatile, like an Idaho potato and the Rosabelle is a firmer, red-skinned potato excellent for sautéing.  Both can be eaten as new potatoes, or stored for the winter months.  We had a bumper crop last year and are hoping for the same results this year.  The crop was so generous that, in fact, we didn’t buy potatoes until February and I still have homemade gnocchi and fries in the freezer made from our own homegrown.

It will be several weeks before all the plants are big enough to be mounded and then not until early July when the first are dug up, but potatoes are an early vegetable, so they signal a definitive change in the season and a change in our daily rhythms.  We welcome this as we slowly wean ourselves off the daily chore of bringing in heating wood and replacing that with tending to the garden.

The History of the Potato in France

There is a collective memory that almost all the French share – eating in the school cafeteria.  Unlike in the US, kids either eat there or go home for lunch, there is no brown bagging.  And, when the French start talking about nostalgic foods from their childhood, one dish always comes up: Hachis Parmentier.  It’s the French version of a Shepherd’s Pie and named for Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, the man credited for bringing the potato to the French dinner table.

Centuries ago, the potato was thought to be inedible; it was only used for hog feed.  In fact, before Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was taken prisoner by Prussia during France’s Seven Year War (1756- 1763) the French parliament prohibited growing potatoes because they were thought to cause leprosy.  During this imprisonment he ate potatoes and noted no ill side effects.  He used this experience as the foundation for a proposal as using the potato as a source of nourishment for dysenteric patients.  Due to this study, the Paris Faculty of Medicine declared the potato suitable for human consumption in 1772.

Antoine-Augustin Parmentier had a hard time convincing everyone that potatoes were edible, so he went to great lengths to convince the population otherwise.  For example, he hosted elaborate dinners which prominently featured potato dishes, gave the King and Queen bouquets of potato blossoms, and armed his potato patch with guards to suggest valuable goods, but told the guards to allow civilians to “steal” the goods.  That’s cleaver.

Hachis Parmentier: some like it, some love it, but now every young French adult has some story to tell thanks to Antoine-Augustin Parmentier. I mean, who can go wrong with meat covered in mashed potatoes?  I might just make some tonight.

Pleasures of the Season: New Potatoes

“Pleasures of the Season” is a series of posts which appear from time to time.  They focus on something special that occurs only seasonally, often fleeting, and something we anticipate.  In some cases, the season is quite short, other are a bit longer.  The posts are sometimes food related, sometimes not, but highlight moments of what I’ve learned about living with the seasons since moving to Southern France.

In early spring, when the air is still cool and the morning fog lingers until just before lunchtime, Christophe gets the tiller out and starts to plow the garden.  It’s too early for the seasonal summer crops of tomatoes and eggplant, but it’s just the right time to get the potatoes in the ground.  By early afternoon, the ground is turned and the promise of rich dirt lies before us.  Bugs hover above the ground for warmth and we look giddily at the 30 pound bag of potatoes to be planted and wonder what they will produce in the next few months.  One by one they are placed on the earth and carefully covered.  It is not until three weeks later that we can see the small sprouts pushing the earth aside and making their way towards the sun.  Soon, the plants are large enough to be mounded and are watered in furrows weekly.  Flowers appear and the foliage grows amble all along as we ask the question, “How do you think they’re doing under there?”

We wonder, we talk about previous crops, and we wait.  Then, a moment in late June arrives when Christophe says, “Let’s pull one up to get an idea of what’s going on.”

We gather around the plant and wait for the moment to see if our work, the weather, and luck have played in our favor.  This is the moment when we hold our breath as we unearth the first plant from the garden.  Christophe pulls it up and then slowly digs around with a hoe; one, two, three potatoes emerge.  He plunges his hand into the dirt and finds four or five more.

“If this plant is indicative of what is to come, it looks like it’s going to be a good year”, he says.  We take the potatoes to the nearby zinc watering tub and rinse them off.  They are smooth and firm to the touch, we smile.  Then, carrying the potatoes, we turn back to the house and start on dinner.

The taste of new potatoes is something extraordinary -   part nutty, part sweet, and something that cannot be found in the supermarket.  But what makes them even more wonderful is the work, the wondering, and the memories left by planting them.