What to cook? Potatoes!
Po-tay-toes, po-tah-toes, spuds, taters, murphies (apparently so), tatties, kartoffelns, tatws, tetti, and about ninety different words to describe them in Irish. When autumn comes, I just want to eat baked potatoes all the time. I like them best going into the oven with a lick of oil on the skin and a sprinkling of salt. Then halfway through the time I wrap them in foil so the skin doesn’t turn from crisp to old boots. Beef chili, tuna and mayo, cream cheese and chives or just cold butter and flaky salt…
But of course there are many other wonderful things you can do with them. Hasselbacks for instance are basically jacket potatoes except in shredded jackets. Boulangères are roasties that the cook skimped duck fat onto; and rösti or latkes are spuds pretending to be pancakes. Take your pick.
Something to go with the potatoes now: it might be time for a meatloaf. I feel it’s not a summery kind of dish though God knows why since we happily nosh burgers from the barbecues? Anyway, meatloaf is minced comfort in a loaf tin and I’m firmly planning on serving it VERY soon.
If you don’t eat meat you could make courgette fritters to go with potatoes, one of the best (read: most palatable) ways of cooking the bland vegetable. Or crispy roasted chickpeas with red peppers and mushrooms – those would be quite good with skinny fries.
More potatoes: cod and potatoes, one dish meal, and obviously haddock or hake will do as well as cod. Or even simpler: smoked mackerel salad on a bed of roasted potato slices. No fish? leek and potato bake in that case will be of interest.
I don’t know any desserts that might feature potatoes, sadly, although you add them to flash bread dough to make it taste like a longer-proving loaf. So I guess you could make bread and butter pudding from it, thus achieving the ‘spuds in every meal’ target, but seeing as it is a completely ridiculous one, let’s make brownie instead.
Plenty more non-potato recipes on the contents pages. And don't forget to subscribe to the weekly newsletter - it will keep you up to date with all the new ones!