Having Irish family means accepting that sometimes stereotypes are real. Potatoes for instance, I cannot remember a time when I didn’t know how to roast, mash and bake them. Sometimes you just have to embrace the fact that your mum says things in a funny way, and that potato famine jokes are hilarious.
Potatoes make any meal homely, they add a safety that is hard to beat, and it’s pretty gosh darn hard to mess them up. Just avoid the green ones.
This is one of my favorite potato recipes (others include potato farles, herb-de-provence roasted potatoes and rosemary and potato pizza) it is ridiculously simple and pairs with so many foods. This time, for example, I had a burger and some green beans that needed using up; eat while enviously watching SJP and her wonderful wardrobe in Sex and the City on a Friday night and drowning in gravy.
The Best Mashed Potato – Serves 2
Ingredients
1 Brown onion
2 Garlic Cloves
2 Small potatoes
2 Knobs of butter
Dash of Milk
Recipe
Peel onion and garlic. Slice onion in half.
Grill or roast them until they are tender, you should be able to smell them.
I grill them under a high setting for about 20 minutes turning occasionally to ensure they don’t catch on fire. If you are doing a Sunday roast chuck them in with the meat and take them out about 20 minutes before you are ready to mash; this method yields incredible results.
After 20 minutes under the grill remove onions & garlic.
Roughly peel and chop potatoes into chunks and boil in salted water until tender.
Once the onion and garlic are cool chop both finely – this is easy as they are both falling apart anyway, I find it easiest to just squeeze the garlic out of it’s skin straight into the drained potatoes.
Drain the cooked potatoes and add the chopped onions and garlic, mash roughly. Add the butter to the roughly mashed mix and mash some more. Add a dash of milk, no more than a quarter of a cups worth per two potatoes and mash until creamy. Plate and season with pepper.
So Easy!
The Little Cookbook 