Budding new spuds

Nation's Restaurant News, May 31, 1993 by Robin Lee Allen

The unadventurous taste buds of the steak-and-potato eater are in for a surprise as chefs nationwide replace their beloved mealy white spud with less usual spud tastes, colors and consistencies.

With names like Yukon Gold and Peruvian Blue, these potatoes are harder to spell but better at perking up palates and plate presentations, according to chefs digging into the trend.

"Some of the newer varieties are just getting popular," said John Doherty, executive chef at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. "More purveyors are handling them and people like potatoes, so the chefs are responding to the customer, and the purveyors are responding to the chefs' needs."

Nutritious and inexpensive, the potato has shed its fattening image and is now more popular with both the health-and cost-conscious than ever before. Americans eat an average of 131.4 pounds of potatoes annually -- that's more than one a day per person, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"People are just discovering that a potato is one of the best foods to eat," explained Gerri Okray, vice president of the Wisconsin Potato Growers Auxiliary and the first woman director on the National Potato Board.

"It's a starch and also a vegetable, so when you visualize your plate, you have your meat or seafood, a potato and salad -- it has a very prominent place on the plate. It's high in vitamins, minerals and fiber."

While Russet Burbanks -- the variety also known as "Idaho" and used for making french fries and other processed potato products -- are still the country's biggest seller, different tuber types allow chefs both to express their creativity and meet consumer demands.

"The Russet Burbank captures almost 40 percent of all sales," Okray said. "But the market for other varieties is the larger cities, where you have more ethnic restaurants. The yellow-flesh potatoes are used a lot in Europe. There are not a lot grown in the United States, but in Poland that's all they eat."

As the name implies, yellow potatoes, like the Yukon gold and Yellow Finnish, have yellow flesh. They are round with light tan skins and are less starchy than Idaho potatoes, which makes them good for steaming, roasting and barbecuing and for use in salads, gratins and pancakes, according to Lydie Marshall in her book "A Passion for Potatoes."

"I like the yellow potatoes because of their rich, buttery taste," the Waldorf's Doherty said. "We just steam them and slice them for warm salads."

On a special truffle degustation menu available earlier this year, Doherty offered a yellow potato, lobster and foie gras salad with truffle vinaigrette. He also has served Yellow Finnish potatoes with warm smoked salmon and a tomato-basil vinaigrette.

Further south on the island of Manhattan, Steven Levine, chef at Zoe, is partial to Yukon Golds.

"Yukon Golds have a higher sugar content, so they're sweeter," Levine explained. "They are also not quite as waxy; they're somewhere between a new potato and an Idaho potato."

Levine uses the Yukon Golds for his basil mashed potatoes -- a version of mashed potato that turns comforting food into the unexpected. The Yukon Golds' lighter consistency makes the dish lighter. The basil and the color of the mashed potato -- gold -- brighten it up, he said. He serves his basil mashed potatoes with a Morrocan-spice grilled salmon and a la carte.

"I had a customer reaction where I was serving the mashed potatoes, and he said, 'You used too much butter.'" Levine recalled. "I said, 'No, it's not butter; it's the potatoes.'"

Levine also combines the Yukon Golds with Idaho potatoes in his lobster-potato home fries, which he serves with a spit-roasted monk fish and a la carte.

"The advantage of using both is that by adding the Idahos, I'm able to get the home fries crispier, and the Yukon Golds help sweeten it up," he noted.

At Bistro 201 in Irvine, Calif., executive chef Alec Lestr is partial to Kennebecs, a white-fleshed potato with a medium starchiness good for making pancakes, pan frying, scalloping and for making gnocchi.

"I like them because they are similar to the Idaho without the water content, so they're easier to work with," he said.

One of Lestr's Kennebec specialties is potato ravioli. He sweats cubes of potato in butter with chopped fresh thyme and adds cream and binds it with garlic puree. The mixture is folded into raviolis and served as a garnish with roast chicken dishes or his ragout of vegetables and chicken juice. In another dish Lestr wraps salmon rolled in spinach, shallots and chives in thin sheets of Kennebec potatoes.

Lestr also likes to use fingerlings, a low-starch, pale-yellow potato, which is best steamed, roasted or barbecued, according to Marshall's book.

He cuts the long, slender spuds into chunks and roasts them with whole cloves of garlic and thyme until they are golden brown. He tosses this with baby corn, lettuce and walnut oil, creating a unique salad.

Peruvian Blue potatoes are generally grown by independent farmers. Medium in starchiness, they are best roasted or mashed, although their blue tone can be disconcerting.