You Say Potato

There’s a lot that marriage can teach one about life – adjusting to two sets of families, being more household-ey than you thought possible and, if you’re married to someone from Calcutta, the crucial importance of potatoes. Prior to getting married, from a culinary perspective, I’d been more North Indian than Bengali. So while I’d greatly appreciated potatoes in terms of their versatility and adaptability, the sheer ubiquity of it meant that I’d never recognized it as being something special. When added to one of those disliked vegetables for which you don’t know the English names, it made matters more palatable; when added to a good vegetable, it made the dish complete without stealing the show in any way. But when it boiled down to it, on matters that concerned dishes that one truly looked forward to in a salivating-in-anticipation manner, it was never really a must have. It was happy to cede the spotlight to chicken or mutton or paneer, and it’s not like you really missed it much.

There probably isn’t any sort of food chain or food pyramid diagrams that are based on the glamour quotient, but if there were, the potato would surely be right there at the bottom of it. No doubt it’s universally loved, but its status has always been that of an ever present, comfort food that you can count on. In movie terms, the potato would be Morgan Freeman – comforting, agreeable and dependable, but, you know, when it really came down to it, not quite Brad Pitt. It’s not the scene-stealer, the showstopper, the coup de grace at the end of a fantastically elaborate meal. It’s always been the regular, every man vegetable that’s happy to stay in the shadows, stoically going about its business while allowing the more glamorous vegetables like avocado or zucchini to bask in the spotlight. It’s defined by its adaptable nature – it’s not fussy about soil or climatic conditions – not for it the temperate weather conditions or well-irrigated farmland requirements that more fussy crops may seek. Of late, it has even handled all the vitriol directed at it by the trendy, carbohydrate-demonizing brigade with an air of quiet dignity.

I’d always thought it was only in regions with a less evolved cuisine that the potato could really take centre stage. Take Ireland, for example, where there was once a great potato famine that killed a lot of people, so you know that potatoes were really important there. It’s the sort of country where you’d imagine everyone was too busy drinking or fighting the English, so the pursuit of gastronomic excellence would not have been the primary preoccupation. Hence, the Irish would’ve just grown the potatoes, boiled it, tossed some salt in it and got on with life. Or the Russians, who were unlucky enough to have a country that was so cold that you could only grow potatoes in it. So they even figured out a way to make alcohol out of potatoes, and survived the winter on vodka and potatoes. Or you’d associate potatoes with the more basic and rustic examples of cooking, such as the Shepherd’s Pie, because you’d imagine that the shepherds didn’t really have any other ingredients handy. The potato, then, was not something you’d link with the more refined, top-notch culinary branches of the world.

Until now, that is. Married life has taught me that Bengali cuisine, for all its glorious complexity and breathtaking range of ingredients and spices, has reserved a special place – no, a position of pre-eminent reverence – for the humble potato. A mutton curry, no matter how well prepared, is only politely appreciated in that half-hearted manner that does just enough not to discourage you completely. Throw in some potatoes, though, and it’s greeted with rapturous screams of delight and looked upon with ardent adoration, a dish that’s truly savoured and promptly devoured, leaving behind an air of blissful contentment.  It’s the same with biryani. An excellent biryani is duly given the respect it deserves, but it doesn’t go beyond that. Unless it comes with a piece of potato, in which case it is promptly elevated to one of those divine culinary experiences best savoured in reverent silence, a truly soul satisfying experience that will be spoken about in awed tones for weeks to come. Even chicken, or fish, or most other dishes, will have the potato tossed in. Sure, the potato may play a support role in the dishes, but it’s a crucial and utterly indispensable support role – without it the dish simply isn’t complete. It isn’t the sort of support role that’s negotiable or interchangeable – you cannot toss in any old vegetable that’s there in the kitchen instead and expect to get away with it. Sure, us Bengalis (well, ok, not me) may be regularly embarking upon supremely complicated gastronomic feats involving tender coconuts, prawns, banana leaves, mustard paste painstakingly ground on a shil nora and what have you, but the potato still retains a cherished spot at the heart of it all.

The inherent Bengali laziness is often ascribed to the effects of rice, but I suspect the potato may be equally culpable in this regard. When we Bengalis start getting visibly and distressingly rounded in shape as middle age starts to catch up, we’re often referred to as Roshogullas, in recognition of that more visible example of Bengali cuisine, but calling us a potato would probably be more accurate. Years ago, Inzamam ul Huq took such umbrage at being called a potato by an Indian cricket fan that he almost beat him senseless with a cricket bat. A Bengali man would quite likely have taken that as a compliment and invited you home for lunch involving mutton cooked with…you guessed it…potatoes!