A Sweet Touch: Mashed Potatoes

For my dad I made regular mashed potatoes as a rabbit bed. For myself, I threw in a sweet potato. Sure the colour is not quite what you’d expect, and it’s not particularly attractive since the sauce for the rabbit is already kind of orangey-red, but it tastes like something a little more than butter and cream. Normally that’s a horrible sentence to write, but when you’re lactose-intolerant it’s necessary. To the regular boiled russet potatoes for my dad I added milk and butter (the butter was salted, so no extra salt). No measurement, just until the right consistency. Unfortunately, not having eaten large amounts of mashed potatoes in my life, the “right” consistency is a bit of a rough estimation. These mashed potatoes were certainly not fluffy and light. The fact is that I didn’t use whipping cream or even heavy cream. My dad added about an extra two tablespoons of butter to it, but he’s from rural Ontario, so butter and salt get added to anything placed in front of you. Cultural heritage and all…at least he was polite enough to have a pity taste before he threw in the extra dollop.

I didn’t want just mashed sweet potatoes for myself, though. I used about a 3:1 ratio of regular potatoes to sweet potatoes. I used just a bit of the boiling liquid to moisten them and absolutely nothing else. I feel the same way about this as I feel about adding salt or butter to plain rice when it’s going to be covered with another sauce – there’s just no point. You’re not going to taste it, and you probably don’t want to taste it, so why bother? For most people it’s probably just a habit, and one that should be broken from time to time.

So my orange-y potato mash was placed under my rabbit meat and topped by the fennel, white bean and sundried tomato sauce, and everything worked out perfectly. Next time you make mashed potatoes to go with something that already has a sauce, try making them without adding a bunch of cream and butter and see what you think. If you make the potatoes to go with something without a sauce, well, sure, add whatever you think complements the dish, but you can still mash in an extra sweet potato to the regular potato mixture. A little bit of beta-carotene never hurt you, and it’ll be a little bit more like sweet potato pie. Dessert with the main course. A great meal.