If it has become central in our Western diets, the potato, or Solanum tuberosum, is no less recent in our history. Domesticated between 5000 and 2000 BC on the high plateaus of Lake Titicaca (Bolivia and Peru), her first contact with Europeans dates back to 1537, with the expedition of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada in Colombia, and the first mentions of the potato in Spain date from 1573. Distributed in Europe during the XVIe and XVIIe centuries, it is cultivated from northern Italy to Poland (kartoffel, its german name comes from italian tartuffoli, “Small truffles”), and popularized in France by Parmentier in 1785, who became the apostle to King Louis XVI.
It reproduces by its tubers, but you can also collect its seeds for sowing.
The potato belongs to the nightshade family, like the tomato and eggplant, but, unlike the latter, its fruit is poisonous, as are its leaves. It reproduces by its tubers, but you can also collect its seeds for sowing (more delicate). There are hundreds of varieties of potatoes, classified by type of flesh (firm, tender, floury), shapes, colors (pink, purple, white, yellow) and harvest period (early, early, late). The bintje is the most cultivated variety, the charlotte a classic farm, the roseval one of the tastiest.
Old consumption
In the Andes, among the ancestral methods of preserving potatoes, the chuños, morayas Where tuntas are processes close to freeze-drying: the tubers are laid out outside to freeze overnight, then soaked in water for several weeks, then trampled underfoot and dried in the sun. The result looks like small, light pebbles that keep for years, used whole in soups and stews or mashed into flour.
Contemporary consumption
There are a thousand ways to prepare the potato, one of the rare vegetables not to be eaten raw: steamed, charred, water in its skin (in a field dress), roasted, fried , sautéed, stuffed, souffle, crushed, mashed, gratin, pancake, terrine, soup, crisps … One of the prettiest techniques is “hasselback” cooking: the potatoes are finely sliced three quarters ( to stay tied underneath), buttered, possibly garnished with herbs and cheese, and roasted for an amazing dish.
The Taste of M