As you well know, the Irish are addicted to their potatoes. This is no national stereotype and I am no exception.
My doctor once told me to ditch potatoes and bread from my diet. I did pretty well with the bread, relatively speaking. But potatoes? Spare me. Potatoes are life.
Last week, I was lolling on my couch which is my wont when the desire for mashed potatoes arose in my manly chest. Now, I can boil a potato. I can fry them in my cast iron pan. I can even nuke them in my microwave. But I have never mashed a potato in my entire life. I have eaten carloads of them with butter or maybe gravy. But someone else always made them.
My favorite bar, Byrnes Irish Pub in Bath offers a mashed potato appetizer with scallions. A potato appetizer! I order it every time.
Now I have watched many people make mashed potatoes. It seems pretty simple. You boil some potatoes, add some milk and butter, some salt and pepper, whip them with a beater and you have the ultimate comfort food.
Even I could do that, right?
I boiled the potatoes. No problem. I have no mixer so I put them into the $300 blender. This would make them ever better and whippier, right?
I started with some onions and mushrooms, then added the potatoes, butter, milk, salt and pepper. I gave them a few blasts. For good luck, I gave them a few more. I believe the word is “puree.”
Vroom. I figured the more I whipped them, the better the final product would be.
It was a shock when the finished product was poured slowly from the blender. Whatever it was, it was not mashed potatoes. I once worked (unsuccessfully) pouring cement for a construction project at the the Gloucester, Massachusetts, treatment plant. My blender concoction looked more like that Gloucester cement than the mashed potatoes mother used to make.
You can’t throw out a half bag worth of potatoes, no matter how they look. So I tried to cook the pureed mix in the frying pan like fish cakes. Basically it was a hot mess.
I put the whole concoction away in the refrigerator.
There was another attack at the potato-cement the next day. The thought occurred that baking the mess in the oven might turn it into blintzes, or something. That didn’t happen, but I did burn my finger taking the pan out of the stove. It was another disaster that did not resemble any blintz I ever saw.
The blob finally went into the trash. Let the mice try to figure that out.
The fun was just beginning. Usually the blender cleans itself with a blast of hot water and dish soap. Tried it once. Tried it twice. The Gloucester cement stuck to the blender like, well, cement. It must have taken an hour to chip the gluey mess out. I suspect there are a few traces left.
Then there was the frying pan I put in the oven. I left that soaking overnight which is my wont. That was worse than the blender. The cement had been baked into the pan. After sponging, then a heavy application of two SOS pads, the pan finally came clean. More than once I considered throwing the pan in the rubbish with the cement.
The mixing bowl was relatively easy, but still a pain in the neck.
As God is my witness, I will never attempt to make mashed potatoes again. I will boil them. I will fry them. I will even nuke them.
But the next time the urge for mashed potatoes arises. I will use the magic instant mashed potatoes, with some onions or scallions. Or maybe I will drive to Byrnes Pub. That would be better than another kitchen-cement catastrophe. Maybe I will just bake some potatoes the next time.
I am a disgrace to my heritage.
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the Bangor Daily News in Rockland for 30 years.