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| Snicked or slugged - random collection of crazy spuds. |
So, loyal spud geeks, it's that time of the year when I take stock of this year's experimental crops, you get some information about cultivars you may not have tried before, and everyone else gets to chortle at the bizarre and rude shapes of the
Pink Fir Apple ones.
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| Alien lifeform? Nope - it's a tater! |
Having got that out of the way, on to this year's trial crops, first of which was
Red Emmelie, sold as an early maincrop with red skin and flesh. The tubers are elongated and the yield per plant seemed good, with tolerably low levels of slug damage and the tops dying back naturally with no signs of blight, but with such a dry high summer, it's not possible to promise that would always be the case. The rough outer skin scraped off easily, leaving a glossy ruby-red layer beneath, and they held their shape well during boiling, although the colour became paler.
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| Red Emmelie after cooking |
They have a good salad-potato texture and a rather smooth, buttery taste.
The other unusual one this year was
Violetta, sold as a late maincrop but harvested now as tubers left too long in the ground on our allotment have been susceptible to millipede attack in the last couple of years. Despite this, the tubers were still of a good size and quite regular oval or teardrop shape, again without undue signs of damage or disease for organic growing.
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| Violetta before cooking. |
Like
Red Emmelie, they cleaned up quite easily to reveal a very deep amethyst layer under the flaky outer skin and an astonishing purple interior. What they would look (and taste) like when cooked remained to be seen.
There is a truly classic Billy Connolly sketch from about fifteen to twenty years ago in which he rails against the menus in fancy restaurants that don't actually tell you what's available to eat, but instead hide behind 'Catch of the Day' or 'Vegetables in Season' descriptions. This reached it's nadir, according to the Glaswegian comic, with a menu in Ireland which informed him that the meals would be accompanied by 'Potatoes of the Night'. Connolly goes on to speculate about what the **** this means, and whether 'Potatoes of the Night' have to be harvested in the dark by farmers wearing mining-style helmets with a lamp on the front or hunted only by the brave, like dangerous noctural creatures.
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| Potatoes of the Night? |
Having cooked the first of my
Violetta spuds, I think I have authentic 'Potatoes of the Night' which, despite their somewhat gothic appearance, are remarkably tasty. They have a floury texture and good flavour, and didn't prove as prone to disintegration as I feared since I left them to cook while I cleared the
Pink Fir Apples that would complete the trio of odd taters to be served to Jon's unsuspecting cousin Steve visiting from New Zealand and he was a good enough sport to give these a try. Sadly, his country of residence is a stickler for bio-security, so he won't be able to take any back for the family.
Nor will he be able to take home any examples of the notorious
Pink Fir Apple, but readers can have a good chuckle at some examples from this year's crop here...
So who still thinks vegetable growing is boring?
