Picky about potatoes? There’s a shortage of some varieties
Homemade shepherd’s pie was on the menu for Ailin, but she struggled to find potatoes for the topping.
I was stressing about how we had such a lot on the next weekend with so many people coming and going.
Guests coming from around Ireland as well as the UK and America for a big family occasion; people staying wherever they could lay their head. You know the kind of thing.
I might have to provide food for a multitude on the Saturday, I worried.
“Listen, you can’t go wrong with a shepherd’s pie,” my friend counselled.
“It’s real comfort food, people love it and when you’re under pressure it’s not as fiddly as lasagne.”
This was a great idea, I thought.
“You could make a humongous mix in advance,” she suggested, “and rather than putting the whole thing into one enormous lasagne dish, divide it up into two or three smaller casserole dishes, top each one with your mashed potato, cook them and then re-heat as needed. Just make sure you get Kerr’s Pinks or Golden Wonders for the mashed potato topping. They’ll last well in the fridge over the 24 hours.”
She wasn’t a fan of Roosters herself, she said, and certainly not as a topping for a Shepherd’s Pie that had to wait 24 hours in a fridge before it was eaten.
“Oh right,” I said, a bit puzzled. (I am generally not that picky about which species of potato I use. Golden Wonders, Kerr’s Pink, Roosters, Schmoosters.
I bought the three pounds of minced lamb. I bought the onions, the garlic, the head of celery and a few bunches of nice fresh organic carrots. A bottle of red wine to add richness to the stock. I’d need tomato puree too. Butter, parmesan and garlic salt for the mashed potato topping – oh yes, if we were going to have Shepherd’s Pie, this was going to be a posh Shepherd’s Pie.
Also on the list was fresh thyme, rosemary and parsley, which I’d take from, yes, my very own flourishing herb bed (of which I am immensely proud.) Oh, and potatoes, I reminded myself; don’t forget the potatoes.
In the shop I remembered. Hadn’t she said to get only Golden Wonders or Kerr’s Pink? I browsed the butcher’s- he does a line in nice fresh local vegetables – and then tried the vegetable aisles of two different supermarkets. Only roosters.
Nobody seemed to have Kerrs Pink or Golden Wonders.
“Not to be had at this point,” a shop assistant said when I eventually inquired.
I watched the Tik Tok video uploaded by Dan Horan, the Killarney fruit and veg supplier. Dan explained what had happened with Golden Wonders and Kerry’s Pink this year. Kerr’s Pink and Golden Wonders, which would normally be available until July, are finished for the moment. Done. They won’t be available until the new season in August.
It’s this damn weather. The climate turbulence last autumn – endless rain and floods followed by the frost in October - meant that many popular late potato varieties such as Kerr’s Pink were lost.
On top of that the prolonged and often torrential rain which was inflicted on us throughout the spring months caused serious and widespread delays in actually getting the spuds into the ground.
Horan suggests people try another kind of potato called Marquis, which is grown on a farm in Ardfert. A very nice potato, he said; he’d tried them himself.
The IFA described last year’s growing season as the worst in living memory.
God almighty, I thought, and all I wanted was a few spuds for a shepherd’s pie. I noticed a tall, rangy farmer-type in his seventies or eighties. He looked like a man who knew his spuds. I asked him about the situation.
“Not to be had, girl. The weather,” he said succinctly.
“SuperValu would have them, I’d say, but don’t expect big sacks.”
And sure enough I eventually tracked down some Kerr’s Pink – in smallish bags– in SuperValu.
I thought of my friend and her shepherd’s pie topping that absolutely had to be made from Kerr’s Pink potatoes.
Potatoes are personal – as someone said, there’s no point telling people who drink Guinness to try Heineken. People who have always eaten Kerr’s Pink won’t want to hear about Roosters. But they may find that they don’t have a choice.
One expert said that while there’s always been wet years and dry years, this past 12 months has been “a bit frightening”. Normally planting would be completed in April to May would be very late. But planting in June? Almost unheard of until this year.
I pay for my surprisingly small bag of Kerr’s Pink and bring it home. I put it beside the big bag of Roosters I also bought. I couldn’t find the Marquis potatoes; maybe they’re still only to be had in shops in Kerry. They say that new potato varieties with shorter growing seasons could mitigate the risks to crops of weather extremes in the coming years.Us non-potato-growers can only hope the weather gets back to normal or that Teagasc is on top of this.
App?
