Pink Potatoes

Our potatoes this year grew quickly, flowered, and died back, leaving us a pretty decent harvest under the ground. We've left them there because they're nice and safe under ground until we're ready to cure them for storage. We did dig up one bed that was planted with Kennebecs and Adirondack Reds:

The Adirondack Reds are new to us this year. I ordered them from Johnny's as a replacement for our Red Pontiac potatoes, which we ate last winter instead of saving any for seed. Unlike the Red Pontiacs, these red potatoes are colored all the way through the flesh, which made for some colorful mashed potatoes:

This meal brought back a strong, visceral memory of the first time I ate dinner at a friend's house. My first grade best friend Wendy loved mashed potatoes (I did not), and she especially loved them with ketchup. She stirred huge squirts of ketchup into her snow white mashed potatoes until they turned bright pink. I had never seen such a thing, and promptly lost my appetite.

Anyway, these potatoes have no ketchup involved, but are naturally pink (the green flecks are chives). Maybe it's just me, but I'm still not sure mashed potatoes should be pink.

Further reading about Adirondack Reds reveals that they were bred at Cornell University and therefore do really well in our short, Northern growing season (which explains the quick die-back of the vine). According to New York chefs, the flesh is waxier, so they're not the ideal potato to make fluffy mashed potatoes.  We did find that they browned nicely when pan fried, though:

These are little potato patties made from the leftover pink mashed potatoes in the first photo. You can see the nice browning.

Where the Adirondack Reds really shine, though, is as pan-fried potato wedges. Kirk made these by slicing them in quarters. First he covered and par-cooked them in the microwave for 10 minutes, then browned them in a pan with some olive oil. This gave them a really nice, brown crisping on the cut edges.

I'd show you, but we ate them up long before I had a chance to snap a photo.