The Tamesis
I headed to the Union Square Farmers Market. I collected eight varieties from Halal Pastures and Norwich Meadows Farm, ranging from the thumb-sized La Rattes to a variety called Upstate Abundance developed by Dan Barber of Stone Barns and Cornell University plant breeder and geneticist Walter De Jong. I’m visiting from Spain and don’t have my own kitchen to taste test. But my mother had a well-appointed house at her house in Hudson. I sent out a series of invitations, piled 60 pounds of potatoes, labeled and separated by type, packed them in a Rimowa suitcase so neatly it looked custom-made, and headed north.
I decided to prepare my eight varieties by simply boiling them in strong salted water. I allowed two sauces—aioli and pesto—but only if the potatoes were tasted plain. My tasters – a farm manager, a five- and nine-year-old, a Chilean artist, an energy executive, a film producer, a personal trainer and jewelry designer Presley Oldham – arrived just after 5 p.m. I poured La Spinetta rosé and played around with the pot while cooking eight batches of potatoes.
The first potato was a beautiful piebald variety called Masquerade, which everyone rated between 8 and 10. Tasting notes describe it as “smells like chestnuts,” “sweet! Delicious!” and “fatty and earthy.” The pink-fleshed Mountain Rose was universally condemned (“not too sweet,” “no flavor,” “bland,” “watery”) but received high marks for appearance (“3 for taste, 7 for appearance”). Northern Abundance is “very potatoy” and “starchy”. The red fish was “meh”, “slightly bitter, slightly sour”, “metallic”, and “chewy”. The most surprising is the jet-black Purple King, whose flesh is only slightly lighter than the skin. Everyone rates it a 9 or 10, describing it as “rich and deep,” tasting “exactly like an artichoke,” and, says the Chilean artist, “like the Andes itself!”
I say good night to the tasters. I understand what a potato is better than I ever did before. But that night, I lay in bed and concentrated on the Andes mountains mentioned by the Chilean artist. Purple majesty was not domesticated on the plateau thousands of years ago, but was bred in 2010 at a research center at Colorado State University. On the flight back to Spain, I drafted a pitiful plea to my editor about the need for a Peruvian expedition. Only then, staring out the window, did I remember that 30,000 feet below me were the Canary Islands, home to the world’s second-highest potato biodiversity after South America. I made a new plan.
A few days later, I boarded a three-hour flight to Tenerife and met Domingo Rios Mesa at the offices of the Center for the Conservation of Agricultural Biodiversity of Tenerife (CCBAT). In a basement cold room set at about 41 degrees, Ríos Mesa and his team store 110 ancient potato varieties, some of which are genetically similar to varieties discovered in the Americas more than 400 years ago. “About 15 ancient varieties are still grown regularly on the island,” he explains.
