A Spud Banquet

John Jemison wants to reintroduce an old culinary friend, the potato. He means the whole potato, not just thin slices deep-fried to go with a value meal. Jemison has nothing against french fries, but there are only so many we can eat, and only so many Maine farmers can sell.

“I think we maxed out our growth potential,” he says, referring to the fry potato market, not American waistlines.

As a water quality and soil specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, Jemison helps Maine farmers grow better potatoes with fewer chemicals; he’s also helping to bring more varieties to the marketplace. Thanks to his efforts, Hannaford recently agreed to carry a UMaine-farmer collaboration potato brand called Star of the North in some stores.

But it’s one thing to put new potato varieties on the shelf; it’s another to get someone to buy them.

“People are not just going to buy a bunch of novel potatoes,” he says, standing over the sink as he washes a colander-full of Carola potatoes. These potatoes come from his private basement stash; Jemison often brings his work home with him.

Potatoes have a lot going for them, nutritionally. They’re high in vitamin C and a great source of antioxidants, but there’s a catch. “How you cook the thing determines how healthy they’re going to be for you,” he says.

Peel the potato and you lose many of the nutrients. Smother it with sour cream or deep-fry it and your heart may be less than thrilled. But there are dozens of tasty ways to prepare a potato, and Jemison and his wife, Shelley, plan to showcase three for dinner.

Some of the best potato recipes are ridiculously easy, including the time-honored tradition of baking, he says. Stick a fork in a potato, throw it in a hot oven, and call it done in 20 minutes to an hour, depending on the potato’s size. Jemison grabs a handful of purple potatoes to slice for steaming. Always steam purple potatoes if you want to retain their beautiful color, he warns. “They look like sad-looking gray things when you roast them,” he says.

Though he steams the purple potatoes, Jemison prefers roasting over baking. His three favorite potatoes, Carola, Kennebec, and Dark Red Norland, are all perfect roasters—crisp on the outside and creamy on the inside. He says Kennebecs are great for home fries and Dark Red Norland have a unique color going for them, but he saves his real praise for the golden-fleshed German Carola potato. “I love its flavor, I love its color. I wouldn’t even dream about peeling it . . . it looks like it’s already been buttered.”

Jemison’s next step is to begin his prep work with another variation on the baked theme, quartering the potatoes and drizzling them with olive oil, salt, and pepper before roasting.

The olive oil used for the roasted potatoes is a souvenir from the couple’s stay in Italy. Food permeates all aspects of Italian life, he says, sometimes literally in olive-producing regions.

“Everything was as slick as can be because there was a fine mist of oil in the air,” he says.

Shelley says it’s an eye-opening experience to live in a country where locals fiercely love their provincial food. “If you’re in Tuscany, you eat Tuscan food, that’s it,” she says, as she stirs a beautiful red sauce meant for the dessert of poached pears.

John may be the main gardener of the family, but Shelley, a speech therapist, is the main cook. “Shelley worked on that sauce for the better part of the day,” he says. As he washes and chops, she is simultaneously mixing together both a stew and a soup, and using a healthy amount of garlic for both.

“You have to love garlic to eat in this house,” she says.

So how do you fit three potato dishes into one dinner? Easy, you do it slowly. Tonight, the Jemisons have opted for a long candlelight dinner, with small, beautiful portions of many dishes. Shelley expertly times each course so that it seems one dish melts into another.

It begins with a warm leak-and-potato soup with sourdough bread dipped in olive oil, then Swiss chard with roasted garlic, shallots, and garbanzo beans, followed by an African peanut stew (with potatoes) and John’s roasted medley. It’s a potato feast that sure beats a value meal.