Occasionally, I fall prey to pictures in seed catalogues and rather than think “Hmmm – it looks different so no doubt it’ll be disease-prone and with a tiny yield”, I think “Wow – cool. I want that!”
And so it was with my impulse buy of ‘Congo’ potatoes. I grow ‘Cara’ for reliability, versatility and some blight resistance. ‘Ratte’ is nice and tasty and a little bit different. ‘Congo’ is blue (well, purple really, but described in the catalogues as blue).
We dug one of the five plants up today. It had an extensive root system, and a smallish yield of tubers. Well, there may have been more, but distinguishing the tubers from the soil was very difficult. The tubers, before cleaning, looked rather like what can only be described as ‘poo’. Well, they can’t only be described as that, but I’ll leave any other descriptions to your imagination.
But contrary to the slightly rude saying, you can polish one (if you catch my drift…). And this is what you end up with:
There are some ‘blue potatoes’ that are all mouth and no trousers. A lovely blue skin but underneath – a grey-stained white flesh. But no, not these. ‘Congo’ is bloo all throo.
And if you would like to continue the blue theme, I have an earworm for you – just click on the play button below. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
10 comments:
Hope the spuds taste ok - they look better when cleaned certainly.
and I love the song, it is the most hummable ever!
You'll be cursing me later when the song is still going round and round in your head!
Can't quite make my mind up about the blue tatties - I think I'll pass.
At a talk by Nick Hamilton recently he showed a blue potato which kept its colour when cooked and I forgot to ask which it was. Will be interesting to see if yours keep their colour
Wise, perhaps, to show us the pictures in advance of describing taste and texture.
P.S. WV is 'nellysit'. Isn't that a nice word?
A blue variety, called Arran Victory, used to be used in potato variety trials to show where different varieties started and ended. However it looks positively anaemic compared to yours!
PG - will post picures later. We had the cut up one roasted for dinner last night and it remained very purple. I'm not sure they'll make good mashers (tonight's dinner) but I'm going to give it a go.
Esther - I'm not holding my breath for a taste sensation, but I will be happy to be proved wrong.
Bill - What a good idea. I might try that next year, as I'm always forgetting how many rows of each variety I've planted.
Loved the photos, the poo-like potatoes did make me chuckle. I'm not sure my head can get around the blue mash. You would think the brain wouldn't recognise it as potato when you taste it. I saw a programme a while ago that was a taste test of wines. The panel thought they were all red as the white wines had a red dye put in them. They were asked to describe them and they described them as red wines even though they didn't taste anything like red wines simply because the brain had seen the colour.
Hi Wellywoman - Yes, it's surprising what our eyes tell our brain, and that our brain is more than happy to accept what they are saying. It was strange eating them. I suppose our eyesight is so much more important to us than our sens of taste and smell.
Hi Sharon,
We all seem to fall prey to the gluttony of our eyes but I guess that’s part of human nature and what inspires us to venture into new territories and partake in unique experiences.
The blue / purple babies do clean up rather well. I wonder what the flavor might be and whether their deep coloring will bleed into the cooking water.
I have never heard of Congo potatoes by I there is another blue potato variety known as Adirondack Blue which is a hybrid potato developed at Cornell University in the early 2000’s. I believe that some food manufacturers have begun making potato chips out of them.
Hanna
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