Potato Blues

The potato harvest is in, about a month or so early due to the unforeseen circumstance of deciding to move to Western Massachusetts with about 3 weeks' notice (!). According to my notes, I planted 1 lb of All Blue potatoes back in mid-May, which should have yielded 15-20 lbs of potatoes... but I only dug up 7 lbs. Admittedly, most of them are quite small and would surely have increased in bulk if I had waited long enough to harvest them. But not even half the expected yield??? It's also true that they were in a less sunny part of the plot this year. This is only my second year of growing potatoes and last year's crop also got pulled early due to the much-bemoaned late tomato blight of 2009, so I'm just not sure what to think, although I am grateful for what I got. Seven lbs of potatoes is still...seven pounds of potatoes! An abundance of potatoes by anyone's count.

I may try potatoes again next year, although since our new living situation includes all meals, vegetable gardening would be a gratuitous exercise. If I do, I probably won't grow blues again. I have to say, even though these are considered "gourmet", I find them just a bit creepy to look at! The blue is actually more like grey once cooked, and their insides lost their color completely. Fortunately, they are quite tasty in the various ways I've served them so far.

Below is a very simple, delicious recipe that requires almost no time to prepare: roasted rosemary potatoes. I've shamelessly borrowed the method from another blogger who posted it back in 2007. The recipe is reproduced below with a few small changes, including using fresh instead dried rosemary since it was all I had.


Rosemary Blues

Preheat oven to 425.

Combine in a cast-iron skillet or other large, shallow, oven-safe dish:

1.5 lbs blue potatoes, washed and cut into bite-sized pieces
1/4 cup olive oil

Cook 20 minutes in the middle of the oven, then turn off heat, stir potatoes to loosen their bottoms and let sit in the oven 10 more minutes.

Now toss with:
1 tablespoon sea salt
2 tablespoons dried (crushed) or fresh (chopped) rosemary

Serve alongside another dish with some nice color, like a tomato salad!

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