Currabinny Cooks: Buttering up with new potatoes in these spring recipes
New potatoes are one of spring's most iconic crops. They come into season in April and are with us until July.
When buying new potatoes, make sure they are the real deal and not just small potatoes. The papery skins should be almost flaky and easy to rub off with your thumb. Authentic new potatoes will be buttery, fudgy and bursting with flavour. It is even worth buying particularly muddy ones as they are more likely to be true new potatoes. Jersey Royals are the gold standard for new potatoes, but you can find other good varieties too such as ‘vivaldi’ and ‘Orla’. In theory, any variety can be cultivated early as ‘new’ potatoes. The important thing is to make sure they are indeed new and not just the runts from full-term main crop potatoes.
In terms of cooking them, I usually just throw them into a deep pot of boiling salted water. Some people steam them but I don’t really think it matters much overall. They don’t easily lose any of their firm texture or get boggy so boiling them seems the simplest method to me. For absolutely perfect cooking, you generally want all the potatoes to be the same or similar size. Boiling differently-sized potatoes together is no good as the smaller ones will be well overdone by the time the bigger ones are ready. Use a lot of water for new potatoes and cover them in the pot by at least an inch. It is preferable as well to use already boiled water as it will decrease the cooking time. The less time they spend submerged the better, you want them to be cooked through, never over-done.
New potatoes can almost be described as a whole separate eating experience from regular potatoes.
Little firm orbs of deliciousness, bite-sized vehicles for all manner of sauces and dressings. We love to have them as a side salad all through late Spring and Summer.
There is however a lot more to them than just a salad. New potatoes can be roasted, fried, sliced thinly and will go with just about any combination of flavours, although sticking to spring and summery flavours is the most appropriate thing to do.
These recipes hopefully show the versatility of new potatoes — and in true Currabinny style, they are simple and stress-free. Relying on good, in-season ingredients, brought together in a simple manner is far superior to making fussy, complicated dishes — in our opinion anyway.
Potato salads don’t have to be stodgy affairs. The usual way, coated in thick creamy dressings, often being more filling than the main dish seems to defeat the purpose of new potatoes. They are starchy, filling and flavoursome all by themselves, so dressing them in a lighter way seems to be more appropriate.
- 800g new potatoes of similar size
- Juice of one big lemon
- Extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar
- 2-3 gherkins or pickles, roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons of capers
- 1 bunch of leafy kale, stalks discarded
- 2-3 spring onions, finely sliced
- Small bunch of parsley, leaves only, roughly chopped
- Sea salt and black pepper
Cook the potatoes in a large pot of salted boiling water until cooked through and tender but not overdone. This should take between 15-20 minutes. Drain them and return to the pot.
In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, cider vinegar and three tablespoons of olive oil. Add a good pinch of sea salt and a crack of black pepper.
Add to pot with the potatoes along with the capers and chopped pickles. Stir everything around so that the potatoes are well coated.
Toss the kale in two tablespoons of olive oil and place on a lined baking sheet with a pinch of sea salt. Place under a hot grill for a minute or two until crispy and starting to char. Fold into the salad along with the sliced spring onions and serve in a nice dish garnished with chopped parsley.
Roasting new potatoes doesn’t seem like the obvious thing to do for some reason. Even though they are naturally quite waxy, new potatoes still give a nice texture when roasted in a hot oven. This recipe is about as simple as it gets — we are always reluctant to fiddle around with something so good.
Leave them to cool a little after you take them out of the oven and you can pop them into your mouth one by one for the perfect snack. These are also great crushed with butter, covered in grated parmesan and are a great side dish for any kind of meat or fish or vegetarian option you can think of. We don’t often use dried herbs, but recently we found a great wild herb mix in a market in Cork, made by Thalli Foods from Miltown Malbay in County Clare.
- 8 new potatoes, scrubbed
- 50g soft butter
- Drizzle of olive oil
- Sea salt and freshly-cracked black pepper
- 1 tablespoon of mixed dried herbs (parsley, oregano, marjoram)
- Fresh basil to serve
Preheat the oven to 200°C.
Place the scrubbed new potatoes in a medium mixing bowl along with the butter, sea salt, mixed dried herbs and a drizzle of olive oil. Mix everything around well so that the potatoes are well coated.
Place on a lined baking sheet and place in the oven for around 25-30 minutes. They should be tender with the outsides nicely golden-brown.
This version is a little lighter than the more traditional Irish fish chowder. New potatoes are perfect for this as they keep their texture and offer a nice bit of bite in contrast to the rest of the ingredients. We usually trust the fishmonger we use in the English Market to give us a good chowder mix but we have broken it down here in the ingredients. The best way to go is a little white fish, smoked fish and salmon. You can go the whole hog and include mussels or clams but for this simple little recipe we have kept it fairly standard. We have left the bacon out of this recipe as we were going for a lighter, cleaner taste.
- 8 new potatoes, scrubbed and sliced into thick coins
- 1 medium fennel bulb, sliced into small pieces
- 150g hake or cod
- 150g salmon
- 150g smoked haddock
- 2 tablespoons chopped dill
- 60ml dry white wine
- 150g crème fraîche
- Sea salt and black pepper
- Olive oil
- Lemon wedges to serve
Heat a good drizzle of olive oil in a medium-sized saucepan or casserole. Add the potato slices and stir around the pot for around 3 minutes. Add the fennel next and season everything with sea salt and black pepper. Keep stirring for another 2 minutes and then add the wine. Bring to the boil and simmer away until almost evaporated.
Add 500ml of water to the pot and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for around 10 minutes until potatoes are tender. Stir in the crème fraîche along with the fish and put the lid on the pot.
Reduce heat and leave to simmer very gently for another 5 minutes.
When it is ready, stir in the dill and serve in deep bowls with crusty bread and wedges of lime.
