The Potato is King!

[caddyman]

It is a generally accepted fact that roast potatoes are the vegetable in a roast dinner with the highest individual value¹. This leads to the necessity for a vegetable exchange rate when there is a paucity of spuds on the menu.

Now if there are four diners and a roast dinner is on the horizon, the well-prepared cook will ensure am equal number of roast potatoes for each person. But what happens when, through some calamity, natural or man-made, there are fifteen roasters? One person will have to make do with three, which is manifestly unfair as the other three have four. Of course, the host will wish to balance the servings by compensating the loser with other vegetables.

Precisely how much broccoli makes up for the missing roaster, or how many peas? Will an additional spoonful of cabbage make up the deficit? Does a roast parsnip equal a roast spud, or is it only 90% of the value and how do you make up the remaining 10% deficit? Then you have veggies so appalling – swede, for example – that adding it is simply heaping insult upon injury. Right thinking people would gladly give up a roaster to do without swede. It is a vegetable so bad that it has a negative value².

With the roast potato at the top of the roast dinner chain, then, I shall assign it a value of ten. This being the case, what value can we assign to other vegetables? Time, I think, for a poll.

Before we go to the poll, however, I should point out that in this case we are simply considering vegetables and their impact upon the palate; we are not interested in their relative nutritional merits, this is entirely value assigned by taste and smell. Neither are we concerned with meat or fish and certainly not with a Yorkshire Pudding³.


[Poll #1131251]

¹By which I mean that it is not a generally accepted fact.

²I shall brook no argument t on this point: swede is vile. If you are odd enough to think otherwise, kindly keep it to yourself. This is a respectable journal.

³The Yorkshire Pudding is that rarity on the dinner plate. It trumps the roast potato. One average sized Yorkshire is worth at least two roasters and as such is an easy way of buying off potato deficits, though again, an imbalance of Yorkshires creates the same concerns one level up. A deficit of both roaster and Yorkshires is unconscionable and the cook should be shot..

Comments

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

I feel shame. I added my comment about swede before reading your point #2!

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Your comment has been logged and just retribution will follow.

[delvy.livejournal.com]

HERETIC!

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Swede is never worth more.

The poll assumes proper culinary skills and is therefore valid.

Next.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I have a lot of respect for the roasted parsnip and personally rate it at 8, not quite up to the standards of the perfect spud.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

But if the poll assumes proper culinary skills, we need to know much, much more before voting.

Cabbage, for example. A good savoy? With cream and nutmeg? Ground black pepper?

Cauliflower - you miss out the most important part of the information - Cauliflower on its own, or (as God intended) in a proper Cauliflower Cheese? That _alone_ is enough to raise it from an okay 5 to at least a 9, if not higher depending on the cheese and the quality of the crispy baked cheese skin.

Leeks? Leeks. sliced into a gentle pepper sauce, or grilled under cheese like the cauliflower?

More information, damnit!

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Whilst there is merit in your argument, I do not see cauliflower cheese as part of a roast dinner.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

That's fightin' talk where I come from.

[oldnick.livejournal.com]

You are wrong so wrong about swede. Properly mashed, with butter and black pepper, it is wonderful.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

You missed 'cut spuds'.

The cutting gives you the sharp edges, upon which the crispy bits form first.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

*applause*

[november-girl.livejournal.com]

that overcooked mushy spud that despite its extra time in the oven never gets a perfect crispy skin?

You mean the only kind of roast spud that's really nice?

[delvy.livejournal.com]

Ummm, when I cook dinner all my guests have one third of their plate covered in roasters. Yorkshires are piled on top and I normally have 5 or 6. All is of course covered in gravy.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

You are clearly a man after my own heart attack.

[delvy.livejournal.com]

Actually as it is a once a week treat I find it not to be so. Although doing anything other than sleeping afterwards is most difficult.

[irdm.livejournal.com]

YP with YP garnish... ummmm!

Is it possible to produce several varying sizes of YP such that they can be placed concentrically?

[ellefurtle.livejournal.com]

Oooooo......

[caffeine-fairy.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes it is.

/the Voice of Experience

[delvy.livejournal.com]

I have indeed done precisley that before, four in total with the outer being the plate essentially.

[delvy.livejournal.com]

There is no such thing as excess yorkshire puddings; they are just all mine.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I'm disappointed that there aren't more people in your poll willing to give peas a chance.




I'll get my coat.

[pauln.livejournal.com]

So long as they're garden variety gorgeousness and not mushy abomination.



Says he, stalwartly trying to avoid the pun.

[keresaspa.livejournal.com]

I must clarify that peas are only the equal of roasties if they come form a tin from Batchelors. Which is perhaps not a clever admission from an overweight man with the surname Morrow!

[irdm.livejournal.com]

Far be it for me to Big.. you up, although I find Farrows are an acceptable substitiute.

[keresaspa.livejournal.com]

I must agree that Farrows do a reasonable yeoman job in the absence of Batchelors. Own brand versions are invaraibly the work of Mephistopheles, however.

[fencingsculptor.livejournal.com]

A roast parsnip is better than a roast potato.

Grated swede & carrot mixed together with black pepper and a knob of butter is wonderful. Pull yourselves together.

A good cook distributes the an unequal quantity of roast spuds by size....ensuring everyone gets the same amount of yaffle. And keeps the crispiest, crunchiest, flakiest, must succulent spuds for himself...he deserves it.

....and then a swift 10k to work it off ..there's a good group of chaps!

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

*agrees with everything except the swift 10k bit*

Swede is also good in big tasty stews.

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

The Swede Brigade is starting to make their presence felt....

I feel somewhat vindicated.

[ellefurtle.livejournal.com]

I like swede too - but only if gooshy and full lof extra yum (i.e. lard)

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

Oooh yes, there is only one way to serve swede. As gooshy as possible!

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

I will join the anti-swede group please, Garrr yeuk and phtooey phtooey for swede. I was traumatised by swede in infant school and have never eaten it since.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

It's a fact of life that tastes change; physically as well as mentally.

Whilst not denying your childhood anguish, I feel that you're doing yourself a disservice not to find someone who can actually cook, and getting them to show you just how good the swede can be.

[lucyas.livejournal.com]

Ditch the meat - just give me the veg, a Yorkshire pud and lots of gravy!

Cauliflower cheese is worth 12 points

[jadeent.livejournal.com]

ptah ptah ptah!

[failing-angel.livejournal.com]

Best way of having swede - mashed (but not to a puree) with carrots - double-yum.


But what's all this about potatoes - anyone would think you had a chip on your shoulder.

[sea-strands.livejournal.com]

In my opinion none of the above, even the roast potato, would work without gravy. Mind you, I have been known to drink the gravy straight from the gravy boat .....

[lapinenoireuk.livejournal.com]

To hell with gravy!

Pepper sauce (with real black pepper corns)is the answer to most culinary problems!!

[ash1977law.livejournal.com]

Until recently I beleived that the spud is king,, trumped only by the yorkshire pud.

Now I know that they are both trumped by 'incorrectly cooked' Brussel Sprouts.

My wife is American and therefore was not taught the 'propper' Britsh way to cook Brussel Sprouts (begin boiling them in late November, serve as nasty balls of disgusting mush on Christmas Day) and instead has learned to cook them in such a way that they taste nice.

[mr-h-r-hughes.livejournal.com]

The spud is my god.


That is all