"Vegetables of Interest"

Bintje Potatoes

Bintje Potatoes

(Solanum tuberosum)

The Dutch are my kind of people.  There are about 16 million of them living in a country about the size of Maryland.  Their birth rate is below the level needed to maintain the population so they are voluntarily thinning the herd.  But even more impressive is the factoid that the Dutch have more than 150 varieties of potatoes with some presence in their produce markets.  To my knowledge you have to go back to the original stomping ground of the potato in South America to find that many potato varieties (Peru has ~3,000).  Compare that with the United States where 90% of our potatoes come from fewer than twelve varieties.  And need we mention that Americans are producing far more little Americans than we need or who are welcome?

But this missive is about potatoes and specifically an heirloom Dutch variety called “Bintje” (Pronounced “ben-jee”).     “Bintje” or “Miss Bintje” as it was known at its introduction in 1910 was the work of a botanist schoolmaster named Kornelis Friesland.   Master Friesland used potatoes as a hands-on teaching tool in his classroom to illustrate the principles of plant genetics and cross breeding.  He named each resulting hybrid potato after one of his children of which he had nine.  But when he produced the tenth hybrid potato in ~1905 (a cross between Munstersen and Fransen) he found inspiration in his best pupil, Miss Bintje Jansma.  And one might say that the rest of the story is “potato history.”

Today Bintje potatoes are the most widely grown yellow-fleshed potato in the world.  Farmers appreciate Bintje’s productivity and its tolerance to a wide range of soils.   Commercial produce firms like Bintje for its storage ability and its good looks.  Even on close inspection a Bintje is smooth and well rounded.  Plus its skin has a silk-like finish.  But where Bintje truly excels is in the kitchen.  Its starch solid content of ~20% puts it in the middle of the ‘wax vs flour’ spectrum and thus they can play either role.  And most important is that the flavor of a Bintje is exceptional.  Some describe it as having a unique light, nut-like flavor.   I don’t taste that note but I agree that it is an exceptional spud.

Despite Bintje’s world-wide reputation it is largely unknown in America.  Much of that may be due to America’s long-standing “potato color barrier.”  Until a Canadian university invented the Yukon Gold in the 1970s the American public wouldn’t look twice at a spud unless it had snow-white flesh.  But Yukon got a toehold in our market when restaurant chefs were intrigued by its “unusual look.”  Growers liked Yukon because they were huge (Remember that Americans nearly always think “Big food is better food.”)  And Yukon’s ultra-short growing season allow them to be planted nearly all the way North to the permafrost.  But the thorn-in-the-side issue with Yukon Gold is the taste.  Yukon is a pretty average-tasting potato.  And that’s on a good day.

So why hasn’t the exceptional Bintje beaten the pants off of Yukon Gold here in America?   It might be the size/productivity issues.  Or perhaps it is the economic phenomena of market dominance. I don’t know the answer to that mystery but I do know what the outcome would be if anyone does a potato tasting throw down between that yellow thing from Vancouver and the delicate, delightful Miss Bintje.

These Bintje potatoes were organically grown in my garden in the Valley of the Moon. 

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008

Green Mountain Potatoes

Green Mountain Potatoes
(Solanum tuberosum)



Green Mountain Potatoes were developed by Orson Alexander of Charlotte, Vermont in 1885.  Alexander and the University of Vermont developed a number of potato lines in response to the American potato blight of earlier years.  The parentage of Green Mountain is recorded as  Dunmore X Excelsior.  The plants are large with a fine display of white flowers.  They are, however, susceptible to a number of pests.

Green Mountain was grown extensively in the Eastern United States particularly in Maine until the 1950s.  It was displaced in the commercial market by oblong-shaped potatoes with  greater disease resistance.  Still, Green Mountain hangs on in small scale farms and in the gardens of potato cognocente.  It is prized for its exceptional flavor when baked or fried.

Recently Green Mountain potatoes have joined other historical vegetables and fruits on the Slow Foods “Ark of Taste” list.

These organically grown Green Mountain Potatoes were planted in my garden in the Valley of the Moon in early April .

Seed Source:      Moose Tubers
Waterville Maine, USA

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008

Cedar Potato 'Barrel'

A unique aspect of Maine potato farming at the turn of the century was the use of cedar barrels to collect the potatoes in the field.  Local cooperages in Aroostook County turned out barrels with cedar staves and ash hoops.  Each barrel (called a 'quarter') held 165 pounds of potatoes, which was the official unit of potato commerce in Maine until the late 1980s.   The use of cedar potato barrels has all but disappeared from Maine but a few Aroostook farmers still use them for harvest and short term storage.

The pictured  cedar potato 'barrel' was created expressly to hold heirloom Green Mountain Potatoes which was the principal variety grown in Aroostook for more than fifty years.  It was assembled at my farm in the Valley of the Moon using non-union labor, various materials and a mountain of imagination.

C Lindquist

Bandicoot Potatoes

Bandicoot Potatoes

(Being the adventures of a Hungry Farmer with a few too many Heirloom Potatoes and a bit less land than needed.*)

The plain truth* was that I was clearing a line for late summer melons when it become clear that there was no room* for a another hill of heirloom Garnet Chile Potatoes.  The solution or First Slice*, of course, was to bandicoot the hill of potatoes making room for a melon start.  To bandicoot a potato is a simple matter.  The soil surrounding the potato plant is moistened until it yields to probing trowel or hand.  The small, immature spuds near the surface are carefully harvested leaving their deeply positioned brethren to grow.

For readers of a certain age (5-100) and nationality (Australian) the phrase ‘bandicoot potatoes’ is instantly familiar if not evocative.  The bandicoot is a small marsupial resident of Australia.  Similar in appearance to a rat and armed with the foraging bravado of a pig bandicoots are famed villains in the Australian garden.  Bandicoots are said to sense the first moment when a sweet potato can be dug or a melon’s debut to sweetness.  Their larcenous, sly habits are immortalized in Australian slang.  To “bandicoot” is to steal but with a touch of flair and skill.

Much like Walt Disney’s animal creations the bandicoot has been given an anthropomorphic makeover in Australian literature and art.  He’s a quick-thinking thief and liar but not an altogether a bad guy.  He has his reasons and malice isn’t one of them.  The bandicoot in Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding is the cornerstone creation in the Aussie imagination.  The 1918 children’s classic documents the travels of three characters on a journey in the company of a magical pudding that can be eaten without being consumed.  The pudding is soon stolen while the characters fight would-be thieves and one another when not breaking into song or verse.  We first meet ‘The Bandicoot’ in Lindsay’s brilliant drawings that accompany the text.  The Bandicoot is holding a stolen watermelon so large that we can only see his legs.  The subsequent interrogation of the bandicoot by Bill Barnacle is a sublime “cop-meets-criminal” moment.  Bill is looking for the possum who has stolen his Magic Pudding.  The Bandicoot doesn’t initially grasp that Bill’s interest in him is as a witness and not as a thief.  The bandicoot pulls out one lie and then another in an attempt to tell Bill what he wants to hear.  The exchange is deft, funny and as genuine as any reality cop show.

Bandicooting potatoes is not isolated to Australia.  Anyone forced to wait the full measure of a potato’s growth cycle can get hungry, particularly for the taste of a just-dug, “new potato.”  The time required for a potato to reach maturity varies by potato variety.  The English make distinctions between potatoes harvested at 12 weeks called “earlies” and those at 14 weeks called “seconds.”  Earlies are dug before flowering.  They are small with very fragile skins.  Seconds are dug just after flowering and are a bit larger but still with loads of ‘new potato’ flavor.  “Mains” are potatoes left 16 weeks or longer in the ground.  Mains are fully mature spuds with thickened skins ready for storage.

The ‘new potatoes’ we find in American produce aisles are faint images of a just-dug, bandicooted potato.   The ubiquitous bright red “creamer potato” is usually a modern variety bred for its appearance.  Cherry Red is popular here in California.  They are a ‘seconds’ potato dug early for smaller size and then misted under refrigeration until you buy them months later.  If they taste like new potatoes its purely an accident.

Any good potato is worth bandicooting if you can manage it.  Gardeners with foresight can make the steal easier by mixing straw with the soil when they ‘hill’ the potato plants shortly after emerging.  Hilling encourages spud formation near the soil surface and the straw makes fast work of the digging.  I particularly like bandicoot Red Lasoda potatoes.  If there is a more delicious new potato than Red Lasoda, I’ve not grown it.

The photograph shows the results of my potato larceny of a Garnet Chile hill.  I’ve written a long story about Garnet Chile a year ago but I can’t say that it stimulated much interest in them.  Perhaps people are still gaga over fingerlings.  Fingerlings are a fine choice for a wax type but there’s a bigger world of potato taste out there besides fingerlings and the fraudulent Yukon Gold.

It’s a sad puzzle that potatoes have sunk to an anonymous generic in the American market.  Marketers have taught us to prefer white-fleshed potatoes because they appeal to some notion of sanitation and purity.  We’ve bred potatoes to have smooth surfaces because we think that the ‘eyes’ are imperfections.  We refrigerate and drug our potatoes to prevent them from aging naturally.  And the largest consumer of potatoes in America has placed dimensional requirements on potatoes so that they yield the largest number of fries over 4 inches in length.  We seem to have every notion about a potato except taste.

But finding the ‘true taste’ of a potato is not a simple affair.  De Gaulle once commented, “Very important affairs never have a single answer.”  I think he was speaking about potatoes.  Much like Lindsay’s Magic Pudding potatoes can taste like potatoes unless they taste like something else.  In adept, sensitive hands the potato can suggest a tender spring moment while another pose can mimic stolid winter nourishment.  They can be a star or a foil.  Dairy is a favored partner but a naked flour potato baked in ashes can be a revelation.  The potato is a culinary chameleon adept in starkly different roles but always recognizable as a warm, fulfilling presence.  Perhaps bandicoot potatoes were in Norman Lindsay’s mind when Bill Barnacle the sailor observered  “There’s nothing this Puddin’ enjoys more than offering slices of himself to strangers.”

These bandicoot potatoes were organically grown in my garden in the Valley of the Moon.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008

*  Phrasing suggested by N. Lindsay, 1918, The Magic Pudding

Walla Walla Onions

Walla Walla Onions
(Allium cepa)

Walla Walla Onions are a Spanish-type sweet onion of Corsican origin.  A Frenchman, Pete Pieri, brought them to America in the late 1800s.  By legend he acquired the onion during a tour of duty in the French army.  After immigrating to the Walla Walla area of Washington State he introduced them to several farmers in the region who were of Italian descent. The large size and early yields of the new onion impressed the Italians who initially called it the “French Onion” in recognition of Pieri.  Later the onion was renamed as the ‘Walla Walla’ as it became the dominant cultivar grown in the region.

Since the 1950s the Walla Walla onion has gained wide popularity across the Pacific Northwest for gardeners and chefs.  It tolerates our mild winters and it produces large, succulent bulbs for a mid-summer harvest.  The flesh is “sweet”  (a technical misnomer since ‘sweet onions’ haven’t any more sugar that other onion types) and if grown in the right soils it can be eaten raw with relish.  (I make liberal use of hardwood ash from my brick oven as a soil amendment for onions.)  These characteristics make the Walla Walla a fine onion for Northern gardeners who have less success with shorter-day sweet varieties such as the Granex onion (aka ‘Vidalia/Maui Maui’).

Walla Walla onions do have one significant flaw.  They don’t keep very long.  Careful curing and storage will keep a Walla Walla for a few short months.  Store bought Walla Wallas have usually been refrigerated to extend their storage at the expense of their delicate flavor.

My crop of Walla Wallas is in good form despite repeated April frosts that pushed some other onion varieties into despair.  The harvest/curing of the 08 crop has begun.

C Lindquist
Vegetables of Interest, 2008