Thoughts for Food: Potatoes

In Chicago, the need for comfort food isn't limited to the dead of winter.  In the temperamental days of early spring, when the sun tries to shine but is overcome by rain and wind, when the thermometer just doesn't acknowledge that winter, in fact, is over and when you know that all things green and fresh are still around the corner, hearty winter fare makes its last stand.  March is here, but the sun is not, and so this month we turn to the potato and cross our fingers that April brings better weather and fresher fare.

These last winter potato dishes are born of menu fatigue as much as the desire for comfort. Potatoes are indeed a winter-long companion and so run the gamut from the expectant mood of the cool weather holidays, through the frigid doldrums of the new year and on to the lingering decline of the season.  With the romanticism of the first crisp days long past (stealing away the cheerful dishes like souffle), with the holidays having been exhaustively celebrated (using up the ambition required to assemble a gratin), with the brutally cold January evenings behind us (taking with them the constant craving for garlic mashed) and in the midst of waiting out the ever-so-slow transformation to spring (requiring for sanity's sake to suppress the desire for garden tomatoes just a little while longer) there remains little energy or optimism with which to design a menu.  Not only is the pantry bare, there is no desire to fill it with another canned good, root vegetable or frozen vegetable ever.

But in the places of need, where people await so much more than the sun, or the garden or the flavors of summer, you still must cook.  And you must still think of the meals you provide in terms of the satisfaction they might bring to the table rather than how much you would prefer to be grilling kabobs in the courtyard than stirring the pot under an exhaust hood that moonlights as a combustion engine.  So you keep it simple but you keep it comfortable, and you're really glad there are so many things you can do with a potato.