A most delicious purée – a novel accompaniment!

January… and the eighty year old National Mark cookery book offers us a dish ‘beyond reproach’!

Mixed potato purée… and the book tell s us you can use fresh or tinned vegetables… which I think these days we might use frozen rather than tinned. It will be a novel accompaniment to many dishes, we had it with our Sunday roast!

First you should make your potato purée, passing the drained, boiled potatoes through a sieve, not mashing them… this will not only give you a fine purée but also strong-arm muscles. Put the potato back in the pan, over a low heat (on the side of the fire the recipe says) and beat in butter vigorously then season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Continue  beating and add as you beat a gill of boiling milk ( 1 gill = ¼ pint) until the purée is ‘light and frothy’. You can add any vegetables you like before you add the milk, spinach, cauliflower, onion, turnip, swede, Brussels sprouts, parsnip or carrot.

We followed the recipe but only used swede – which was delicious but I think with potato it would have been better. We also gratinéed it by sprinkling the top[ with a mixture of cheese and breadcrumbs and browning it in the oven… jolly yummy, I can tell you!