Hesp Out West 7 - Perfect Potato Country
This week I have been thinking about potatoes. A lot of people think about potatoes a lot of the time - chips and crisps, after all, are two of the nation’s favourite things. For me, this love of the humble spud was highlighted by the vast amount of feedback this column received after we featured oven-chips cooked over charcoal in a rotisserie basket - I stand by the claim that cheap frozen supermarket oven-chips prepared in this way are as good as you can get.
But when you get down to basics, at this time of year fresh spuds - steamed and eaten immediately they’ve been harvested - are hard to beat. Something happens to the sugars in a potato after it’s been left hanging around for a while - new potatoes cooked and eaten just minutes out of the ground do have a sweeter, more pronounced, earthy, flavour.
The same experience can be enjoyed with good fresh shop-bought potatoes, albeit to a slightly lesser degree. The Jersey Royals in the stores at the moment are a case in point, although many will argue they’re not as good as they used to be. I’d say that Cornish Earlies are just as good.
It was 20 years ago that I was asked to write about a marketing push that was being launched to promote Cornish Early potatoes. I went down to West Penwith to find out more about these wondrous spuds (which were being marketed with the tagline “Dirty Delicious”) and we visited a farmer near Land’s End so that we could taste these marvellous pomme de terre. They had a fabulous, almost ready-salted flavour and a firm but creamy texture.
At the time I wrote: “The true ‘early’ from West Cornwall is so delicious, you can happily eat a bowlful with nothing added save for a knob of local butter, a little mint, pepper and salt.”
Farmer Jeff Thomas told me he thought the flavour had something to do with the layer of black peaty soil that thinly covers the granite rocks of Penwith. I wondered if it might also be linked to the constant veil of salt spray which comes off the Atlantic.
Early potatoes have been grown in Cornish cottage gardens since the mid 1700s when, along with pilchards, they made up the staple diet of most local working families. But it wasn’t until the early 19th century that a market developed for the distinctive new potatoes of Cornwall and the Scillies. By 1808 the first Cornish potatoes of the season were in such demand they were being shipped all round the UK, to Europe, and even as far as Barbados and Newfoundland.
In the Isles of Scilly, top quality early potatoes were the main source of income for the islands’ farmers for a century or more. Alas, that trade has disappeared, although one or two farmers still grow the odd field for local consumption.
The farmed landscape of the Scillies used to be filled with new potatoes
I spent the entire summer of 1976 living on the Scillies and earned a few quid helping a farmer on the remote isle of St Agnes harvest his spuds. Half a century later, I still maintain that those new potatoes (of the Home Guard variety) were the best I have ever eaten. To harvest them in the tiny warm fields - surrounded by the tall, protective, Pittosporum hedgerows - you had to clear away a thick layer of desiccated seaweed which the farmer had harvested during autumn storms and put on the land. I am pretty certain this salty fertiliser had something to do with increasing the flavour. Or maybe it was just the fact that we’d eat these wondrous spuds with nothing but a knob of homemade butter, fresh from the farm’s one Jersey milking cow, and a sprinkle of fresh-picked wild fennel that grows on most of the islands.
If they’re top of my own spud-you-like listing, what’s the second best potato I have ever eaten?
I came across them in Japan, of all places. The beautiful northern island of Hokkaido is famous for its potatoes - indeed they grow 99 different varieties in the valleys between the island’s many forests and its scattering of extinct volcanoes. One of the best is a variety called May Queen, a dense, waxy number that’s marvellous for use in salads and the like. I was told by a local farmer that the mineral rich soils, created by so much volcanic action, gave the Hokkaido spuds their pronounced potatoey flavour.
Third in my list of super-spuds are the amazing wrinkled new potatoes cooked in sea salt which are a speciality in the Canaries. Papas arrugadas are early potatoes encrusted with a thin layer of salt - they’re cooked in highly salted water (traditionally, seawater) for long enough that evaporation occurs and the salt forms a crust, giving the spuds a wrinkled look. The dense, velvet-fleshed, orbs have an intense flavour and are usually served with a small bowl or two of the island dips or sauces, known as mojo - pronounced mo-ho.
Having said all this, nothing quite beats the new potatoes you grow in your own garden - the ones you are able to cook and consume with some good butter and garden mint just a few minutes after they’ve been taken from the soil.
QUICK WALK IN NEW POTATO COUNTRY
A 300-mile round trip to taste a potato? Sounds mad, but that’s what I did some years ago to report on a newly launched campaign to market Cornish early potatoes. As I mention in the main article today, we visited a farm near magnificent Cape Cornwall just a couples of miles north of Land’s End.
I certainly made good use of the visit. Not only did I purchase a large sack of spuds I took the opportunity to enjoy a walk so that I could admire the stunning coastal scenery. Indeed, Cape Cornwall is one of the most dramatic places I know in which to enjoy a quick hike.
Cape Cornwall
Officially speaking, a cape is the point of land where two bodies of water meet - and the reason this mighty finger of rock earned itself the name was because, until the Ordnance Survey came along and mapped Britain properly, it was believed that Cape Cornwall was the most westerly point in England, dividing the Irish Sea and English Channel.
There’s a car park on the shoulder of the cape and from here walkers are spoilt for choice. You could, for example, take the coast path south - above Priest Cove - to walk along the top of the high cliffs which would take you around Carn Gloose, past remarkable Ballowall Barrow, and down into the deep valley where another footpath will take you sharp right down to the tiny cove at Porth Nanven.
I elected to go the other way by turning my back on the cape and cutting across from the car park to find the coast path heading north. This took me around the steep seaward slopes into the Kenidjack Valley, which is riddled with old mine chimneys and workings. The path wends its way high along the contours between the fields and the wild terrain of the steep slopes, but eventually it descends down towards Kenidjack Farm.
At the bottom, by the stream, a track leaves the coast path to head off down the valley towards the sea, and (not for the first time - this is one of my favourite places in Cornwall) I walked down it to visit the rough and rocky beach at Porth Ledden, before retracing my footsteps back the way I’d come.
Only this time I left the coast path up on the ridge of Cape Cornwall to extend my short walk around the head-land itself - which you can do by following a footpath that heads out along its north-facing ramparts to round the chimney that marks the head-land for miles around.
What a place in which to go mining… That is what I always think when I visit this place. The mine was operated intermittently between 1838 and 1883 - and the chimney was, sensibly, retained as a navigation aid.
Around the corner heading back now towards Priest’s Cove you might see traces of how the former ore dressing floors were converted into greenhouses and wineries - now long gone alas.
Like so much of this coast, the cape is now in the hands of the National Trust and so preserved for the nation’s enjoyment. And enjoy it you will - I promise - if, like me, you go out there for a quick hike after you’ve bought some of the delicious local Cornish Earlies.
Fact File
Basic Walk: around Cape Cornwall, either by heading south above Priest Cove for a visit to Porth Nanven before visiting the cape, or by walking north, as we did, to Porth Ledden, then enjoying views from the old mine chimney.
Recommended map: Ordnance Survey Explorer 102.
Distance and going: anything between one and three miles.
