Best Spuds by Galen Crane
How local growers prepare potatoes, from starch to finish

Agriculture jokes notwithstandingmaybe youve heard the line about North Country soil being good for growing only rocksmost years find bumper crops of a few longtime Adirondack staples, and potatoes are chief among them. Areas such as Gabriels and Lake Placid, high-elevation plateaus where prevailing cool conditions naturally limit (but do not eliminate) pests, are home to long-established tuber plots. Cornell Universitys 175-acre Uihlein Farm, which sits at about twenty-one hundred feet in the shadow of the High Peaks outside Lake Placid, is a leading developer of disease-free seed stock; some of the table varieties grown by area farms originated at Uihlein.

  When it comes to cooking potatoes, rather than turn it over to you, our readersas we did with apples in our 2003 Collectors IssueAdirondack Life decided to ask a few growers themselves for culinary inspiration with the good ol spud.

  Mark Kimballwho, with his wife, Kristin, runs Essex Farm, a community-supported agriculture operation just outside the Lake Champlain village of Essexhas been growing spuds for a dozen years. Late summer 2006 produced only an average yield thanks to excessive early-summer rains and a new potato field with limited fertility. Still, they turned out some decent Kennebecs and red golds. When dinnertime rolls around, they forswear recipes and wing it, Mark says. They throw some quartered roasters in a shallow baking dish with chopped onion, garlic, salt and pepper, rosemary, and dot the mixture with homemade lard. (In winter theyll often toss in some extras like beets and celery root.) Bake at four hundred degrees for an hour, more or less, he says. Four-fifty if you keep an eye on it.

  Suzi and Art Place run Witenagemot Farm, a thirty-acre plot in Schaghticoke, just outside the Blue Line near the confluence of the Hoosic and Hudson Rivers. They specialize in heirloom tomatoes and grow winter squash, dry beans, lettuce, beets, turnips, carrotsall the usual suspects, says Suzi, a journalist-turned-writer who once worked on the soap opera General Hospital. Another area of concentration is sweet corn using a certified no-spray, no-chemical approach thats the equivalent of certified organic, she adds. In addition to selling their vegetables at farmers markets in Lake Placid and Troy, the Places belong to Farm-to-Chef Express, a cooperative that puts their crops in restaurant kitchens from Manhattan to Lake George.

In potatoeswhich they never grow in the same spot twicethe Places offer huckleberry (a purplish-pink skin with mottled white flesh), butterball (very yellow and buttery), the fingerlings red thumb, LaRatt and rose finn apple, as well as common varieties such as russet and Yukon gold. Here are two of the Places favorite recipes:

Patriotic Potato Salad

1/2 lb. each of red potatoes (all red, red thumb or huckleberry), blue potatoes (all blue or Peruvian purple) and white potatoes (island sunrise, Yukon gold or russet), washed and cut into bite-size pieces
6 to 8 pieces good bacon
1 medium-size onion
3 to 4 stalks celery, chopped
Italian dressing

Boil potatoes until tender, then drain. Cook bacon in a skillet, then drain on paper towels and cool slightly. Chop onion and sauté in bacon grease; add celery and sauté until tender and the onions are transparent. Drain well. In a large bowl mix potatoes, bacon, onions and celery with enough Italian dressing to lightly coat everything. Serve immediately. This is a great, quick way to make a salad for quite a lot of people, says Suzi. But there will be few leftovers.

Blue Potato Chips

2 lbs. all blue potatoes, washed (do not skin)
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and paprika to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice the potatoes into thin rounds. Pour olive oil into a large bowl and sprinkle with salt and paprika. Mix the sliced potatoes with the olive oil mixture. Place potato rounds in single layer on ungreased cookie sheet and bake for approximately 20 to 25 minutes or until potatoes begin to brown at the edges. Remove from cookie sheet with spatula and serve immediately. Suzi says to take her advice: Save yourself some troublemake two batches!

  The Tucker Family has been farming off Hobart Road in Gabriels since 1865 (thats not a typo141 years). They work about 380 acres in seed and tablestock potatoes, as well as vegetables from A (acorn squash) to Z (zucchini). And to the delight of children in the area, every year they grow an enormous corn maze that stays up through Halloween.

  Two of four brothers, Steve and Tom, run Tucker Farms now. According to Steve, about ninety percent of their crop is seed potatoes; the rest is tablestock. (Although the seed potatoes ultimately end up on the table, he says.) They rotate varietiesincluding Adirondack blue, all blue, Adirondack red, Hampton, Monona, Norland dark red, Reba, Superior and Yukon goldbetween plots every three years. Two dogs, Princess (a St. Bernard/great Pyrenees) and Buddy (a mixed terrier), tag along in the fields, occasionally crunching a raw spud tossed their way.

The Tuckers sell to everyone from the hobby gardener to commercial growers, and their table spuds end up in dishes at places known for fine cuisine, such as the Point, on Upper Saranac Lake, and the Interlaken, in Lake Placid. Here are two recipes from the Tuckers:

Scalloped Potatoes

2 tbsp. flour
11/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. fresh ground pepper
2 lbs. Adirondack blue potatoes, cut 1/8-inch thick
1/2 cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2 tbsp. butter
1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream or half and half
1 clove garlic, crushed (preferred) or 1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1 medium onion, diced

Butter a 2-quart rectangular baking pan with 1 tbsp. butter. In a separate bowl combine milk, cream, cheese and garlic; in another combine flour, salt, pepper and onion. Overlap half of the potato slices in pan and half of the onions. Sprinkle with half the flour mixture and dot with remaining butter. Cover with last layer of potatoes and onions. Pour milk and cream mixture over top. Cover and bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Reduce temperature to 325 and uncover for another 45 minutes or until tinged with gold.

Stuffed Baked Potatoes

6 baking potatoes
3 tbsp. butter
1 can cream of broccoli soup
6 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/4 cup hot milk
6 tbsp. grated cheese of choice
Salt and pepper to taste

Bake potatoes at 375 degrees for 1 hour or until tender. Cut potatoes in half, scoop insides into a bowl; keep warm. Combine butter, salt, pepper, soup, milk, bacon crumbs and potato pulp thoroughly. Stuff potato skins. Add shredded cheese on top. Bake at 325 degrees for 15 minutes.