Mash Made in Heaven

Novel cover after the novel was made
 into a movie in 1996

I have recently read Nora Ephron’s romantic heartfelt yet ‘revengeful’ novel Heartburn (1983) widely renowned as her semiautobiographical novel. She uses her characters to publicise her husband’s affair with Margaret Jay. The novel is a romantic heartbreak which contains underlying meanings and metaphors, and links memoir and recipe to explain how she felt at different moments in her life.

One particular passage caught my attention as she writes about eating mashed potatoes as comfort food.  She writes:

“POTATOES AND LOVE: SOME REFLECTIONS

The beginnig

I have friends who begin with pasta, and friends who begin with rice, but whenever I fall in love, I begin with potatoes. Sometimes meat and potatoes and sometimes fish and potatoes, but always potatoes. I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them. … Not just any potato will do when it comes to love. There are people who go on about the virtues of plain potatoes - plain boiled new potatoes with a little parsley or dill, or plain baked potatoes with crackling skins - the time for plain potatoes - if there is ever a time for plain potatoes - is never at the beginning of something. All this takes times, and time, as any fool can tell you, is what true romance is about". (Ephron, 1996 p. 124 – 125)

Throughout her novel, her ability to paradoxically express simple metaphors is genius. She tends to throw things in a pot to boil, boiling out past worries and feeling.

Everyone loves a bit of mashed potato, and not just for comfort consumption, so I decided to prepare a mix of my own favourite types of mashed potato to scoff all by myself.

If you want to do the same, all you'll need is:

Sweet Potato & Parshnip          Mash Simple Mashed Potato               Champ

2x Large Sweet potatoes                 2x Large King Edwards            2x Large King Edwards

2x Parsnips                                       ¼ lb butter                              ¼ lb butter

¼ lb Butter                                       100 ml of Milk                          100 ml of Milk

3-4 Scallions (spring onion)

200 ml sour cream

Peel all 6 potatoes and chop into quarters.

Bring 3 saucepans to boil, in one add the sweet potato quarters and in the other two divide the King Edward potatoes (great for mashing) evenly. To the sweet potato saucepan add the parsnip, peeled and chopped. Make sure to turn the down a little when the water has reached boiling point.

When the potatoes in each pan are fully cooked (simply pierce a potato quarter with a knife and it should easily slide off) turn off the heat and drain the water out.

·        For the sweet potato and parsnip mash, simply add the butter and get mashing!

·        Add the butter and milk to the simply mashed potato pan. You can even add a little sour cream to make it that more interesting and begin mashing.

·        With the Champ, slice up the scallions and add them to the potatoes along with the butter, add the milk followed by the sour cream and get mashing.

When you’re sure there are no lumps and bumps simply spoon the mashed potatoes out onto one large place and enjoy!

If it’s a little comfort eating you’re after, you can eat straight from the saucepan in front of the television wrapped up in a blanket! Bliss.

Ephron, N. Heartburn. London: Virago Press, 1996