Potato Recipes

It may seem strange to start with the common spud—what could be more English—in a book full of international recipes?

Well, let me set you right. The potato comes from Peru, and was brought to Europe by the Conquistadores, who came from Spain, in the early fifteenth century.

To the Incas the potato was almost a sacred object. It was grown in potato patches fertilized with human blood, and it figured prominently in their rituals.

It was Raleigh, or was it Drake, or, as some scribes have it, Hawkins, who brought the potato to Britain in 1578. Anyhow, whoever it was, the British have been eating it with practically everything ever since.