Mashed potatoes

Potatoes play an important role in both restaurant and home cooking in all of their forms—which are many, potatoes being among the most versatile of foods. Here we go from simple, more-or-less standard mashed potatoes to those laced with truffles. In between are mashed potatoes with cheese, with crisp shallots and sharp mustard, and, perhaps most surprising, with lightly cooked cucumber.

For these recipes (and any mashed potatoes recipes), you want starchy potatoes, often labeled Idaho or russet, or good all-purpose potatoes, sometimes called Eastern. The relatively new Yukon Gold potatoes are a starchy all-purpose type that produce beautiful mashed potatoes; we used those in testing and developing these recipes. What you do not want to use are so-called “new” potatoes, which are low-starch and waxy.