For various reasons related to my blood sugar I choose to eat a low carbohydrate diet most of the time, but a few splurges a year help keep me on the straight and narrow. This year my chosen splurge was purple fingerling potatoes, which I haven’t grown in many years. Fingerling potatoes are a little waxier and less starchy than standard potatoes, and purples have more antioxidants than other colors, but don’t kid yourself that you’re doing this for your health. If better health is what you want, eat greens instead. This is for a rare treat.
I got my seed stock from Moose Tubers,a wonderful source for all kinds of potatoes. I planted them whole, and only planted five hills and gave the rest of the seed tubers away. I was using newly broken ground and my soil is heavy clay and extremely alkaline, so I amended heavily with kelp meal and gypsum pellets to moderate the alkalinity. I watered deeply once a week, and other than that ignored them except to mulch a bit once they were about 6 inches high. I dug them in mid-fall, and each hill produced about six potatoes 1-2 inches long. I hasten to add that under halfway decent conditions the yield would almost certainly be a lot better. I was not interested in increasing yield. The last thing that I want is more potatoes around to tempt me.
As far as how to cook them, there was no doubt in my mind what to do. My favorite way to use fingerling potatoes is to boil them for 10 or 15 minutes, just until a knife tip penetrates them easily, then drain. When cool, I lay them on the cutting board and press/smash them carefully with the flat bottom of a glass until they are about half an inch thick but still hold their shape. Then salt, and fry in olive oil or bacon fat until they get lovely and crusty on the outside. There is simply nothing better. Mindfully enjoy every mouthful, because if you have any blood sugar problems you are not going to eat them again for a while. But oh, are they delicious. And if you have normal blood sugar and no family history of diabetes, these are a healthy side dish that you can enjoy a little more frequently. Back before I had blood sugar problems I used to enjoy smashed fried fingerlings as the center of a vegetarian plate, surrounded by other vegetables chosen according to the season.
Incidentally, under my hardscrabble conditions the plants were compact, maybe a foot tall and 18” wide, and the leaves were tinged with purple. They would have looked fine among ornamental plantings, as long as they were in a place where perennials would not be disturbed by digging up the tubers at the end of the season. In the plateful above I threw in a standard fingerling from the Co-op to see if it tasted better than the Mollies, and the answer was that it tasted more bland, so I would only bother with the Mollies in future seasons.
My urban homestead 