It was my grandmother who first told me that potatoes were “the food of the poor” – cheap, long-lasting, and filling.
Luckily, they can be prepared in so many ways – and I love them all.
My love for potatoes was fueled early on by the experiences I gathered in my grandmother’s kitchen – and by her heavenly cooking.
Back in the 1980s, keto-protein diets and glycemic indexes were concepts no one had even heard of, and potatoes weren’t banished to nutritional purgatory. In fact, among the winter staples of the time – potatoes, carrots, onions, and cabbage – they had a place of honor.
On cold December afternoons, while the fire crackled in the stove and sparrows pecked away at the feeder outside, we would cook in the small room set up as a winter kitchen.
We fried potato flatbreads (krumplilángos), filled soft potato-dough pastries with thick plum jam and sautéed them golden in oil, and made homemade mayonnaise for potato salad – slowly, patiently, one drop of oil at a time.
I’ve never eaten a potato-based plum-jam pastry since, and despite all my searching, I’ve never found that recipe online.
Over the years, many recipes have come and gone, but my devotion to potatoes has never faded – and this spicy, peanut-topped potato dish you see in the photo only deepened it.
It wasn’t love at first bite, though. Despite having lived in China for six years, potatoes were never a prominent part of local cuisine – neither in Beijing nor in southern Guangzhou.
Among the astonishing variety of vegetable dishes, there was usually just one potato item on the menu: julienned potatoes in a spicy-sour sauce.
It was tasty, but between the numbing Szechuan-pepper cabbage, the stir-fried green beans sprinkled with bits of pork, and the perfectly crunchy broccoli, my love of potatoes took a back seat for a while.
What I loved most about life in China was that every day held something surprising, something unexpected.
In the narrow alleyways behind the hundred-story towers of Guangzhou – among old bicycles and laundry hanging from balconies – it felt as if time had rewound a few decades.
On a grimy hotplate at a Beijing street corner, I once had the best egg-and-chili pancake (jian bing) I’ve ever tasted.
In the summer heat, local men would roll up their shirts to proudly reveal their bellies.
At my favorite Beijing market, I once stumbled upon fresh curd cheese – and in a side street in Guangzhou, dried seahorses were being sold from a plastic bucket.
Each morning on my bike, on the way to work, I’d pass a woman in her sixties who always walked backwards.
In well-kept parks, small groups waltzed to cassette music, others did tai chi, and self-declared opera lovers sang their favorite arias out loud.
We stumbled upon a tiny second-floor restaurant in Guangzhou by pure chance.
It was tucked away and served dishes from western China – bold, flavorful, and unfamiliar.
That’s where I first tasted this spicy potato dish, and it was so delicious that I insisted we celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary with it.
I ended up recreating it in Istanbul, thanks to a weekend lockdown that gave me time to experiment.
Here’s how it went:
Ingredients:
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500g potatoes, thinly sliced
For the sauce:
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1 tablespoon soy sauce
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1 teaspoon sugar
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1 teaspoon flour
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3 tablespoons oil
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A thumb-sized piece of ginger
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3 garlic cloves
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1 hot chili pepper
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150g peanuts
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1 bunch of scallions
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Fresh coriander
I baked the potatoes at 180°C (350°F) for 20 minutes, then tossed them in the sauce mixture.
After that, I stir-fried them in a wok with hot oil.
When they were about halfway done, I added the peanuts to let them toast a little.
I finished the dish with fresh coriander – though I admit I forgot to sprinkle sesame seeds on top.
To be honest, they didn’t turn out quite as crispy as the original version, so I’ll keep experimenting.
At my husband’s request, next time I’ll even add numbing-hot Szechuan peppercorns for that authentic fiery kick!