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Chapter 1: What is the story behind the potato's resurgence in popularity?
Hello and welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Ruth Alexander and I'd like to tell you about the podcast I host, The Food Chain. As the name suggests, it's all about what we eat. Each episode looks at the ideas, people and trends shaping what we put on our plates and what it takes to get the food there.
From the intense pressure of professional kitchens through to the rise of meal kits and how to eat more fibre. You can listen and subscribe to The Food Chain wherever you found this podcast. In this episode, I'm tracing the origins of one of the world's most familiar foods and how it's been misunderstood.
We have the confit potato. So this is an amazing dish. Basically, we're using agria potatoes. I think right now, agria potatoes are probably the best potato we can use for the season. But we have these lovely potatoes. We trim them down to our size. We like them three centimeters thick, and then we trim the rest.
Potatoes are having a moment. At Fallow, a smart restaurant in central London, senior sous-chef AJ Shaharta has invited me into the open kitchen where potatoes aren't just a side, they star as main dishes in their own right.
being a British restaurant, I think the potatoes are a very important ingredient for us, and it's best to highlight it and show it in any way we can. So we cook these for maybe four to five hours in butter, garlic, and rosemary.
Four to five hours?
Four to five hours.
Wow.
Yes, so... Just at a very low temperature? Very, very low temperature. So it kind of penetrates, gets super, super tasty and gets really soft. We then chill them down and then on service, we kind of fry them, get a nice crisp around the outside and reheat them that kind of way. So I'll get those in the fryer now for you. This is hours of potato love. Hours of potato love after you.
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Chapter 2: How do chefs creatively use potatoes in modern cuisine?
And what the tuber is, is it's a starch storage organ that the plant uses to persist through difficult seasons like winters or rainy seasons or when it's not perfect for growing. So you could think of it as the plant's food store. It is exactly the plant's food store. So the plant would die on the top and then it would then sprout again.
So you can see here's a little tuber starting right there on this underground stem.
Tiny thing.
And there are 104 wild species of potatoes, but we cultivate only one species, which is Selenium tuberosum. It's called Selenium tuberosum is its scientific name. So all the varieties of potatoes that we see in the supermarket are all a single species. They've just been changed by us, by humans, to be different.
So tell me then, what's the origin story of the potato? Where did this all start?
So I was really privileged to be part of a paper which was led by my Chinese colleagues last year. So our hypothesis is that there was an ancient hybridization event which we dated using the genetics about 8 to 10 million years ago that involved an ancestor of the tomato lineage and an ancestor of the E. tuberosum lineage that hybridized together, they crossed,
and made a hybrid which had this mix-up of genes which eventually went on to allow tubers to be formed. with the plants that survived, and it's a chance, it's a chance that they'll survive. Often hybrids die.
And so that serendipitous hybridization between these two lineages gave rise to something which had this key innovation, which is the tuber, which allowed the potatoes to expand into these habitats as the Andes were rising. So this is about the same time that the Andes themselves were rising, creating lots and lots of new habitats in slightly difficult areas, which are dry and cold.
So much of the Andes is dry and cold at these high elevations, which meant that a tuber was an absolutely wonderful thing to have if you were a plant because it meant you could survive through a season that wasn't ideal. And we think that's how they explosively diversified into the Andes.
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Chapter 3: What are the origins of the potato and how did it evolve?
So you are eating the potato, but a portion of it is not being digested. It's passing through your digestive tract undigested, but it is a fuel for the bacteria in your gut. So it contributes to health. it generates something called a kind of short-chain fatty acid, which again is good for you.
And crucially, it's not going to be raising your blood sugar levels as high as if you hadn't cooled those potatoes.
Right. So the whole, the fibre content of the potato increases. When you add a little bit of fat, when you add some vinegar... These are things that help to lower the glycemic, the blood glucose response.
So if you boil some potatoes or steam some potatoes and add a knob of butter on top, you're making them even healthier potentially.
I would add olive oil. I would not really add butter because olive oil is a good fat. But it's fine to eat French fries, but in small portions. It cannot be that you're eating French fries every day. So indulge on occasion. Moderation is the key.
Is it true that really all of the nutrients in a potato are in the skin or just underneath it? And if you peel them, most of it is lost?
No, the dietary fibre of the skin contributes to the overall dietary fibre content of the potato. But potatoes have a high in vitamin C. They have high potassium in magnesium, in vitamin B6. These are all contained within the flesh of the potato.
Another thing I've heard, is it true that the potato is or almost is a complete food? Could you survive on eating just potatoes alone and nothing else? You know, you actually could.
The potato... which is surprising, has very small quantities of protein, but that protein is of a very high quality. So it is equivalent to eating soybeans or eggs, for that matter. These are high quality protein. It is very little. So if you eat a large amount of potatoes, then you would get sufficient protein.
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