purple potatoes

okay, this post makes me feel *kinda* childish, but who doesn't enjoy a funny-coloured food from time to time? Especially if the dyes are the natural product of the food in question? (Case in point: I have been making BEET cookies with cream cheese frosting lately. They are good! Subtly, warmly sweet - like vanilla or toasted coconut - and bright magenta! Love it!)

So tonight Cass was bringing some homemade swedish meatballs home from his mum. We made mashed potatoes with 1 lb. fingerling and 1 lb. peruvian purple potatoes. Left the skins on, boiled, then mashed. Isn't that lilac glorious? I'd swear it was the same colour as the candied violets we brought back from La Duree in Paris. I, of course, scarfed even more potatoes than normal because I couldn't get over the colour (isn't that a weird reaction? Pretty colour - munch!). The salad is a combo of celery, frisee, avocado, toasted hazelnuts and mandarines, tossed with a dressing of creme fraiche, olive oil, mirin, salt and pepper.

We paired this super-pretty plate with glasses of Pink! prosecco laced with Thatcher's cucumber liqeur. Bizarre and addictive: the combination smells and tastes like a watermelon jolly rancher, but stops just short of the disgustingly cloying sweetness of those candies (pace jolly rancher lovers, I've just never been able to enjoy them). It is a girlie drink par excellence; try it some night that you're not feeling serious about life or what you're drinking - say, for example, on a night when you feel like eating purple mashed potatoes!