623: Smashed, Mashed, Boiled, and Baked by The Splendid Table | Free Audiobook

**Lynne Rossetto Kasper** (0:02)
It's The Splendid Table from APM, American Public Media. I'm Lynne Rossetto Kasper. You never can tell how and when a cook's imagination will take off. For instance, that moment when Indian chef Ragavhan Iyer was sipping a cocktail.

**Ragavhan Iyer** (0:19)
One of the days when I was having a good mojito, I thought, wow, this would be amazing as a dressing for a good waxy potato. And so I took some fresh mint and key limes and I muddled the two together so the essential oils from the skin of the lime sort of permeated and flavored the mint and threw in some coarse cracked black peppercorns and a really good sea salt. And to give it a further pizzazz, I actually swirled in some fresh pomegranate seeds.

**Lynne Rossetto Kasper** (0:48)
Take that potato salad. There's lots more coming your way this hour on The Splendid Table.
The Splendid Table from APM, American Public Media, The Show for People Who Love to Eat. I'm Lynne Rossetto Kasper. Ragavhan Iyer is an Indian chef and writer who's tallied up awards for his classes and his writings, like his inspired tome, 660 Curries. The man has this gift with seasonings. Now in his latest book, he's coming to terms with a lifelong addiction, potatoes. He has new recipes from nearly every continent, and the book is called Smashed, Mashed, Boiled and Baked, and Fried too. Ragavhan, good to have you with us.

**Ragavhan Iyer** (1:52)
Thank you. It's a pleasure as always.

**Lynne Rossetto Kasper** (1:54)
Am I right that potatoes for the first time have names? It's not just Russet and Redskin. It's, I mean, designer potatoes.

**Ragavhan Iyer** (2:04)
It is. And I think, you know, finally, they're coming into the limelight after, what, 10,000 years?

**Lynne Rossetto Kasper** (2:09)
Oh, 10,000.

**Ragavhan Iyer** (2:10)
Something like that.

**Lynne Rossetto Kasper** (2:11)
Yeah, yeah.

**Ragavhan Iyer** (2:12)
But you're right. Potatoes do have varietal names. But I think for the most part, you know, people still shop based on the kind of potato they want for their recipe, especially in North America. You see people are still looking for, you know, either your russets or your Yukon gold, but nobody is going to go into the store and say, do you have any Kennebec? We shoppers are still very much just looking for the type of potato.

**Lynne Rossetto Kasper** (2:39)
Okay, so the book divides up potatoes by essentially what their style.

**Ragavhan Iyer** (2:45)
Yes.

**Lynne Rossetto Kasper** (2:45)
They're starchy, they're waxy, they're new in quotation marks. And that dictates a lot about what recipe you're going to use them in. But just to get people thinking about looking for names, a couple in each category that we should...