Potatoes deserve to be piled high next to thin slices of corned beef for this year’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration. Ever so versatile, potatoes offer big satisfaction for the buck. These days we eat them rarely in favor of less carby offerings. Not so, on one of our favorite food holidays.

We’ll boil and then butter little red potatoes to serve with our breakfast eggs. Perhaps these boiled potatoes will be seasoned with mayonnaise and green pepper for a lunchtime salad. Dinner plans definitely include a mash-up littered with bits of meltingly-soft cabbage.

Darina Allen, an Irish cooking school owner and author, teaches us that potatoes mashed with cabbage or kale are known as colcannon. Reminiscent, she writes in her seminal “Forgotten Skills of Cooking” (Kyle Books, 2009) of “champ,” a popular dish in the North of Ireland made from green onions (fresh peas in the summer), butter and mashed potatoes.

This year, our St. Patrick’s Day table will sport a warm bowlful of colcannon made with golden potatoes. For a delicious twist, we’ll boil those potatoes with chunks of celeriac (aka celery root) for a subtly-rich, anise flavor. A skillet full of Savoy cabbage, browned in bacon drippings adds flavor and texture.

To cook potatoes and celeriac together, cut the celeriac slightly smaller. That way they’ll be mashable at the same time. When mashing, remember, the richer the milk, the richer the final dish. I like to use a combination of skim milk and crème fraiche. Of course, butter brings its universal goodness; Irish butter makes sense here.

So, while Chicago dyes its river green and the corned beef simmers, cook some potatoes. You’ll be lucky indeed.

Makes 4 servings

Ingredients

Directions

1. Scrub whole potatoes clean. Put into a saucepan large enough so they fit in a single layer. Add cold water to cover by 1 inch. Stir in 1 teaspoon salt. Heat to a boil, then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer. Cook until a thin metal skewer or tip of a knife comes out easily, about 15 minutes. Tip off all the water from the pan, leaving the potatoes in the pan.

2. While the pan and the potatoes are still hot, add butter, a few pinches of salt and plenty of grinds of fresh pepper. Serve hot showered with chives.

Makes 6 servings

Note: Rutabaga or turnips can take the place of the celery root. Or, simply use more potatoes.

Ingredients

Directions

1. Put potato chunks and celery root chunks into a large saucepan. Add cold water to cover by 1 inch. Stir in 1 teaspoon salt. Heat to a boil, then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer. Cook until a thin metal skewer or tip of a knife comes out easily, about 15 minutes. Tip off all the water from the pan.

2. While the potatoes cook, put bacon into a large skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring, until golden brown and crisp, about 5 minutes. (Or, heat oil in the skillet if not using bacon.) Add cabbage. Stir to coat with the bacon fat or oil and cook until cabbage browns slightly and wilts to tenderness, about 8 minutes. Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper to taste.

3. Push potatoes and celeriac to the edges of the saucepan so the pan bottom is revealed. Pour milk into the center of the pan; add the butter. Set the pan over low heat and watch until the milk is hot. Then use an old-fashioned potato masher and mash everything into the milk and butter until as smooth as you like. Fold in the cabbage with their pan juices. Season to taste with about 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper.