My earliest comfort food. I always come home to potatoes.

Potato like momma used to make.

Now, I've heard of people who like to eat a bowl of bread and milk with some sugar on it --I suppose this is not dissimilar. Try it sometime. I'm eating this tonight: world, go your own way.

For one, take some floury potatoes --maybe two largeish ones? Peel them and cut them into large chunks. Here, texture is everything: it won't work with waxy potatoes. Bring the potatoes to the boil in not too much water and simmer until they are done. Perhaps allow them to be a little softer than usual. When you have drained them, give them a good shaking against the side of the pan. Like you might give if you were roughening up their surface for roast potatoes.

Now, into a bowl go the potatoes, add some milk, salt and pepper and a knob of butter. Eat in your dressing gown. And here it doesn't matter if the pyjamas you are wearing are unbecoming.
What do the potatoes care?

I know: we're not a million miles away from mashed potato here, are we? But it's something about the chunkiness of the potato and the sweet taste of the milk that appeals to me. And that, just as it is, it originally emanated from my mother's kitchen and was something she used to eat, growing up.

And another potato-related anecdote. One of the best I ever ate was at a steam fair in Carmarthenshire. Don't tell me I'm hick. It was a jacket potato, with a fine crispy skin, from an unprepossessing fast food van called (I had to go because of the name) 'Potato Paradise.' It was heaving with a dollop of decent butter (the potato, not the van) and home-made chilli -- heavy on the beans -- plus a spoonful of sour cream. It spoke of generosity, I thought. Just the thing to eat while perusing the chainsaw and then the antique lawnmower display. In the rain.