Scalloped Potatoes a la Gorta Mór

His ma made scalloped potatoes with heavy cream and a comedy of errors. First she scrubbed cleaned the potatoes, cutting out all the dark eyes with a paring-knife, then she cut them into slivers no bigger than a doily, set them out to dry on paper towel and waited for the oil in the skillet to begin smoking. Claiming Irish heritage his ma said there was no way she could make bad scalloped potatoes, even though the man in the hat’s father told her scalloped potatoes weren’t invented by the Irish, but by the Spanish conquistadores in South America in the mid 16th century, thereafter referred to as taratoufli (little truffle) by the Germans and the French. His da tried to convince his ma that what she was really making was pommes soufflés, but she kept to her guns, claiming that the Irish were entitled to at least one invention, even if it was a slurry one and not very creative.

‘My great-great grandmamma lived through An Gorta Mór, so shut you’re pie-hole and get me some pepper!’ she said, her dentures slopping in the slurry of her mouth. ‘But your great-great grandmamma wasn’t drawing breath, blighted or not’ said the man in the hat’s da ‘unless she was born in 1845, which clearly she wasn’t’. ‘She was the great-grand niece of Oliver Cromwell and lived behind a ferry-launch in county Cork’. ‘No she wasn’t’ said the man in the hat’s da, his left eye twitching. His ma turned round to face the skillet, which was smoky and searing hot, and said ‘leave it to a commoner to say such rot and blather’. His da made the beast with two backs with the lady who pealed onions for the Seder grocer, the man in the hat’s ma refusing to lower herself to the level of a commoner’s whore.