Trauma and nostalgia are linked in the taste buds of our grandmothers. My grandmother loved potatoes. But not quite like any other person I have known. She loved cooking them, serving them, eating them, she loved talking about them. As a child, my grandmother lived alongside war, coups and regimes. During times of hardship for people in Bulgaria, often potatoes were the only thing the people had to eat. I always felt that due to the shortage of food, her memories were focused almost entirely on food.
Talking about food is an effective way of developing relationships ‘woman-to-woman’, and of establishing shared perceptions and experiences. Trauma and nostalgia are linked in the taste buds of our grandmothers. “Traumatic” past can move between generations, aka "intergenerational trauma". Potatoes have become carriers of that trauma. They have to be handled delicately, with respect and care in order to satisfy my grandmother's expectations. They had to be peeled paper thin, so as to waste as little of the edible material as possible. If the potatoes had to be cut, it was crucial to cut them into stripes in such a way that each one turns out to be odd shaped and has a minimum of four corners, in order to reduce chances of sticking.
The following recipe is not a potato puree, it is not mashed potatoes, it is mashed potatoes expanded with eggs, cheese and citrus fruits. It is a celebration of eating every damn cubic millimeter of that potato. It is the taste of the trauma and nostalgia of post conflict societies, in the taste buds of our grandmothers.
