Fresh Sheet : Save room for Ozette spuds

If you’re thinking of keeping your Christmas dinner local this year, you’ll want these fingerling potatoes on the menu.

Slow Food Upper Columbia is selling locally grown Ozette potatoes to raise money for the group, a local convivium of the international Slow Food movement. Slow Food members are working to counteract “fast food and the fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”

Lora Lea Misterly, of the Quillisascut Farm School, says the small spuds were grown by group member Al Kowitz at his farm near Kettle Falls, Wash. The potatoes are part of Slow Food’s Ark of Taste, a program designed to identify preserve and recover foods that are unique to North America.

According to Slow Food, the Ozette potato is unusual because it was introduced to the Makah people, near Neah Bay, Wash., directly from the Spanish who were attempting to establish an empire in the West. In 1792, a Spanish fort was briefly established at Neah Bay, with a garden that included potatoes brought from South America.

“One of the five early Makah villages of the region was named Ozette and became the name of the potato,” according to the Slow Food research.

Potatoes originated in South America, and almost all other spuds now in North America came via Europe, where the tubers were first introduced in the 1500s.

The flavor of the light yellow to tan potatoes is described as earthy and nutty.

The Ozette fingerling potatoes are available in 2 pound bags for $10 each. The money will benefit Slow Food Upper Columbia and its work to preserve local foods.

To make arrangements to buy the spuds, contact Misterly at (509) 738-2011 or e-mail rmisterly@ultraplix.com.

Hegsted wins national honors

Brix Restaurant chef Adam Hegsted won third-place honors in the recent Taste of Spain contest.

Hegsted whipped up a Marcona Almond Crusted Jamon Serrano and Manchego sandwich that bested most of the other 600 chefs in the contest.

He won an all-expenses-paid trip to New York, $500 spending cash and $1,500 prize money. Contest organizers also took him on an eating tour of the the best Spanish restaurants in Manhattan, Hegsted said.

The winning recipe was Fresh Sherry Vinegar-Poached Figs with Crispy Jamon Serrano by Deborah Gelman of Dujour Catering of New York.

Find the recipes at