In Defence of Potato Waffles

For lunch today I ate two potato waffles, broken apart with my fingers (my front teeth are sensitive to heat, the occasion did not warrant cutlery), and dipped into a squirt of Heinz barbecue sauce. My boyfriend had waffles too, as a main course after a starter of cheese on toast. His condiment of choice was Heinz tomato ketchup, and he ate his lengthways.

I like nursery food, and this pandemic has rekindled my love for the potato waffle.

I've eaten them on their own. I've eaten them topped with poached eggs (try it). I've combined them with gluten free fish fingers when I couldn't be bothered to conjure up anything more complicated.

Birds Eye first sold potato waffles in 1981, and since then they have been reproduced by other brands, filling freezers across geographical and societal divides. Potato waffles are a unifier, a staple carb that evokes the same level of comfort in 27-year-old pseudo-professional me, as it did my chronically fussy 7-year-old self.

As we sit out this pandemic, trying to decipher some meaning in the runes cast for our future (when will lockdown end? How high will the interest rate be when I come to the end of my fixed term mortgage this summer? Will we be officially asked to reduce milk production?) there is a balm in returning to the simple meals of times gone by.

I'm not the sort of person who views my schooldays as the best time of my life. I found the whole epoch rather difficult, and I ached to be welcomed into the world of adults, where schoolboys didn't kick footballs at my head or chase me down the corridor shouting that I was ugly. However, I think we all can sometimes yearn for a time when we didn't worry about economic collapse, and pandemics were something that we learnt about in history lessons, or affected people far away in countries that we'd never visited (privilege checked and acknowledged- it's a uniquely Western issue to not be concerned about disease outbreaks). My first introduction to potato waffles stems from that time, when they were cooked on a black tray that was warped from the Aga, and accompanied by spaghetti hoops and chicken nuggets.

The potato waffle is nearly 40 years old. Four decades of easy suppers and quick lunches loaded on to the golden grids.

When I was a teenager I had an evening home alone with our terriers, Snap and Percy. I went to feed them and found that their dog food had finished. There was little to tempt them in the fridge, so it was to the freezer I turned. Half an hour later the Jack Russells dropped their heads to a supper of potato waffles and fish fingers, cooked in the Aga and allowed to cool to a dog-scarfing- suitable temperature. It was the best meal of their lives, up there with the time that Percy found my father's stash of Dairy Milk chocolate, and managed to eat it without poisoning himself.

In 2016 I moved back to Wales, and set up a tutoring business alongside my employment as a consultant. At one stage I tutored six nights a week, barely drawing breath from my day job before leaving the house, trailing GCSE Maths past papers and extracts from The Color Purple behind me. This period of my life- where I saved enough money from a month's tutoring to buy return flights to Kenya- was fuelled by potato waffles.

I obsessively calorie counted, and at 94 calories per waffle I was happy to eat them. Their size passed them off as a meal; the holes allowed them to fill a plate without drawing a red total on My Fitness Pal. The same also applies to other air-filled snacks, notably rice cakes and popcorn. Potato waffles were comforting carbohydrates, but they fitted within the narrow constraints of my diet. I could eat potato waffles; they were on my side.

When I was diagnosed as gluten intolerant in 2015 (as a dietician told me last year, most probably a coeliac of the skin variety, but as per tradition, I passed the coeliac exam (probably due to not eating enough gluten when I took the test)) a whole category of foods left my plate, never to return. I bid goodbye to Maltesers, sourdough bread, tins of spaghetti hoops, wood fired pizza, fresh ravioli, hungover brown food, stodgy pies, couscous, KitKats, and Pringle paprika crisps. At the time it felt like there were two paths I could follow; a Deliciously Ella curated diet of buckwheat flour burritos and kale smoothies, or a highly processed smorgasbord of "Gluten Free" labelled products, all trussed up in plastic and embalmed with preservatives. After trying and failing to enjoy a quinoa pizza, I sought a middle road. On it, I found that the humble potato waffle was waiting for me, devoid of that poisonous protein, and filled with fluffy potato sourced within 40 miles of the Birds Eye factory.

That's the beauty of the potato waffle; they may be quiet, and cheap, and not particularly beautiful, but they are always there for you, waiting patiently in the icy depths of the freezer.

Within the blocky architecture of the waffle, with its retro pattern of air-filled squares and its neat rectangular form, the potato is elevated to king. The filling is fluffy, and the coating crisp, its colour and consistency dictated by the method of cooking. Grilled, there is a satisfying bite. Baked and the waffle is stodgier, whereas when cooked alongside a fatty meat and then allowed to continue roasting, the waffle enters the realm of fry up carbs, oozing fat like it's sometimes-friend the fried bread.

Toasting, I am yet to try.

You may have neglected the potato waffle, looking at it with disdain as you search for ripe avocados and organic, grass- reared beef. For you it may be a throwback to childhood that you would never consider in adult life. You may consider it's fast cooking time and ease of preparation as evidence of its inferiority, basically a ready meal without the microwave.

The potato waffle has no such prejudice. Obediently stacked in their cardboard boxes, sandwiched between meaner potato products, the potato waffle offers up its love. It will feed you and comfort you, be a vehicle for more exotic toppings, and chase condiments across your plate. Through this pandemic and beyond, the potato waffle will keep you going. It is a key worker in starchy form.

Let us not forget its contribution; potato waffle, we love you.