Smashing!

It’s about as far from an organic, locally sourced, natural ingredient as you can get. And yet, there’s something wonderfully wholesome about a steaming pile of reconstituted dried potato.

Peeling, boiling and mashing a spud has to be the biggest no-brainer kitchen activity there is ... but boiling a kettle and adding a couple of scoops of feathery flakes is even less of a stretch. Okay, the resulting gloop isn’t quite the kind of mash that Nigel Slater is referring too when he talks about his favourite food ever (and he certainly wouldn’t be fooled if a mound of Smash accompanied his Gloucester Old Spot bangers). Still, to some, it’s sexier than Magpie’s Susan Stranks and capable of evoking even more related nostalgia than the Three Degrees singing ‘When Will I See You Again’ - yup, instant mashed potato is the quintessential taste of a 1970s childhood. And, in it’s own very peculiar way, it hits the lazy slob/comfort food spot like nothing else on earth.

For the full-on guilty pleasure experience, reconstitute some onion gravy granules while your faux-mash is fluffing up, serve with supermarket ‘value’ brand chipolatas and do a YouTube search for a clip from the award winning,1974 ‘Smash’ ad campaign, featuring a post-nuclear family of of martian robots giggling hysterically about how ‘earth people’ used to make mashed potato (“And.Then.They. Smashed. Them. All. To. Bits”). Ah, remember the days when food used to be funny? One forkful of Smash is all it takes to take a trip on your own personal time machine. Yum.