Trying Out the Potato Stamping

"If the British Isles had an official vegetable, it would have to be the potato." -Yotam Ottolenghi
So... potato stamping. I tried to explain it to Maeve yesterday before we did it, and she was like, Mom, we can't do that! Potatoes aren't stamps! Au contraire, my little kiddo.

First we had to find cookie cutters small enough to fit into my halved potato, which was a small challenge, since it was a Yukon Gold and not very large in diameter. We ended up finding a leaf and an acorn that were small enough. Next, I pressed the cookie cutters as far as I could into the potato - not too hard, as raw potatoes have a surprising amount of give.

The trick to making it easy is: leave the cookie cutter in, then cut around it with a small, sharp knife to remove the top layer of potato, everywhere but inside the cookie cutter. This leaves your shape in relief on the potato. Then just remove the cutter, and voila! Potato stamp.

Then Maeve got to the stamping part. The other trick is not to put too much paint on the stamp, so I put very small puddles of paint on the plate. The results were pretty fun!