A Crisp Cake of Shredded Potato

I had heard about Golden Wonder, the rock-hard potato with a deep honey-brown skin that roasts like a dream, but only came across my first a year or so back, at the farmers’ market. Hard as ice and crisp white inside, the golden one turns out to hate water and will turn to soup if you attempt to boil it. Give it olive oil, butter, or goose or duck fat instead. This is the potato for frying in little cubes with rosemary and salt, and for French fries. If you plant Golden Wonder in April, and are lavish with the water, it will reward you with charming, snow-white flowers flushed with palest lilac and, come September, perhaps the best frying potatoes of all, to be finely shredded and cooked in a flat cake with goose fat and garlic.