Here is how we made pomme puree at the restaurant I used to work at, for a very well known (in Canada anyway) French chef:
Peel and boil as many potatoes as you need. Cook until slightly underdone.
Run the potatoes through a ricer/food mill. Then--this is key--scrape the result through a tami--a very fine mesh sieve. Most often used for sifting flour. Usually about 14-18" diameter, looks like a drum.
Return resulting potato to a pot, add melted butter, cream, salt, pepper, nutmeg to your desired consistency, stirring all the time.
If not serving immediately, chill as fast as possible, and reheat to order in a pan using a little more cream to loosen it up.
IMPORTANT: you must work as fast as possible; the potatoes need to stay hot the whole time or will become gluey.
Tough question - there are a lot of non-scientific ways to measure small/medium/large potatoes and nobody seems to agree on exactly what weight each is. However, there are a few ways I identify large vs medium at home.
In my experience, a large potato is about the size you would get in a restaurant (I know, not very specific). That is, when I cook at home, the potatoes I purchase tend to be medium - round (not oval) and about the size of a tennis ball or baseball. When I'm at a restaurant their potatoes are noticeably larger, and generally more oval shaped it seems (closer to a sweet potato in shape and size), which makes them great for stuffing like for a loaded baked potato. Luckily most of the recipes I have at home that involve potatoes don't require precise measurement, so I just stick with my eyeball measurements and don't even bother weighing them.
I found a source online that says this:
According to Shape magazine, eatbetteramerica.com and prevention, a medium potato is the size of a computer mouse, so somewhat bigger than that.
And I think I can get behind that answer. I'd say your average computer mouse (like, one you would get with a new PC, not a fancy third-party mouse) is about the size of an average medium potato. Another way to eyeball: I'm a 30 year old male with hands that are neither very large or very small. The medium potatoes in this bag are about the size of a loose fist for me. So a large potato would be bigger than either of those things.
As for measurements, I have a bag of medium potatoes and it says they're 5.3 oz (150g) a piece. I weighed one and it was closer to 6.5oz (185g). Based on that I'd say a large potato would be anything over 8oz (225g), pushing as high as 12oz (340g).
I found a way to search online for this info: calories. By searching for "large potato calories" I was able to find pages with weights and measures:
So, in short, it seems like I would consider these good numbers:
- Medium potato: 2 to 3" in diameter, 5-8oz (140-225g)
- Large potato: 3 to 4.25" in diameter, 8-12oz (225-340g)
Below is a picture of the medium potato from my bag, compared to some common household/kitchen items. The gift card is the size of a normal credit card, and the knife is a common steak knife from my utensil drawer. Apparently a medium potato is almost exactly the size of a 1 cup measure!
Best Answer
For Potato Jenga you are going to want to use a French Fry slicer like this one from Amazon. The larger slicing grate will produce potato of about the right square size. You will want to exclude the edges and end pieces.
Some additional tips: several hours to a day before you are going to serve them slice and blanch the potatoes in sweet water (boil water, add sugar, and potatoes boil for about 5 minutes, remove potatoes to and ice bath and store in the fridge.) Just before frying, dry the potatoes on paper towels to remove surface moisture. Once they are golden brown remove the fries to bowl and toss them with a light coat of olive oil.
[Edit added on 12/8/11]
I love questions here that cause me to experiment with food. So after answering this question I decided to try this myself. Well, the potatoes came out nice and crispy and tasty, but I am afraid that @shujaa is correct, no matter how you cook them, you aren't going to get a good game of Jenga out of them...
You can get a good "Jenga Like Tower" this way, but you wont be able to play with your food...
Might I suggest carrot sticks sliced to the right size?