Nigella's Roast Potato Heaven & Breaking In the New Kitchen

From How to Eat, my bedside reading companion, the book I read while I am eating instant noodles while admiring the way she rambles about anointing free range chickens with butter (like expensive hand cream), about the trials of making sticky asian fried noodles for one and learning from her mistakes; about serving chocolate puddings at blood heat; about losing one's ice-cream virginity (which I will very soon). There is such beauty in her gastronomic prose, I could only wish I could speak about food like she could (so far I've watched many cooking shows and ownes many a cookbook, no one does it quite like she does)

This recipe produces, hands down, the bst roast potatoes I have ever tasted. Not only did I read about it, I watched her make this on her Christmas show and it was her declaration of heaven that intrigued me most.



It's a technique really, not a recipe. Cut potatoes into large chunks (6 chunks per potato?). Preheat your oven to 190degC. In your baking dish, pour in about half a cm of high-smoking-point oil, e.g. goose fat, beef dripping (neither of which I had, sadly) or as I used, canola oil.

Throw in a couple unpeeled cloves of garlic, put your tray in your hot oven. Parboil the potatoes for 5 minutes, then drain the pot and sprinkle in a couple tablespoons of flour or semolina (Nigella prefers the latter, but I used flour and it was still wonderful). Cover your pot and give it a couple of good shakes to slightly bash the potatoes and create those wonderful crispy edges later. It's imperative that you make sure your oil is super hot before you put the potatoes in. Roast for 45 minutes to an hour, check on the brownness.

The end result is crispy-on-the-outside, soft and fluffy on the inside, garlicky morsels that just need a little pinch of salt to render them perfect. As Nigella said, and you should trust her, it really is roast potato heaven.

I made dinner for the first time since revamping the kitchen. I tried to oven fry chicken, marinated in yogurt, garlic, basil and oregano, floured, egged and floured again, sprayed with oil and roasted in the oven with the potatoes. To accompany, sweetcorn soup, pureed and whole corn kernels from a can, simmered in a homemade chicken stock, an egg whisked in vigorously at the last minute and whisked and topped with crispy fried pork bits.