garlicky herb-salted roast potatoes
I love a roast potato, and as part of THE TABLE at Christmas, I’m making mine with a herb salt I’ve coined as Christmas Salt and smothering them in roasted garlic. They’re absolute stunners for your Christmas table. ENJOY.
MAKES ENOUGH POTATOES FOR 6 PEOPLE
15 min prep + 1hr 15 min cooking = 1 hr 30 minutes
INGREDIENTS:
1.5kg Maris Piper potatoes
1 bulb of garlic
tin foil (which you should have but get it back in stock)
1 large sprig of fresh rosemary
3 sprigs of fresh thyme
3 sage leaves
Big handful of sea salt flakes
Olive oil, extra virgin kind
METHOD:
First job. Oven up to 200°C please. Get the garlic bulb and slice the head off it, so you expose all the garlic cloves. Now drizzle that in a little bit of olive oil and a touch of salt and pepper before wrapping it up tight in tin foil and roasting it in the oven for 40 minutes. We’ll come back to that later…
In the meantime, spuds. Peel all your spuds and chop them in half. You can half them again but to me, that’s too small to have your potatoes, make them big! Then we’re gonna parboil them in a large saucepan salted boiling water for around 15 minutes or until they fall cleanly off a fork. Whichever happens sooner basically.
Now the Christmas salt. Do this whilst the potatoes are boiling #timemanagement. Roughly chop the fresh herbs, then in a pestle and mortar (or spice grinder) add the sea salt flakes and the herbs and grind together until you end up with a bright green and crumbly salt. Should take about a minute.
Drain the potatoes in a colander, and “rough ‘em up” by shaking them around the colander. If the colander is not big enough, pop them back in the empty saucepan and bash them up there. You should end up with nice fluffy, almost floury edges on the potatoes. That gives you the CRUNCH at the end.
In a large roasting tray, pop all potatoes and drizzle on loads of olive oil and a pinch of your Christmas salt. Roast that tray for 30 minutes.
At this time, we should have the garlic bulb from earlier. Let it cool a little then remove the foil and squeeze out the cloves of garlic into a small bowl. Add about 5 tbsp of olive oil and a pinch of the Christmas salt and put to one side.
Once the potatoes have had 30 mins, take them out and flip them all over, then spread the garlicky oil all over the potatoes. Both sides do not need to be covered. Roast the potatoes for another 30 minutes.
Finish with an extra pinch of Christmas salt if needed, and pop them on your table.