richard The following recipe can be found in this month’s edition of the excellent Wa’ro Kitchen Magazine. Its creator is Gill Meller – head chef River Cottage HQ … not to be confused with the annoying pointy sideburned twat who has featured heavily in HF-W programmes of late.
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 35 minutes
Skill level: easy
Serves: 4
Ingredients
- new potatoes – 1kg
- olive oil – 1 tbsp
- 3 anchovy fillets – roughly chopped
- crushed dried chillies – a good pinch
- 2 garlic cloves – finely chopped
- double cream – 85 ml
- butter – a knob of (8g)
- 2 sprigs of fresh thyme
- Parmegiano Reggiano – grated – 50g
- s & p
Pre-heat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6.
Drop the potatoes into a pan of boiling salted water and parboil for 10 minutes.
Drain and put in a roasting tin.
Season, drizzle with the olive oil, and roast in the oven for 15 minutes.
Remove from the oven and scatter over the anchovies, chilli and garlic.
Pour over the cream, sprinkle with the cheese and thyme and add the knob of butter.
Return to the oven, turn down the heat to 180C/gas mark 4, and roast for a further 10 minutes.
Serve as an accompaniment to whatever takes your fancy – we had hake in parsley sauce and purple sprouting broccoli.
Verdict: Are you kidding? Roast potatoes covered in cream and melted cheese? An utterly delicious indulgence with surprising little piquant explosions of salty anchovy and caramelized garlic.
Drink: A ridiculously expensive pint at The Britannia, Victoria Park – £4.40 for a pint of Meantime London Pale Ale – when queried we were informed this was because it was a ‘speciality beer’. Fortunately exetremely poor service prevented us from buying a second pint. A conciliatory beer and a bottle of red when we got back to Yumblog HQ.
Entertainment: The Big Bus (1976) on DVD. Well we didn’t die laughing, but it was a reasonably amusing and suitably silly period piece well worth a viewing.
