An Invernessian in America By Diane Knox: Eternal kitchen quest has been conquered just in time for Christmas dinner
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
On Friday it’ll be Christmas Eve. We had one more Sunday before Christmas, ONE!
Sunday is my food shop/meal prep day, and I’m already dreaming of that huge festive meal on the 25th. My mum and dad are having us over to their house on Christmas Day, as we do every year, but the torch has already been passed to me for next year. But next week, I have two tasks: ham and potatoes.
I love to cook. I cook all our meals at home and try to make it interesting by keeping the favourites in rotation while adding in new “experimental meals”.
I’m not one to follow recipes, which is often my downfall, but there is one recipe that’s been tried and tested over the years: the Coca-Cola ham. I think it was Nigella Lawson who first introduced me to the concept of boiling a shank of ham in coke, and if you’ve never tried it before you have every right to be dubious, but it’s honestly amazing.
Coke, treacle and brown sugar – how can you go wrong?
So the ham is taken care of, but the roast potatoes have been a whole other issue. My eternal quest to conquer the crispy roastie.
My granny was a cook in Strathconon Primary School in the tiny village west of Muir of Ord where my mum grew up. For my entire childhood, my granny would cook us the most incredible meals – macaroni cheese, shortbread, any kind of meat with all the trimmings… it was hard to ever beat what she served on her table.
You knew you would never leave her house hungry, and almost always fill your belly with seconds – as long as nobody else beat you to them!
She was the master of the perfect crispy-on-the-outside yet fluffy-on-the-inside roast potato. And one regret I have since her passing is that I never learned more of her culinary secrets. So this has been on my mind for years, and I can’t even tell you the amount of Maris Pipers I have gone through trying to find the perfect recipe. But last Sunday was the day, just in time for the big meal.
I’ll be 100 per cent honest, I didn’t follow a method and I can’t fully remember what I exactly did which frustrates me more than you, I promise. But by a process of elimination I’ve identified three key steps to create a crunchy, fluffy roast potato to serve on Christmas Day.
1. Put a couple of tablespoons of baking powder in the water when boiling the potatoes.
2. Before you pop them in the oven, take your (hot) roasting tin and put it on the hob to heat the oil, then (carefully) transfer the potatoes… and listen to the sizzle.
3. Make sure you cut some of the potatoes up small so you get those wee bits that taste like crisps. They’re the best!
If you try it, I hope it works for you. If not, that Coca-Cola ham never fails.
