Читать книгу The Kitchen Diaries - Nigel Slater - Страница 52

When Indian cooks bake potatoes, they tend to add spices and some sort of liquid, such as water or yoghurt, but I see no reason why you cannot add the yoghurt afterwards, which has the advantage of allowing the potatoes to crisp nicely. A moderate heat is needed here to stop the spices burning in the oven.

potatoes – 4 medium

onions – 2 medium

vegetable or groundnut oil

red chillies, as hot as you like – 2, chopped

garlic – 2 cloves, crushed

cumin seeds – half a teaspoon

ground turmeric – half a teaspoon

To finish:

natural yoghurt – 4 tablespoons

a little mild ground chilli

young mint leaves – a palmful, chopped

Peel the potatoes, cut them into the sort of pieces you would for normal roasting, then bring them to the boil in deep water. Add salt to the pot and simmer for ten to fifteen minutes, until the potatoes are approaching tenderness. You should be able to slide a knifepoint through them with almost no pressure. Drain the potatoes thoroughly, then very gently shake them in their pan so the edges fluff and ‘bruise’. Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4.

Peel the onions and slice them finely. Heat enough oil in a roasting tin to make a thin film over the bottom. The thicker the base, the less likelihood there is of the spices burning. As the oil warms, add the sliced onions and let them soften, then stir in the chopped chillies, garlic and cumin and let them warm through, stirring (and watching like a hawk) so that they do not burn. Add the potatoes to the hot oil, add the turmeric, then slowly stir and toss the potatoes so that they are covered with the seasoned oil.

Roast the potatoes in the preheated oven until they have started to crisp. Thirty to thirty-five minutes or so should do it. You don’t want them to be as brown as classic roast potatoes. They should be golden and flecked with spice.

As the potatoes come from the oven, grind over a seasoning of salt, then spoon over the yoghurt, sprinkle with a very little mild ground chilli and scatter with the chopped mint leaves.

Enough for 4 as a side dish