Family Style Platter Meal (plus the best freaking roast potatoes on earth!)

I'm a big fan of sharing a good meal and a nice bottle of wine with friends on a Saturday or Sunday night. When I've had all day to futz around in the kitchen making good smells and filling the house with steam (and sometimes smoke!). When no one has to be at work the next day and you can sit around chatting into the night, bellies full.

For this reason I love fondues and tapas. This time, I decided to try a different kind of shared meal - the family platter. You just plonk down a huge platter on which is displayed the entire meal: meat and potatoes and vegetables. Everyone takes from the same platter in the middle of the table. In the way that everyone dips into the same fondue pot brimming with melted cheese. There's certainly something about sharing from a communal vessel that makes a dinner seem more friendly and intimate - the perfect way to share a meal with family or treasured friends.

This weekend's menu included:

• Apple and ginger ham
• Savoy cabbage and peas in a mustard cream sauce

AND....

The Best Freaking Roast Potatoes on Earth!  (serves 4)

• 6 large russet potatoes (I will take no blame whatsoever if you use a different kind of potato)
• 1/4 to 1/3 cup canola oil
• salt & pepper

Peel and cut the potatoes into largish chunks, roughly 3 pieces per potato. Boil the potatoes in salted water until they are cooked through and begin to get quite floury on the outside. I did mine in the microwave (in a plastic container with water to cover) and it took 12 minutes. Drain out the water and put the potatoes back into the container, drizzle with canola oil (use more oil rather than less, as the extra will melt off during cooking) and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Use a slotted spoon (or your hands, if you've done the potatoes ahead of time and they are not too hot) to toss the potatoes around in the oil. The outsides of the potatoes should break up a fair bit - this is exactly what you want. The floury outside of the potatoes will combine with the seasoned oil to make a gorgeous coating that gets unbelievably crispy when baked! When they are adequately coated, transfer them to a foil-lined baking sheet. Place them on the lowest oven rack in a 400F oven for 15 minutes, then transfer them to the top rack and broil them, turning with tongs where necessary, for a further 15 minutes, until their outsides are golden and crispy.

These potatoes are the perfect mix of crispy outside and soft, floury, creamy inside. Sigh.

If you've got leftovers, which you won't, you can re-crisp them with 15 minutes under the broiler.

Comments

[sam]

my mum and my friend penny both make the best roast poatoes on Earth, too. No self respecting Brit would cook a Sunday lunch without a decent roast potato :)

I always thought a very good description of how to make perfect roast potatoes, is this one following, which i have used as refence for years and years.

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/perfect-roast-potatoes,817,RC.html

[Lyn]

Yum. Delia's recipe sound simpler with the no transferring of the rack and so forth. I'll try that next time.

[MArkus]

I love bbq! We wanted to do it today but the wather is not good...Weather and bbq... What can be worse for a bbq lover than bad weather??

[Acai Optimum]

thanks so much for yet another great post... always educative... keep it up anyways

[herbal toothpaste]

The potato originated in Peru and has been cultivated since 8000 years ago in South America and it was important food of the Incas who developed advanced techniques for storing. In the fourth century the Spanish conquistadors brought it to Europe and sold in 1573 and potato in Seville. In 1900 he became one of the main food of the world. However, in the old world passed through fears and doubts in some places because it is attributed to be the cause of many evils from leprosy to lust.