These potatoes are easy to make, look good and taste good so they are lovely as a side dish with roasted meats. But you could instead add some chunky white fish fillets towards the end of cooking time, and you get a complete meal in one dish. At the time of writing Red Gurnard is in season and would be great, as would Halibut, Haddock, Hake or Turbot. Allow one fillet of fish weighing about 150g per person. Look for sustainably caught fish.
*If you want to prepare this dish ahead of time, you could par-boil the potatoes whole for ten minutes and then slice them. This will mean the hour of cooking time would be reduced to 40 minutes.
Sliced and Baked Potatoes
Enough for 6
1 kg main crop potatoes, peeled and sliced into discs each about 0.5cm thick
2 medium leeks, cleaned and finely sliced into rounds
Some olive oil
Sea salt flakes
Fresh thyme leaves stripped from the stems of a small bunch
300-500ml good chicken stock or vegetable stock
You will also need a roasting pan or ceramic baking dish large enough to hold the potatoes in 3 or four layers.
Preheat the oven to 180c and oil the roasting pan or ceramic dish.
Make a layer of *potatoes in the base of the dish and then a layer of leeks. Sprinkle with a few sea salt flakes, thyme leaves and some olive oil as you go. Make more layers in this way and finish with potatoes on the top.
Pour enough of the stock over the potatoes and leeks to within a centimetre of the top.
Bake in the preheated oven for about one hour or until the potatoes are tender and tinged golden brown at the edges.
And if you are having the potatoes with fish:
After 50 minutes or so when the potatoes and leeks are tender, remove them from the oven and lay the fillets in a single layer over the potatoes. Sprinkle each fillet with a little sea salt and a little olive oil and return the dish to the oven for 15 to 20 minutes until the fish is just cooked. It will become opaque but should also be moist.
Eat the fish and potatoes with some seasonal greens if you like. You could also have some baked sourdough crumbs, mayonnaise and even some sultanas in sherry for something extra special.
See Also: Hake or Halibut with Potatoes, Leeks and Gremolata
Sherbhert champions delicious, healthy and sustainable food where its production minimises environmental damage, exploitation, animal suffering and subsequent processing. Sherbhert’s recipes are simple and use mainly UK seasonal produce sourced as locally as possible.
