Buttered jacket potatoes with smoked trout, red onions, horseradish & chives

Buttered jacket potatoes with smoked trout, red onions, horseradish & chives

Winter

Buttered jackets celebrate the cooked potato in the simplest way. There’s something almost magical about cutting through the crisp, puffed skin to the steaming, fluffy flesh inside. If you think about it, it’s the first time that potato has ever seen the light, and it’s already cooked. How different that is to all other potato preparations! Perhaps that’s why baked potatoes taste so good – all that flavour is baked in. For this recipe, I bake whole red onions with their skins on, right next to the spuds. The same thing happens with the onions – all that wonderful sweetness is locked in and, once cooked, they taste amazing. If you can’t find or make cold-smoked trout, you could use cold-smoked wild salmon or hot-smoked trout, instead.

Serves 2

Ingredients

  • 2 baking potatoes
  • 2 large red onions, unpeeled
  • 2 tablespoons soured cream, plus extra to serve
  • 1 tablespoon creamed horseradish, plus extra to serve
  • 1–2 tablespoons finely chopped chives, plus extra to serve
  • 25g (1oz) butter
  • good-quality extra-virgin olive oil
  • 200g (7oz) sliced smoked trout
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Heat the oven to 190°C/375°F/gas mark 5. Wash the potatoes, then sprinkle them with a little fine salt. Place them on a baking tray with the whole onions. Put the baking tray in the middle of the oven and cook for 1–1¼ hours, or until both the potatoes and onions are cooked through. Remove the potatoes and onions from the oven, but leave the heat on.

Halve the cooked spuds and scoop out as much hot flesh as you can, without tearing the skins. Place the flesh in a bowl, then return the hollow skins to the oven for 10 minutes to crisp up. While the skins are crisping, mash the potato flesh with the back of a fork or a masher, if you like. Add the soured cream, horseradish, chives and butter, season with plenty of salt and pepper, and mix well.

When the skins have crisped up, remove them from the oven and spoon the potato filling back into them. Return the filled skins to the oven to warm through, about 8–10 minutes.

Use a sharp bread or serrated knife to halve the onions and remove the soft flesh. Discard the drier outsides. Season the onions with a little salt and pepper and a trickle of your best extra-virgin olive oil.

To serve, place two filled potato halves on each plate. Wedge in the soft roasted onions, arrange the smoked trout over the top and finish with a spoonful of extra soured cream, extra horseradish and a scattering of extra chives.

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