Crushed, crispy new potatoes with lemon & garlic

Crushed, crispy new potatoes with lemon & garlic

Spring

Freshly dug boiled new potatoes are one of the garden’s great gifts. I like to serve them with plenty of salt and melted butter – divine! Sometimes, though, it’s good to mix things up a bit, and this recipe does just that. The potatoes are boiled, but then they get crushed. Not mashed, not chopped, just lightly crushed so that their skins split and their soft insides break out. Then, they get roasted in a hot oven, with garlic, lemon zest and – when I can get hold of one – a bunch of fennel sticks. (You don’t eat the fennel; it’s just big on flavour.) The results, fennel or no fennel, are a joyous mix of the crisp and the soft and everything in between. These potatoes are great on their own with some beers and dips, or they make a superb side to a piece of grilled fish or a roast chicken.

Serves 6

Ingredients

  • 1kg (2lb 4oz) large new potatoes, scrubbed
  • 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 handful of fennel sticks
  • pared zest of 1 lemon (in strips)
  • 1 garlic bulb, cloves separated, skin left on
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper, plus extra salt flakes to serve

Method

Heat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4.

Place the potatoes in a large pan of salted water and bring to the boil over a high heat. Cook for about 12–25 minutes, until tender (cooking time will vary according to how fresh your potatoes are and the variety). Drain, then leave the potatoes in the colander for a few moments for the steam to evaporate. Tip out the cooked potatoes onto a board and give them bash with a heavy object. I use the base of the pan I cooked them in. Don’t mash them though, just bash them into flatter shapes, exposing the flesh and maximising their crisping potential.

Trickle half the olive oil into a large roasting tray. Distribute the potatoes evenly over the tray and wedge the fennel sticks in and around them. Scatter over the strips of lemon zest and the garlic cloves and season all over with salt and pepper. Trickle over the remaining oil and place the tray in the oven. Roast for 45–60 minutes, or until the spuds are super-crisp and crunchy.

Remove from the oven and sprinkle with a little more flaky salt before serving straight away.

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