Megabytes Top Tips #1

Annie Bell's roast potatoes

The Roast Spud forms a crucial part of the Christmas meal, so you will need a failsafe technique for roasting the perfect potato (and you need them perfect for guiltily scooping up masses of left-over bread sauce late on Christmas day).

We think the best recipe for the most perfect roast potato comes from Annie Bell's exceptional book, 'Living and Eating'. Annie's tip, which is what makes these potatoes special, is to return them to the pan after a first boiling, tossing them to make them fluffy, which gives a great surface for the olive oil to crisp.

Annie Bell's Crisp Roast Potatoes

Serves 4

900g maincrop potatoes
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt

Preheat the oven to 200ºC, fan oven 190ªC, gas 6 and bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Peel and cut up your potatoes. Add to the pan, cook for 8 minutes, then drain into a sieve and leave for a minute or two to dry a little. Return to the pan and shake, tossing the potatoes in the air until they appear textured and floury on the surface. You can be as rough as you like without risk of them breaking up.

Tip the potatoes into a roasting tray and trickle over some olive oil, without drowning them - they certainly shouldn't be sitting in a pool of oil. Scatter over some sea salt. Roast the potatoes for 1 hour, turning them halfway through. They should be evenly golden all over, the colour of a crisp. If you are roasting them at the same time as a joint they may need a little longer than this.

'Living and Eating' by John Pawson and Annie Bell, published this autumn by Ebury Press (stg£25)