Salt Baked Potatoes With Prawns And Jalapeño And Coriander Butter Food

SALT-BAKED NEW POTATOES WITH PINK-PEPPERCORN BUTTER

Steps:

• Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Wash the potatoes.
• In a large bowl, mix the salt, rosemary needles, peppercorns and 1 cup water together with your hands, crushing the peppercorns a little between your fingers and bruising the rosemary needles to release their sticky oil, making a moist, fragrant and pink-and-green speckled sand. (You might have to add a few splashes of water if the mixture needs more moisture to feel like wet sand.)
• Transfer a little less than half this salt mixture into the bottom of a wide, shallow, heavy ovenproof skillet or casserole to make a salt bed about 1/2-inch thick.
• Nestle the potatoes into the sand, close to one another but not quite touching, if possible.
• Pack the rest of the salt mixture over the nestled potatoes, and rub and brush and smooth it with your hands until you have tightly encased the potatoes in a little salt sarcophagus. The rounded tops of the potatoes will just show as bumps under the salt cast.
• Bake the potatoes for 30 to 40 minutes, until a cake tester easily pierces the potatoes and tests warm on your chin or the back of your hand. The salt casing will dry and harden like clay - and smell delicious while baking.
• While the potatoes roast, prepare the compound butter: Grind the peppercorns in a mortar and pestle with the whole branches of rosemary to create an oily, coarse powder. Remove the bruised rosemary sprigs, shaking off any clinging pink peppercorns, and discard. (You just want to extract the oily flavor from the rosemary, not the needles themselves.) In a small bowl, mash the oily peppercorn powder with the salted butter using a fork until well blended.
• To serve, rap the salt-packed potatoes forcefully on a sturdy surface that can handle it, to crack the salt crust from the force. A few solid raps will loosen the potatoes inside. If the cast needs a little more help, use a regular dinner knife like a spade to just pop open the salt crust along its fault lines. The potatoes are easily plucked from the dry salt. Set out with the compound butter in a small bowl on the side.

SALT-BAKED POTATOES

Steps:

• Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 425°F.
• Prick potatoes in several places with a fork. Coat each potato with egg white, then crust potatoes completely in salt. Bake potatoes in a shallow baking pan until tender when pierced with a sharp knife, about 1 hour.
• Crack off as much salt as desired from skin before serving.

SALT-BAKED POTATOES

Steps:

• Heat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3. Put the egg whites and salt in 2 shallow bowls. Dip each potato into the egg white to completely cover, then dab into the salt to cover in patches. Carefully put the potatoes onto a baking sheet, pressing on any remaining salt, then bake for 1½ hrs.
• Bake them for a further 1 hr at 200C/180C fan/ gas 6. Scrape off as little or as much of the salt as you like before eating.

BAKED POTATOES WITH CRAB, JALAPEñO AND MINT

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 450.
• Scrub potatoes under running water; dry them, and rub the skin of each with the oil and a little salt. Pierce the skin of each in three or four places with the tines of a fork.
• Place the potatoes in the oven, and roast for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the potatoes, until they offer no resistance when a knife is inserted in their centers.
• While the potatoes are baking, lightly toss the crab meat in a bowl with the lemon juice, olive oil, shredded mint, diced jalapeño and sour cream.
• When the potatoes are done, remove them from the oven, slice them open down the middle and use a spoon to scrape out their flesh into a bowl. Add the butter, salt and pepper and mash to combine. Spoon the mixture back into the empty jackets, place on a baking sheet, top with the crab-meat mixture and shower with cheese. Return to the oven for approximately 15 minutes, until the cheese is melted and golden.