Time for a roasting!

Dear Tom

Time waits for no man, especially a one week to Christmas and can't cook the Christmas lunch man, so best foot (or knife, and a sharpened one at that)forward....

No roast dinner, whatever the meat, is truly complete without roast potatoes. They are easy to do well and so have to be part of your festive table.

Ingredients

Enough potatoes to have 3-4 halves per person, or 2 for a child
Cooking oil, vegetable or sunflower
Salt
Garlic bulb
Sprig of fresh rosemary or heaped tsp of dried

Method

• Pre heat oven to gas 5 or 200'c
• Peel and halve potatoes (Or possibly quartered if they are baking sized ones)
• Put them into a pan, add a good pinch of salt, pour on boiling water
• Bring to the boil and then simmer for 5 minutes, you're not trying to cook them through, just soften the edges.
• Test them by scrapping the edge of one with a fork, if the fork breaks the edges without too much effort they are done. Turn off the heat and strain them in a colander
• Whilst still in the colander shake them around a bit, this breaks up the outside edges, fluffs them up a bit and is what will make them crispy in the oven
• Put into a roasting pan, coat in about 5-6 tbsp oil. Sprinkle over a large pinch of salt
• Halve the garlic bulb horizontally through the middle, pop on top of the potatoes, cut side facing down
• Lie the rosemary on top, or sprinkle if using dried
• Put into the oven for an hour or so, stiring gently from time to time

Many many vegetables can be roasted, they don't require much attention, get sweeter and smell so nice cooking away.
You can add flavours like orange with carrots, cumin with sweet potatoes, or just leave them naked
You don't need to part boil anything except potatoes and perhaps parsnips which only need a minute or two, but different vegetables need different amounts of cooking time, so just keep an eye on them
I will be making a tray of roasted sweet potatoes with butternut squash and also honey roast parsnips.

Yours, with a dose of optimism
Ruth