For a perfect baked potato, simply pierce the skin all over the potato, rub with oil and salt and bake at 200°C or 180°C fan for at least an hour, but maybe 1hr 30 mins, depending on size.
Why not rub the skin with a mix of oil and cumin, or cajun spice powder for a more exotc flavour.
Then cut the potato down the centre and top with your favourite filling. I like leftover chilli con carne or bolognese sauce, but the best is chargrilled avocado and poached eggs.
What tops yours?
A simple breakfast that keeps you full and is a definite treat. I like to spend a little extra time on breakfast over the weekends; I don’t want to eat the same old yogurt or cereal all the time. I like to wake up on a saturday morning and spend that lie-in time dozing and plotting breakfast. Today, I came up with this savoury dish: poached eggs on potato cakes.
Try adding avocado with chili to this dish for a spicy breakfast.
I started by mashing some leftover new potatoes (you can easily use leftover regular mash, but this is what I had), then I mixed the mash with some grated cheddar and some grated red onion; you could use chopped chives instead of the onion, it would look nicer and be quicker. Add some salt and pepper and enough beaten egg to bind it together, and you’re ready to start frying. Heat a nonstick frying pan and add a blob of butter; once the butter is frothing and melted, spoon dollops of the potato mix into the pan and flatten with the back of a spoon. When it is golden brown on one side, flip it over and cook the other side. Then you’re done.
Top with poached eggs for a comforting, savoury, filling breakfast that just screams “weekend!”: you get started on the mash, I’ll go make another pot of coffee…
So I’ve been looking into alternative carbohydrates. I love pasta and bread so cutting them out will be something of an ordeal but I’m trying to stay positive and remember that no pasta means more mash potato. I never eat mash, but now I can eat it all the time (well, not all the time, obviously, but more than I used to). Also, whilst I can never again have pasta or pizza (unless I have the gluten-free pastas or pizza bases which, I have been reliably told by a nutritionist, may as well be called “sugar that looks like pasta”) I can have risotto, one of my favourite things; really, all this just means that I will no longer be plagued with indecision when confronted with a menu over two pages long. I’ll have so much free time! Maybe I’ll start a rock band.
There are so many alternatives to wheat that we coeliacs really have no reason at all to resort to the processed rubbish that is marketed as gluten-free bread is pasta. That stuff is so far far removed from being bread it may as well have gills and live in the sea. For example, there’s potatoes, of course, but also sweet potatoes, which are delicious mashed or cut into wedges and baked. And they cook much faster than regular potatoes so perfect for a speedy baked spud. And of course, there’s rice, loads of rice, countless kinds of rice. I’ve got some brown rice here and some risotto rice (I’m having fish risotto tonight) but there’s wild rice, red rice, jasmine rice, long-grain rice, the list goes on and on. There’s also lentils, which are perfect in curries and soups and puy lentils go really well with salmon.
Oats are tricky. I’ve been told to steer clear but there are gluten-free oats out there that have been protected from wheat contamination so you can still have porridge in the morning if you trust what the back of the box says.
In addition there’s also quinoa, buckwheat, beans, so many kinds of beans which also count of protein so they’re perfect for staying fuller for longer (try a salad with tuna and cannellini or kidney beans for lunch). Anyway, you get the point. There is absolutely no need to settle for pasta or bread that tastes like sweet corn or sponge when there are so many other ways of eating filling, satisfying, gluten-free meals.
Naturally Not 