I don’t do chips – I am not cluttering up my kitchen with a deep fat fryer, and I am not throwing away all that fat. And in any case Life is Too Short. So whenever a dish calls for chips, this is what I do instead – it is genuinely no work – and the lemon makes them a bit unusual.

If you want to ring the changes (and I use this method for cooking potatoes so often that sometimes I do) you can try one of two suggestions from Salma Hage’s The Lebanese Cookbook.

• dust with sumac, instead of the herbs, and snip over some fresh parsley before serving
• dust with za’atar, instead of the herbs, and snip over some fresh mint before serving

Hage suggests serving these with garlic dip (perhaps an aïoli).

Alternatively, and this is not for the faint-hearted, in fact, it’s for the very strong-hearted, and those who are not one iota worried about their health, you can do what Nigel Slater does in A Cook’s Book and serve them together with a tomato salsa, and burrata.

Recipe for wonderful wedge potatoes

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 2 really large baking potatoes (Russets are good – follow this link for more information)
• 4 tbsp sunflower oil – or in fact olive oil also works alright. But best of all is duck fat, which gets good and hot and results in a crisper potato
• 4 fat cloves of garlic, squashed – skins removed
• smoked salt
• juice of a lemon  (NB – this is essential, DO NOT FORGET OR OMIT). If you are making these to go with the fried fillet of perch, save the zest for the romanesco. If not use the zest as well. Use the zest too.
• 1 tbsp of dried herbes de provence or a few sprigs of thyme or rosemary

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 220°C (use top right aga oven – use middle shelf). Warm the plates and the glasses for the potatoes.
2. Oil a BIG roasting sheet REALLY well, otherwise you will be spending all night washing it up – even better use bake-o-glide… or just foil.
3. Cut the potatoes in half, then slice lengthwise into thin wedges.
4. Put onto the roasting sheet with a good slosh of oil, the cloves of garlic and the herbs.
5. Mix well – make sure the surfaces of the potatoes are all covered, lay them out with plenty of room around each wedge.
6. Sprinkle with the salt.
7. Put in the oven for 30-40 minutes – keep turning every ten minutes or so.
8. Take out the potatoes and sprinkle over the lemon juice.
9. Cook the potatoes for another five minutes, turn out onto kitchen paper and keep warm.

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Music to cook by

Hot Sardines sing French Fries and Champagne.