Recipe: Fancy Jacket Potato

You will need: 

A jacket potato
Tin foil
Olive oil
Salt
Grated cheese of your choice
Butter
Pancetta
Spring onion
Kebab stick
Kitchen roll

Being a truly global food, there are a million and one ways to rustle up the humble potato. It’s possible to fill a whole book with just potato recipes that have come from every corner of the globe. However, since the incas first domesticated the potato some 8,000 years ago people have been chucking them into the embers of a fire and favouring the simplicity and ease of what we call a ‘jacket potato”.

Make a little space at the front of your stove with some hot embers and push your fire to the middle. Pour a little oil into your hands and rub it all over the potato and sprinkle with salt. Wrap the whole potato in a couple of layers of tin foil and scrunch the sides to seal it.

Place a skillet on top of the stove and in a dry hot pan fry off your pancetta. Once its got nice and crispy pour it out onto some kitchen roll or a towel and get rid of the fat.

Every 15mins or so turn over your potato. Keep rolling it until you can stick a kebab stick all the way through it with ease. Its not an exact science but it should take around an hour.

Open the foil, slice in half and fluff up the flesh with a fork. Add a dollop of your favourite salty butter and top with grated cheese, pancetta and spring onion.

Nothing is more simple yet so comforting.