The holiday season is looming ahead and in the food stores we trip over mountains of chips, nuts and the general junk we are meant to serve our guests. The problem is that even though their appetites seem to increase annually, our budgets have taken a substantial knock this year and we’ll all just have to re-look the guest snack situation.  In this case, the humble potato is the answer because we can use the centres for gnocchi, dumplings, bread or puree and the skins for appetizers. Stuff them with whatever comes to mind (or don’t stuff them at all) and serve with pre-dinner drinks – your guests will be elated!

Ingredients

• 2 large baking potatoes
• 30 g butter
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
• 1 x 150 ml sour cream or hot chilli sauce

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• Scrub the potatoes until they are quite clean and rub with coarse salt while they are still wet so that the potatoes become very crisp.
• Prick the potato skins in several places with a very sharp fork, very pointy knife.
• Bake in the oven for about an hour so they are crisp on the outside and soft inside.
• Remove the potatoes from the oven, cut in half and gently scrape out the inside with a spoon, then use the scraped out potato to make gnocchi or anything else – or you can use it to make a stuffing for the potatoes.
• Make sure that you don’t remove so much that you tear the potatoes or leave no potato around the skin – you need a thin layer of potato on the inside of the skin.
• Cut the potato skins into thick strips or quarters and put them on a large, well greased baking tray with a pat of butter on each skin.
• Season to taste, taking care not to make them to salty.
• Bake for another 10 – 15 minutes at the same temperature until they are crisp and serve hot with chilli sauce, sour cream or avocado dip – in fact, whatever you enjoy.