This is such and easy and delicious dish, perfect for a larger dinner party. It needs hardly any time to prepare, it can wait if someone is late, it’s fat free for those on a diet, and it even looks fancy in its own rustic way.
builiding up the salt crustRecipe
Ingredients
- 2 kg ( 4 lb) medium-small potatoes
- a few sprigs of fresh rosemary or thyme
- 2-3 pounds coarse salt
Directions
Preheat the oven at 200 C°/400 F°.
Scrub the potatoes well in advance so they will be dry when you need to use them. Do not peel.
Scatter the rosemary spirgs over the bottom of an ovenproof dish and add the potatoes in a single layer. Pack the potatoes together closely, fill in the gaps with a few more rosemary sprigs and pour over just enough salt to cover the potatoes entirely. Do not shake the dish, you do not want too much salt under the potatoes.
Bake for about 45 min, or until they are fork tender. Remoce the potatoes from under the pan, brush off the salt, split them in two and serve immediately with a drizzle of your best extra virgin olive oil.
Slow baking will give you the best results, but you can cook the potatoes at higher temperature (max. 230 C°/450 F° ) for a shorter time.
They keep warm for a long time under the salt crust, so you can prepare them up to one hour in advance and remove them from undr the salt just before serving.
This simple dish looks so tasty, such a perfect combination of three ingredients. My outside pizza oven survived, so we can enjoy some late autumn picnics and use the oven to bake this dish!! Your posts bring me joy. This is my kind of food. Thankyou Letizia,
Ciao Morgana, I will be looking forward to read about your picnics! Everybody loves this dish, it’s so easy one wonders: how comes I did not cook it before?
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