Best Ever Potato Skins

In this episode, Tom’s serving up some great crowd pleasing dishes, perfect for sharing with mates at a party.  However, there are no canapes on this menu – Tom likes to make proper hearty food for his guests that you can eat in your hands, packed full of flavour. To start he transforms ordinary filled potato skins into extraordinary crispy stuffed skins filled with creamy Roquefort and salty pancetta.

Ingredients

  • 8 baking potatoes
  • 2 cos lettuce, washed and prepped
  • 4 sticks of celery, peeled and washed
  • 8 rashers of thick cut pancetta
  • a little olive oil
  • 500g crème fraiche
  • 200g mayonnaise
  • 400g crumbled Roquefort cheese
  • 2tbsp Dijon mustard
  • few splashes  of tabasco
  • garnish
  • 2tbsp chopped chives
  • 2tbsp chopped celery leaves
  • dusting of smoked paprika

Method

  1. Place the potatoes into a pre-heated oven and bake for 1 ¼ hours at 180°C until the potatoes are cooked.
  2. Remove them from the oven and leave to cool for 10-15 minutes. Cut them in half lengthways and scoop out the potato, try not to break the skins. Put the hollowed out potato skins back onto a baking tray and drizzle with a little oil and place them back into the oven and cook until they go crispy and brown. This will take about 15-20 minutes.    When the skins are browned and crispy, remove them from the oven and keep to one side.
  3. Place the crème fraiche into a mixing bowl and add the mayonnaise. Add the crumble Roquefort cheese and mix together. Add the Dijon mustard, and the tabasco, season and mix together to form a lovely rich cheesy dip or dressing.
  4. Place the pancetta under a hot grill and cook until crispy.
  5. Cut the washed cos lettuce roughly and place it into a mixing bowl. Thinly slice the peeled celery sticks and add them to the lettuce. Spoon in some blue cheese dressing and mix together. Be very generous with the dressing.
  6. Add a rasher of pancetta to each potato skin.   Spoon the dressed cos leaves, celery and dressing on top, and sprinkle with the chives and celery leaves.   Dust with a little paprika and serve.