Perfect roast potatoes

A few tips to ensure your potatoes are cooked to perfection. First, don't use cheese for this recipe, or you will end up with something ridiculously cheesy and oily - even freshly grated parmesan is unnecessary. Second, you must heat the cream or you will have trouble cooking the potatoes. Third, if you have the oven too high, the cream will curdle - not a disaster, but the result won't look so good.

Ingredients (serves 4-6)

150ml milk
550ml crème fraîche
1-3 cloves of garlic (according to taste) finely chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Freshly ground nutmeg
1.2kg potatoes (preferably waxy rather than floury)

1. Use medium-sized floury potatoes (such as King Edwards) of as fegular a size as possible.
2. Place the potatoes in a saucepan, cover with boiling water, then boil in their skins for 10 minutes (the skins stop them from soaking up too much water, so they don't go soggy). Drain in a colander, run under the cold tap, then peel off the skins (spear the spud wih a fork, then use a sharp knife to slip them off). Cut into halves or quarters, depending on the size.
3. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas mark 6. Put enough fat in a roasting pan to cover the base (this can be goose fat, dripping, sunflower oil or olive oil) and place in the oven for about 10 minutes to get very hot.
4. Meanwhile, scrape the parboiled potatoes with the tines of a fork to give them a ridged surface.
5. Tip the potatoes into the hot fat, toss until they are coated on all sides, sprinkle with salt, then return the pan to the oven. Cook for 1-1 1/2 hours., turning twice during cooking to make sure that they are nicely browned on all sides. This will give you a crispy outside and a fluffy, mash-like centre.