Everyone loves potatoes (don’t they?) but sometimes it’s tricky to do something other than sauté them, mash them, turn them into chips and so on.

Last night I was faced with an Asian style fish dish (recipe to come) that needed an accompaniment. We’d had rice the night before, there were no noodles in the cupboard and we had just two potatoes.

This is a great way to stretch those two potatoes a little further.

Start by taking your potatoes, peeling them and cutting them into approximately 1 cm square cubes. Cook them in boiling water – slightly under is better than slightly over. Drain. You can leave them to cool or not.

Heat a generous tablespoon of ghee in a frying pan. If you have no ghee a combination of butter and a light oil (such as peanut, or a very light olive oil) will do. When the ghee is hot, add a little very finely sliced onion (I used about a quarter of an onion as that’s what I had left over – but if you love onion then a whole one will be fine!) and one clove of garlic, finely chopped. When the onion starts to take on a little colour, add 2 tsp of ground coriander, 1 tsp of ground cumin, about ½ tsp of turmeric and chilli flakes to taste. Fry these spices for a minute or so and then add the potatoes.

Now, this is best done a little in advance because you don’t want to be hurrying the potatoes. You want to get them plenty of frying time so everything gets good and crispy. You don’t have to worry about serving them immediately they look done – they keep hot very nicely. The only problem might be snacking on them while you finish off other things … if you do that you’ll find your potatoes don’t go quite as far as you hoped!

I needed to season the potatoes reasonably generously with salt. I almost never add salt to cooking so my idea of “reasonably generous” is probably nowhere near enough for many people. As always … season to taste.

Serve with whatever you happen to be eating. These would be awesome with any type of curry, or at a BBQ – any meal with robust flavours that can stand up to a bit of chilli. Delicious!