Potatoes - 1. I say Chip-pizza, you say Chipizza

I was listening to The Food Programme on Radio 4 the other day and they had two experts on who were debating heatedly about the date when the potato first came to England. They also featured a Slovenian group of Chefs called The Association for the Recognition of Saute Potatoes and Onions as a Main Dish, who travelled round Europe to Potato Festivals cooking up their signature dish. Having a preference for rice generally, I had no idea that people could get so passionate about potatoes.

And then I started thinking about all the recipes that I knew for different types of potato dishes and realised that, for someone who claims to be not so fond of potatoes, I knew quite a number dishes involving the spud. So here is the first in a series of posts all to do with potatoes.

This is a recipe I invented one frosty November lunchtime. It was a Saturday and I was reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, revelling in the heat and atmosphere of the Deep South, while outside, it was grey and chilly. By lunchtime, I was starving and longing for something hot and warming that I could cook and eat quickly so I could get back to my book.

We looked in the fridge and there was very little food. Damn. I needed to go to the supermarket later that afternoon. In the meantime, there was some cheese, a few peppers and onions, a few slices of ham and frozen chips. Everything apart from the frozen chips were ideal for pizza - but I couldn’t be bothered to get the flour out and make the base.

Wait. What about chip-pizza?

1. Lay out the frozen chips on a baking tray as you would normally
2. Sprinkle on top of the chips chopped peppers and onions (and in fact, any vegetable that would go well on pizza) - and garlic
3. Tear up and sprinkle the pieces of ham on top (or any other meat that you might put on pizza eg salami, pepperoni etc)
4. Grate the cheese (cheddar works well) and spread evenly over the top of it all
5. Bake in a medium oven for 30-40 mins

When you take it out, you will have melted bubbling cheese over the chips and pizza ingredients. Serve with tomato ketchup a la Jackson Pollock squirted all over the tasty pile.

You could bake the chips bare for 20 mins first to get them a bit browner and then take them out and action items 2-4 above. Then put it all back in for another 10-15 mins.

Either way, you end up with a quick, yummy dish that’s great to eat on your own or for sharing with friends (especially while watching a DVD at home) - but hideously naughty if you are worried about your figure…!