Salt Baked Potatoes With Guacamole

Things I like about a grey day:

• Hot tea.
• Fluffy quilts.
• DVD's of  Downton Abbey.
• Turning the oven on knowing that you're about to cook something delicious to eat AND heating the kitchen at the same time.
• Woolly socks.
• Rain on the window.
• Salt Baked Potatoes With Guacamole.

Salt Baked Potatoes With Guacamole

from Delicious
Serves 4

For the Potatoes:
4 medium-sized baking potatoes
sea salt
a dollop of butter
2 spring onions, finely chopped

For the Guacamole:
1/4 medium-sized red onion, finely chopped
1 small ripe tomatoes, seeded and finely chopped
1 tablespoons finely chopped mint
1–2 small red or green chillies (seeds and all), very finely chopped
2 ripe avocados
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
a dash of Tabasco sauce
sea salt, to taste

For the Garnish:
tomato slivers
red onion slivers
mint or oregano sprigs

Bake the Potatoes:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.

Scrub the potatoes well and shake off the excess water. (Don’t dry them, though; they need to be damp.) Prick each one a few times with a fine skewer. Pour some sea salt into a shallow bowl and roll each potato firmly in it, to coat them finely. (The salt won’t stick all over, but don’t worry, just pat it on as best you can.) Put the potatoes in a shallow baking tin lined with baking paper. Bake them for about 1 hour, or until they’re tender when pierced.

When the potatoes are ready, take them out of the oven. Using a tea towel to protect your hand, rub off most of the salt and slice a lid off each one. Carefully scoop out the flesh into a bowl, leaving a shell about 6 mm thick. Keeping the lids and shells apart, put them all back into the baking tin.

Mash the potato flesh in a bowl. Then add a nice big dollop of butter and stir in the spring onions. Cover the bowl loosely and keep it warm.

Make the Guacamole:

Mix the onion, tomato, mint and chilli in a bowl.

Halve the avocados, scoop out the flesh into a bowl and mash it coarsely. Then stir in the tomato mixture, along with the lime juice, a dash of Tabasco and some salt. Taste and adjust the flavours.

To Assemble:
Stir some of the guacamole into the mashed potato mixture, then pile this back into the potato shells. Leaving the lids off for the time being, return the potatoes to the oven for 10 minutes to heat through.

When they’re ready, take them out and spoon a bit more guacamole on top, then sprinkle it all with tomato and onion slivers. Sit the lids back on top at a crooked angle and finish them off with some sprigs of herbs.