We've been eating frozen chips!!!!!

But shhhhhhh - don't tell anyone!!

Actually, it wasn't as bad as it sounds.  When The Under-Gardener  dug the potatoes late last summer, there were obviously some that weren't suitable for storing.  So I prepped them and turned some into ready-mashed potato, and some others I cut into chip shapes and par-boiled before putting them in the freezer.

Then I more or less forgot about them!

We still have quite a lot of potatoes left in the storage drawers, although none now up in the landing cupboard in hessian bags.  But I have been sorting out the freezers this week and found all the frozen potatoes and decided we need to eat them too.

I bought a lovely sea bream at the weekend and decided to have that last night with chips. I didn't do anything to the sea bream at all, other than put it in the oven and let it get on with things.  The chips I fried twice in a mix of vegetable oil and goose fat.  I have a tin of goose fat in the fridge and decided to add it to the vegetable oil because I think that plain vegetable oil is not particularly tasty when used for chips (usually I have rapeseed oil but I have run out). The mix made beautiful, crispy chips which were fluffy in the middle and nothing at all like the commercial frozen chips which are almost always dessicated in the middle.  Not sure what they do to them to get them like that.  The fish was delicious - almost steamed in its skin.  And we had it all with a beetroot stew, for which I diced a large beetroot into small dice and added thinly sliced leeks, a thinly sliced fennel bulb, a teaspoon of fennel seeds and a happy glug of orange juice together with a dollop of butter.  That simmered gently for about half an hour while the rest of the fish and chip supper was being prepared.