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Max |
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40°C |
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Min |
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30°C |
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Sunrise |
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05 : 30 AM |
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Sunset |
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06 : 30 PM |
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Humidity |
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50 to 80 per cent |
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- Prayer Time
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Fajar |
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03:58 am |
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Dhuhr |
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12:08 pm |
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Asar |
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03:30 pm |
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Magrib |
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06:49 pm |
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Isha |
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08:09 pm |
- Oil Price
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- Gold Price
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Price in RO
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24ct / gm |
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16.97 |
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22ct / gm |
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16.60 |
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Forex Rates vs R01
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US Dollar |
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2.58 |
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Euro |
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2.01 |
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Pound |
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1.70 |
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Indian Rs. |
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142.84 |
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Pak Rs. |
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255.60 |
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Bangla Taka |
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201.37 |
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Chip chip hooray!
Not so long ago, the closest you could get to having a conversation about chips would have been when you ordered a portion of them at your local fryer. Now, chips are more than just chips. Whether they come double-cooked, triple-cooked, shallow-fried or made from sweet potato, plantain, cassava or even courgette, the simple deep-fried favourite certainly has a lot more to say for itself than it used to.
"It's very easy to think of chips as a frozen pack dumped in a fryer," says Tom Kerridge, the chef and owner of the two-Michelin-starred Hand & Flowers gastropub. "But it's the same as everything else — treated well with a bit of love and respect and they can be fantastic."
For Kerridge, the resurgence of street food has had a big impact on our appreciation of what was previously dismissed as 'junk'. "We're getting burgers, chicken wings, hot dogs, all that American-style street food and you suddenly realise a really well-made burger is something beautiful and brilliant," he explains. "When chips are alongside that profile of fast food you realise they're a very good accompaniment. We work hard to make sure each chip of ours is a very high-quality chip." When it comes to the pursuit of the 'perfect' chip, however, Heston Blumenthal's technically magnificent triple-cooked recipe is still considered the gold standard.
"When it's made right, you've got a really light, fluffy inside to the chip and you've got lovely light yet crisp glass-like textured crust on the outside," explains Ashley Palmer-Watts, the executive chef of the Fat Duck Group, who has spent years serving the triple-cooked wonders.
"It's like a roast dinner. You can have a perfectly cooked piece of meat, but if the potatoes aren't good it lets the whole thing down. And I get more excited about the roast potatoes than I do the actual meat. It's the same with a chip." In fact, Palmer-Watts takes the integrity of his chips so seriously that for six to eight weeks each year he stops serving them. "There's a period in the year when you finish the old season's potatoes and the new season's potatoes come through. They're too sugary and just don't produce really good chips. So we'd rather take them off the menu than serve something that isn't as it's supposed to be."
Other chefs have been looking beyond the potato to make their chips. Indeed, it's not difficult to find a vegetable more exotic than the potato. But whether a chip can be made out of anything else remains a point of contention, one that Kerridge feels strongly about.
"Chips are done with potatoes and that's it," he says. "A classic's a classic. You can call a courgette a chip but it's not, is it? It's just a courgette that's been fried. A chip is done with a potato!"
Ben Tish, the chef director of Salt Yard Group, who serves up some 'very popular' Venetian-style courgette and parsnip fries at his restaurants, represents a more progressive view. "Chips are done to death," he says. "The next step has to be to do something different.
"People always want something fried and crispy that they can dip in something and chefs have been experimenting with different vegetables and alternatives — there's definitely a bit of a movement for that.
"In effect, a chip is a cut. If you chip something then you are cutting it into a certain shape to be fried. So I don't think that's specific to potatoes. They're obviously the most common form of chips, but there's no scientific reason why you can't have a parsnip chip!" (Will Coldwell/The Independent)
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