Jacket potatoes

A million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I worked for Berni Inns. Although I was a management trainee and then moved through the ranks to being a relief manager I was usually the first person called upon should the grill chef not turn up for work. I trained and worked as a chef before joining Berni so I could find my way around a friture and knew which end of a tomato bites if approached from the wrong direction. For the many too young to remember Berni Inns a staple of the menu, for those too posh for French fries, was the jacket potato. If I had a quid for every jacket potato I'd cooked I'd have a lot of quids (which I'd promptly invest in beer - I'd not squander a penny of my quids). In fact I'd be reasonably squiffy if I had a quid for every tray of jacket potatoes I'd chucked in the oven at the end of a busy lunchtime sitting before I dived off for a nap to prepare for an evening of cooking 5oz rumps (well done) with fries and peas.

The reason for this reverie is that I cooked some jacket potatoes today. This wasn't for money but for dinner and as I prepared them my mind slipped back to Saturday nights stinking of grease, watching 20 steaks at a time and trying to calculate when I'd next be able to slide out the back door for a smoke and whether, when I did, my commis would mess everything up.

Other than this meander down memory lane my day has seen me finish my marking and watching the football and reading stuff which I find fascinating but many other folk probably wouldn't (The Woodcock report which stems from starting to read John Podmore's "Out of sight, out of mind" which I downloaded yesterday). The picture is of an orange - you knew that didn't you? - and it's about to be segmented in readiness for garnishing roasted breast of duck to go with the pommes de terre en robe de chambre.