• Four large Maris Piper potatoes, peeled
• 125g butter or duck fat or goose fat
• Salt
• Pepper

This one is all in the technique. Slice the peeled potatoes on the mandolin’s thinnest setting. If you’re worried about your fingers, use a folded tea towel to protect your hand from the blade. Once the potatoes are thinly sliced, fill a bowl with cold water and cut each potato slice into very fine batons. Don’t worry if they’re not hugely even, you’re just looking to shred them without breaking up their cells in the way a grater would. Drop the shredded potatoes into the cold water and keep them there until every potato is shredded.

Turn the oven to 190. Lay a clean tea towel on the work surface. Remove the potatoes from the water and lay them out on the towel in a kind of long heap across the middle of the towel. Roll the towel up around the potatoes and squeeze over the sink. You’re trying to get as much water out as you can. Dump the water out of the bowl, too, and dry with kitchen roll, then add the potatoes back in.

In the large non stick over the lowest heat on the largest burner, melt the butter. Season it with a little salt and lots of black pepper, then pour into the potatoes. Mix up – the potatoes will have cooled the butter a bit so you should be able to touch it quite happily – then pour all the potatoes and butter back into the pan, still over a low heat. Using your hands or the back of a spoon, push the potatoes down and shape them into a rough cake.

Allow the potatoes to cook, occasionally using a spatula or spoon to discipline the edges of the cake and keep them in check. Once the bottom is deep golden brown – you’ll see the colour at the edges of the cake – put one of our big white plates on top and confidently flip. Don’t mess around here. The plate will be cold enough to happily touch with your bare hand, which will give you best grip and control. Put the pan back on the heat, confidently slide the cake back into the pan and tidy up the edges.

Put the whole kit and caboodle in the oven and allow to cook for twenty minutes or so. Flip out of the pan again and serve.