Instructions: My mother once asked a caviar importer how he best liked to eat his product.

"When I get home after a long day" he replied "theres nothing I like better than a steaming baked potato split; . open and slathered with soured cream topped with a big spoonful of caviar." It is indeed a marvellously comforting combination with an appealingly decadent air to it.

If you want to adapt the principle ta a smaller scale perhaps for a Christmas drinks party try roasting little new potatoes (or waxy salad potatoes such as charlottes or belles de fontenay) in their skins lubricated with olive oil and butter then neatly splitting them open and topping with a small spoonful of soured cream and a decorous dollop of caviar.

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