smitten kitchen

I think that gratins get a bad rap. I mean, if you’re ordering them in restaurants, swimming in layers of triple creams and crusted with four different varieties of cheese, they might even (most deliciously) deserve it. But after coming home from the farmers’ market in our new neighborhood (!) last weekend with potatoes and shiitakes and no real inkling of what I wanted to do with them, I turned to Alice Wates — her books are increasingly become my cooking bibles these days — and realized that something I’d never much associated with easy, light meals, a gratin, was exactly what was in order.

At its simplest, a gratin is sliced potatoes, a cup of whole milk (yes, milk though you’re welcome to gild the lily with half, full and double creams) and a few pats of butter on top. Adding a wee bit of a cheese between the layers goes surprisingly far — once it is all baked together, you’ll feel like you’re eating a macaroni-and-cheese level dish, minus that extra pound-and-a-half of cheese, not bad for four ingredient dish! — and if you season it well, you wonder why you don’t make them more often.

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Let me just get the obvious out of the way: this is no proper Southern cornbread. Please, do not bring it to a North Carolina or Texas barbecue dinner, they’ll be horrified by the presence of sugar and honestly, at that point, it may be in your best interest to not even bring up the goat cheese within.

And while we’re on the subject of proper Southern cornbread — no sugar, cooked in a skillet that has often been swirled with bacon drippings — you know, I have tried to find love for it many times. I made a batch in January that all of my Southern friends (and their visiting parents) heartily approved of. It had crisp edges. It went great with the barbecue dinner. It was a cinch to make.

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You know, I’ve got to be the only person who misses a day of posting in November because they were too busy actually cooking to sit down and tell you about it. There were cupcakes (coming soon) and a birthday cake that makes the Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake look like it is trying hard enough to be gluttonous and there was this technicolor dreamcoat of cauliflower gratin.

Surely I’m not the only one who cannot resist those freakishly-hued cauliflowers, right? But although these were labeled “organic” and “all natural” I had my doubts when I par-boiled the purple and it turned the water a deep blue and I boiled the orange and it managed to get even brighter. Like Cheez-Whiz from a can. Not that we here at the Smitten Kitchen would ever know about such unnatural things.

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This is one of those recipes that I’ve had bookmarked for more than a year (a! year!) and never made, despite knowing it would be nothing short of awesome and that my husband, who is a Dijon and also a roasted potato fanatic, would adore it. Obviously, I do not love him at all, right?

And when I finally did make them two nights ago, oh, how I kicked myself. They never deserved to be detained my recipe holding pen for a year. Even a week would have been too long to wait. They’re crispy (from the roasting) and crackly (from the whole mustard seeds that darken when roasted and snap in your mouth) and tart and tangy (from the lemon) and make fantastic leftovers (with a fried egg on top) and seriously, I have learned my lesson.

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I know it has only been five months since I told you about caramelized shallots, and I would hate for you to think that I have a one-track mind about the diminutive members of the allium family. I use them in other things. For example, I love minced shallots in a salad dressing or tomato sauce, and sometimes I even roast cippoline with tomatoes and pour the juices over garlic-rubbed toast.

But mostly, mostly I just think about slow-cooking them in butter and sugar and vinegar until they caramelize and take on entirely new dimensions. Knee-weakening dimensions. Futile to resist dimensions. Side dishes that upstage the roast dimensions. If you were alone you might lick the dish they came in dimensions. If you know what I mean.

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