Readers, I have to admit I was a little nervous making Gratin Dauphinois, because I think this is the potato dish Teena was telling me about when she said she first heard from Ruth Reichl. In a nutshell, Teena hated it, and Ruth left a distressed comment. Teena (who had cooked it in some other shape pan besides a gratin dish) agreed to try this Reichl family recipe again, with more satisfactory results.
What if I hated it too? Would RR, one of my personal heroes since I read Tender At the Bone, be sad and leave me a distressed comment too? Perish the thought--I would rather not post on it at all!
Fear not. I decided to try this when my second cooking client, Catharine, asked me for scalloped potatoes. This looked quick, user friendly, and yummy--with a bonus being that the half and half made it slightly less rich than the usual heavy cream associated with these dishes. A food processor with a slicer blade made the potato-slicing a snap.
Here's the dish before it went into the oven:
and after it came out:
OK. Now, I know that doesn't look like the most amazing gourmet food in the world but MAN is it good! Talk about total comfort--it hits all the buttons. And I especially loved that it is streamlined for the ease of the cook--you heat the potatoes right in the pan with the half and half, garlic, salt and pepper--and when it's just boiling, dump them (ok, pour carefully) into your buttered dish. Grated Gruyere and a little nutmeg and you're good to go, baby.
Follow along as I cook all the recipes in The Gourmet Cookbook and Gourmet Today.
"Perhaps the most impressive of all the cookbook blogs are the three devoted to the 2004 edition of Gourmet magazine's "The Gourmet Cookbook" -- all 5¼ pounds and 1,300-odd recipes of it. Befitting this culinary Everest, all three writers are overachievers in their professional lives."
--Lee Gomes, The Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2008
--Lee Gomes, The Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2008
"I should have told you before how much I've been enjoying reading your thoughts. You seem like such a great cook."
--Ruth Reichl, Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet Magazine, June 8 2008, comment on "Chocolate Velvet Ice Cream".
--Ruth Reichl, Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet Magazine, June 8 2008, comment on "Chocolate Velvet Ice Cream".
Friday, June 13, 2008
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3 comments:
It certainly looks wonderful. I'll have to give it a try. :)
Have to ask, can you provide me a source for the Microplane zester you list in the sidebar? When I moved out to the midwest my zester went missing, and I haven't been able to find anything adequate to replace it with since.
Amazon. If I were organized that sidebar would allow you to click right through to their site where you could buy it.
I love those things in part because the first time I ever saw them was in art school and we used them to make sculptures out of solid plaster. You can only imagine how delighted I was to see they could be applied with equal efficiency to cheese and chocolate. :-)
That looks incredibly good. Personally, potato products are total comfort food.
I'm in Tokyo for two months and I don't have an oven (they aren't very common in Japan)--I never knew how much I made in the oven until I didn't have one anymore...
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