So potato gratin takes forever to cook. It only requires about 15 minutes of prep time, but it takes soooo lonnnnng in the ovennnnn--like an hour and fifteen minutes sometimes. This is primarily because of a few things: the potatoes have to cook, the onions have to soften, the cheese has to melt, and very importantly, the sauce has to thicken.
Tonight, I really wanted potato gratin but I didn't have an hour and a half. So I put some water on the stove while I was slicing the peeled
potatoes. Once I finished slicing them, the water was up to a boil. I dropped the potatoes in and cooked them just for a couple minutes, until they started to soften. I dumped them into a colander and ran some cool water over them, just to keep them from overcooking. After I emptied the pan, I made a
roux in the pan I used for the potatoes and created a cream sauce (well... a
half and half sauce) out of this. While the sauce was thickening, I shredded the
cheese, minced a
shallot, and got the
salt and pepper ready. The sauce is done when it looks like a thick soup. It will thicken a little more in the oven.
Putting together the gratin went just like any other gratin. Potatoes, salt, pepper, shallots, cheese, potatoes, salt, pepper, shallots, cheese, then the sauce poured on top. At this point the dish is basically cooked. It just needs to thicken a little more, cook a little more, and brown on top.
The only extra steps were: cooking the potatoes and creating a sauce. These steps don't really take more than an extra 5-10 minutes because you can do them while you are prepping the rest of the ingredients. And it only dirties one extra pan. But it gives you gratin like 45 minutes sooner. You can take any recipe you have (or just wing it like I did) and modify it with my suggestions.
So here's a break-down of how this method solves the 4 problems:
1) Pre-cook the potatoes so they don't take an hour and fifteen minutes to cook through in the oven. (2 extra minutes of active time)
2) Use a shallot instead of an onion, which will not take as long to cook and is tender and mild already. (0 minutes... just buy a shallot instead of an onion)
3) The cheese will melt when the warm sauce is poured over it. It will further melt when it is in the oven browning and thickening. (0 minutes)
4) Thicken the sauce before you add it to the gratin. (5 extra minutes of active time)
And the best part is that it tasted just as good as any other gratin I've ever had. There were some things I liked even more. For example, sometimes in a gratin, the cream sauce cooks for so long, it separates and gets really greasy. In this one, because it doesn't cook for very long, the sauce stays together really well. Also, the cheese gets less grainy because of the shorter cooking time. The only potential problem is that the flavors don't have much of a chance to meld, but to tell you the truth, I didn't notice a difference in quality. I would try this sometime if you want a gratin in a (relative) hurry.
I've been cooking a new recipe or two from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything every day for the last month. That book is awesome.
If I had to start over building a kitchen, the first thing I would buy would be a cast iron skillet (of course, that was not the first thing I bought when I was starting my kitchen, but I didn't know any better). It is the most versatile and functional kitchen tool. While there is only a handful of kitchen items that I use absolutely every day, my cast iron skillet is one of them. And of the things in my list of daily kitchen tools, my cast iron skillet is the most irreplaceable. You can use a salad bowl instead of a rounded-bottom mixing bowl to get the job done, you can use a pot to boil water instead of an electric kettle, you can hand-knead bread instead of using a fancy KitchenAid stand mixer. But nothing can ever replace cast iron. Nothing gets as hot, holds heat better, and conducts heat to the food as powerfully.
This was such a good meal. I made a ton of veal stock last weekend, so I made the risotto with the veal stock. It was perfect. The stock was absolutely saturated with gelatin. It had a wattery-jelly-like consistency when it was cold. Veal stock is not my favorite stock flavor, but the texture is unmatchable. Just remember that whatever you buy in the store is probably labeled as veal flavored stock and is not the real thing. Veal bones are cheap (especially in comparison to veal) and pretty easy to find if you do some looking. I found some at the farmers market, and they're always at my grocery store (which has the best selection of meat I've ever seen). If you ask your butcher, he or she will probably be able to help.
Potato salad with short ribs... yum. I have been really into braised meats this summer, and have finally called it quits. I'm a little sick of mushy food. I've been pan-searing everything and have made a rule not to braise anything, at least for a while. So this was my last and final braising experience. Braising is like alchemy, which is why I was interested in it for a while. You take a cheap cut of meat, work your magic, and it turns into something tender and delicious.
Popovers! Need I say more?
So potato gratin takes forever to cook. It only requires about 15 minutes of prep time, but it takes soooo lonnnnng in the ovennnnn--like an hour and fifteen minutes sometimes. This is primarily because of a few things: the potatoes have to cook, the onions have to soften, the cheese has to melt, and very importantly, the sauce has to thicken.