Gratin Dauphinoise

Gratin dauphinoise

OK so the big debate for this dish is - do you add cheese or not?  I am a definite no cheeser as I just don't think it needs it.  Jean Marc, however, it a cheeser and so to avoid argument I do half with and half without.

The art of a good dauphinoise is how thin you can slice the potatoes.  I sliced them in the slicer on my kenwood and an hours cooking is then all you need to make lovely winter potato dish.

Enough sliced potatoes to fill a gratin dish

Enough milk to cover the potatoes

Grated Gruyere cheese

Salt

Garlic clove cut in half

1 oxo cube

Small bits of butter

1 Peel and slice the potatoes into 1mm slices

2 Rub the garlic clove on the bottom of the gratin dish

3 Layer the potato slices (about a third of the way up the dish)

4 Sprinkle with salt, and knobs of butter and cheese (optional)

5 Put another layer of potatoes and sprinkle with salt and knobs of butter and cheese (optional)

6 Put a final layer of potatoes sprinkle with salt and cheese

7 Dissolve the oxo cube in a small amount of water and add to the milk

8 Pour the milk over the potatoes but not up to the brim of the dish otherwise it will overflow when cooking.

8 Cook for 1 hour at 180 C.  Test with a knife to make sure it is cooked.

Jeremie's Cress Soup

Jeremie's Cress Soup

The texture of this soup is lovely - soft and velvety it makes a sophisticated change to bog standard vegetable soup. It is surprisingly flavoursome and would be great as a dinner party starter.  You could just swirl the cream in at the end to make it look rather glam.

500 g cress
500 g potatoes
20 g butter
1 small onion
1.5 l chicken stock
10 cl single cream

1 Peel and roughly cut the pototoes
2 Slice the onion
3 Wash the cress and take off thick stalks
4 Melt the butter in a saucepan
5 Add the oinion and the cress to the butter and cook on low heat for 5 minutes until soft.
6 Add the stock, potatoes, pepper and bring to the boil then cook on a low heat for 30 minutes.
7 Blend in blender until smooth, add the cream and blend again.
8 Season to taste

Thanks to Jeremie, lovely frenchie living in London but loving the south of France, for this recipe and I would suggest a chilled bottle of Jones Blanc to go with it - yum!

Delicious apple tart

It is just a little too cold for a fair weather vigneronne to be out in the vineyards at the moment so I have resorted to cooking up some lovely winter recipes inspired by Jean-Marc's mum and tried and tested over the generations. The first is an ever so simple apple tart that really tastes like the ones you get at the boulangerie. 



Ready to roll pastry either short crust or flakey

2 big cooking apples or powdery apples

2 big tablespoons of sugar (white or brown) and more if you like sweet things

1 dessert spoon of melted butter

My tarte aux pommes takes 5 minutes to prepare and 20 - 30 minutes to cook.  All you do is roll out some ready to roll pastry in a flan case, prick it and sprinkle with sugar (white or brown), slice 2 peeled and cored apples into 5mm slices and place in overlapping rounds covering the whole of the base of the tart.  Sprinkle generously with sugar and drip some melted butter over (about a dessert spoonful).  Put in the oven at 180 degrees and cook for 20 to 30 minutes until the apples are soft and slightly golden.


Katie's alternative
I imagine that pears could be used instead of apples and you could also add some apple puree under the sliced apple.  Or as a savoury version you could try using stilton or roquefort instead of the sugar which would go extremely well with Jones Muscat!