Eats/Reads

This is an easy version of potatoes au gratin. I made them in a large cake pan so it was just a thin layer of potatoes and they were very crispy. Yum. 4 large potatoes, sliced into 1/4 inch slices 1 onion, sliced into rings salt and pepper to taste 3 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 cups milk 1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Butter a 1 quart casserole dish. Layer 1/2 of the potatoes into bottom of the prepared casserole dish. Top with the onion slices, and add the remaining potatoes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. In a medium-size saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Mix in the flour and salt, and stir constantly with a whisk for one minute. Stir in milk. Cook until mixture has thickened. Stir in cheese all at once, and continue stirring until melted, about 30 to 60 seconds. Pour cheese over the potatoes, and cover the dish with aluminum foil. Bake 1 1/2 hours in the preheated oven.

This is my aunt's German potato salad which I'm recording here for posterity. I ate this dish several times a year - always at Christmas and Easter - while I was growing up. As an adult I've tried to recreate it several times - with mixed success. I could never get the dressing right. Then six months ago I found out she used the pickle juice! This would be easier to make in the US than the UK (where we live) because it's hard to get real dill pickles here - and even hard to find really good sweet pickles. Ah well. At least the bacon here is good! 5 lb bag of potatoes 1 lb of bacon 1 jar of sweet (bread & butter) pickles 1 jar of Kosher dill pickles 1 apple Boil potatoes until they burst - don't overboil. Pour off water. Cut pickles into tiny cubes. Save water from pickles. Fry bacon. Peal potatoes, slice into pieces the size of little finger. Mix pickles into potatoes. Add one-half jar of pickle water. Add one-third of the bacon fat. Taste and add fat and pickle...

We didn't have the right pickles to make Aunt Imme's German potato salad so we came up with this version, which we had all the ingredients for. It was great! We used sausage instead of the usual bacon (cause that's what we had on hand). It would have been great with bacon too (duh). Would also be nice served with fresh parsley. We served it with fresh lettuce - a great warm weather meal! I'm sure it would be possible to do a veggie version too - with no meat, just cooking the onions in oil. [The toddler ate some plain sausage, boiled potatoes with butter, and as much chopped up pickle as we would allow her.] 1 small onion, diced 1/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp white vinegar 1 Tbsp oil 2 tablespoons water 2 tablespoons white sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper About 1 lb potatoes 2 small sweet and sour pickles 3 small, organic gluten-free pork sausages About 1/2 a head of lettuce Boil potatoes until soft. Set aside. Cook sausages on medium heat in a cast-iron ski...

I was totally winging it with this one and it came out very tasty! I wanted to stew some meat because it makes for great family meals - very easy to eat for the family member who still doesn't have all her teeth. The rest was just a mix of what I remember from making other stews and Marcella Hazan tomato sauces (ie, LOTS of olive oil!). We ate it with pasta but it could also have been served over rice, with potatoes - or even with potatoes cooked in it. 2T veg oil 800g pork 1/2 cup olive oil 2 onions, chopped 2 medium carrots, sliced thin 1/2 courgette, sliced thin About 1/4-1/2 lb mushrooms, sliced thin 1/2 head garlic, chopped 2 splashes dry sherry 1 tsp oregano 1 enormous bay leaf 3 400ml/14 ox tins tomato 250ml/1 cup chicken stock 1 Tbsp flour (Would have added dried basil if I'd had it. Instead, chopped up some fresh basil and cilantro and used that as a garnish before serving) Heat veg oil in Dutch oven until very hot. Add cubed meat and brown on all sides. Set aside. Add...

Tonight is a leftovers night, so I am featuring a brilliant recipe from my friend Patrick. He came up with this recipe for hachis parmentier - a fancy French version of cottage or shepherd's pie - with the hopes of recreating a wonderful version of the dish he, my husband and I have all eaten at a little cafe in the Marais district of Paris called Le Barometre (which we've loved and recommended to all our friends but which Patrick now tells us has changed chefs and gone downhill a bit - so if you try it and it's not so great, well, sorry). My husband and I have made the dish at home a few times and it's been wooonderful. Last time we made it in our huge Le Creuset dutch oven and picked at it all week, so all we had to cook was a vegetable dish - great for when you can't/don't want to cook every night. So over to Patrick: "this is actually perfect timing, since i just made this for the first time in a while 2 nights ago, and i settled on the main balance pr...