Thursday, November 07, 2002

My Very First Gratin.  Râpée Morvandelle.  Gratin of Shredded Potatoes with Ham and Egg and Onions. Of course it isn’t my very first gratin, really.  I’ve made potatoes au gratin a few times in my life.  But it’s the first Julia gratin, and having finished with the quiches, I have a feeling of growing, putting away childish things, etc…. I had a very, very long day at work, and was not much feeling like cooking, but fortunately Râpée Morvandelle is simplicity itself to make, to employ a JC turn of phrase.  Simply sauté some minced onions and ham in olive oil.  The ham Eric had bought from the LIC grocery store came in suspiciously square slices, but oh well.  Beat some eggs with some minced garlic, chives, swiss cheese, cream and salt and pepper.  Mix in the onions and ham.  Peel some potatoes and grate them.  Squeeze the water out of them in a dish towel.  Mix the potatoes into the egg mixture.  Melt some butter in a pan, pour the batter or whatever you want to call it in, dot it with butter, and stick it in the over for half an hour. And it’s okay.  One of those dishes that I think would respond well to the “Fine Ingredients Treated With Respect” school of cooking.  Some good ham and cheese would have done wonders.  Also, you know, anytime you give me shredded potatoes, I think hashbrowns.  Hashbrowns are good and all, I guess.  I notice that in the next few recipes, the potatoes are diced or sliced.  Maybe I’ll prefer that. We can’t wash dishes these days.  Our sink is doing a repeat performance of what it did the first week we were here – every time we wash something in the kitchen sink, the sink in the half-bath spews vile black shit.  Lovely.  Until we start acting like adults and remember to buy some fucking drain-o, we’re stuck washing like three dishes at a time, then going around the corner to muck out the guest bathroom.  The nice part of which is, nobody’s really doing dishes. I utterly collapsed after dinner.  I don’t know why – maybe it was the twelve hours of meaningless administrative grunt work, or maybe the lack of television and booze.  Eric and Emily ate some leftover chocolate Bavarian – even made some new whipped cream to go on top.  I lay on our day bed and wondered what unearthly power gave them the endurance to do such a thing.  I was so happy someone was eating the Bavarian though – throwing away a perfectly good, if aged, orange one last week had made me sick with regret.  Ah, the desserts lost…. But last night I was too sleepy to ruminate much.  After Emily went home, Eric managed to rah-rah me into motion enough to take out my contacts and strip out of my boring government worker suit before losing consciousness utterly. Oh, hey, by the by, I will post my mom's cheese biscuite recipe this weekend, so keep out an eye.... 7:41:16 AM    comment []