March 7, 2011

On the Table Tonight: Potato Mushroom Gratin

Last night I made a mushroom béchamel sauce and ended up with a bunch of leftovers, so I wanted to repurpose them for dinner tonight.  I decided to try a spinoff on potatoes au gratin.  I peeled and sliced 5 Russet potatoes (I sliced them about 1/8 inch thick, but you could go thicker – you just might need to cook it longer) and layered them in a buttered 7x9 inch baking dish.  I heated up the sauce (about 2.5 cups), added some Worcestershire sauce, and poured it over the potatoes.  (I was fairly…shall we say…”experimental” with the technique I used to make the sauce yesterday, so for simplicity,  I would recommend just making a béchamel sauce and adding some sautéed mushrooms – or honestly, you could probably just use canned cream of mushroom soup, though you might want to thin it out with some milk.  Just make sure there is some nutmeg in the sauce!)  Cover the dish with tin foil and put it in a 350 degree preheated oven for an hour and fifteen minutes.  Remove the tin foil, sprinkle the casserole with bread crumbs and shredded cheddar cheese, and put the dish back in the oven for 20 minutes, or until the top is browned and the potatoes are cooked through (when a paring knife slides easily into a piece of potato, they are done).  The results were delicious (I mean, how could potatoes, milk, and cheese not be?).
On a related topic, if you are still using a traditional vegetable peeler, give it up!  The Y-shaped (or horizontal) peeler is a genius little tool that I learned about on my internship.  It is so much easier on your wrists!  I have the Kuhn Rikon Swiss Peeler (in orange!), which is inexpensive and very good quality, though there are a variety of models on the market.

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