Tag Archives: potato

Potato Gratin


Posted by admin

My recipe is similar to others that I have found on the internet but I have played with the cooking times and I have yet to create a bad batch.


Ingredients
750g – 1kg Maris Piper Potatoes
4 cloves of garlic
500ml cream
Butter
Salt and pepper


Method
Pre heat the oven to 150 degrees centigrade.
Generously butter a shallow baking dish making sure you get right into the corners as this will make washing up a lot easier.
Peel and finely slice your potatoes. By all means use a mandolin if you have one but I can never be bothered digging it out of the cupboard and setting it up so I use a standard, if a little blunt these days, kitchen knife.
Place one layer of your potatoes into the bottom of the baking dish. You can be as artistic or lazy as you like but try and make sure the layer is level and packed in.
Peel and finely chop all of your garlic and sprinkle about a quarter of it over your first layer along with a grinding of salt and pepper. Normally I would advocate white pepper with potatoes but with the amount of cream that I am adding you don’t seem to be able to taste the white pepper so I use coarsely cracked black peppercorns and sprinkle those instead.
Repeat the layer of potatoes, garlic, salt and pepper until you are either out of potatoes or the dish is about 0.5cm from being filled.
Pour on the cream, it should just start to cover the potatoes but no more. The top layer should not be floating. You may need a little more or less cream, use your own judgement.
Put the dish on a non stick baking tray and put in the oven uncovered for 2 hours. It is done when a knife inserted into the centre has next to no resistance.
Please, leave it out of the oven for around 10 minutes before eating as I have burnt the roof of my mouth more times than I care to mention.


Broccoli and blue cheese soup


Posted by admin

I seem to have spent the past month making foods with a monumentally high calorific content, very tasty but very fattening. So now I get a whole new challenge, to cook tasty low calorie and preferably low fat foods to help everyone lose the excess pounds. This is not as easy as it seems; I live with my parents, my father is not on a diet, does not like salads, or any fatty meats, my mother, has 3 stones to lose, likes salads but does not like pasta, rice, peppers or spicy foods…. This means that every evening I have to cook 2 or 3 different meals, all at different times.
The most simple and filling lunch I have found so far is the simple soup with homemade bread. The bread roll recipe that is the current favourite is the Hairy Bikers simple bread roll recipe that is on their website except that I make double the quantity at one time using 800g strong white flour and 200g of Strong wholemeal flour. It makes a very light and very tasty bread roll, worth giving a try to if you feel the urge to make some bread.
Today’s recipe is Broccoli and Blue Cheese Soup, not as low in fat as I really need, but, too tasty not to make once during the week. Everything in moderation :o )

Broccoli and Blue Cheese Soup – serves 4

1 kg bag of frozen broccoli
1 large potato
1 medium onion
30g butter
1 chicken stock cube
1.2 litres of water
150ml double cream
120g strong blue cheese

I use a large deep sided, non stick, frying pan for this as I am completely paranoid about things sticking to the sides of saucepans and burning. Melt the butter on a low heat while you peel and roughly chop the onion. Add the onion to the pan, keeping it on a low heat so that the onion does not colour.
Peel the potato and cut it into small cubes then add it to the softened onion. I say small dice here so that they cook quicker but you can cut them larger, it is entirely up to you.
Throw in the frozen broccoli, crumbled stock cube and water, and then stir. Turn up the heat till the contents boil then immediately turn it down to a simmer and leave it like that for about 30 minutes. Check at this point to make sure that all the vegetables are soft, if they are not or you want them softer leave them on a simmer and check every 5 mins.
Turn off the heat at this point.
Using a hand held blender, blitz the contents of the saucepan until completely smooth, then add the cream and stir.
The final part involves crumbling in the blue cheese. Don’t be worried that the cheese doesn’t instantly melt, persevere and keep on stirring, it will get there.

Extra info:
Taste the soup, it may need salt, pepper or even more blue cheese. I use a really strong blue cheese like stilton which means that I do not need a lot of it, cutting down both the calorie content of the soup and the cost.
This soup can be made the day before, kept in the fridge in a sealed tub and reheated on the hob before serving.


Cauliflower Soup


Posted by admin

Soups are one of the best and easiest things in the world to make and a great way of using up veges left at the end of the week. The problem I have found with many of the recipes in  books is that they use a LOT of dairy, by the time you have added all of that there is no way that you can taste the vegetables any more.

Yesterday I altered one of these recipes for cauliflower soup and it turned out really well.
1kg frozen cauliflower
1 large potato
1 medium onion
2 stock cubes
1.5l water
2 tbsp butter

Simmer all of those together until all the vegetables are very soft then blitz.
Add a very small pot of double cream and gently reheat and serve.

It is very mild in flavour but has gone down really well with my family and WILL be made again.