Gratin

These crispy, cheesy, caramelized florets of broccoli and cauliflower are a wonderful mealtime vegetable. But they’re so tempting, easy to pick up and pop in your mouth, that they would make a hard-to-resist impromptu hors d’oeuvre before dinner begins. You can prepare either broccoli or cauliflower alone with this recipe, though a combination is especially colorful. The florets are partly cooked by my covered-skillet method, then tossed with grated cheese and bread crumbs and baked until golden. The cauliflower and broccoli cook at different rates in the skillet, as detailed in the recipe. If you’re preparing just one kind of florets, simply adjust your timing.

As with pizza or focaccia, the bread base of the gratinate can be covered with all manner of savories. A big batch of sliced mushrooms sautéed with lots of garlic and herbs makes a great topping. Use wild mushrooms if you have some or a mixture of wild and cultivated (see box on page 139 for suggestions). Use a whole-grain country bread as a base for a more gutsy flavor.

The inspiration for this recipe came on a recent visit to France. In a small bistro, I was served an elegant but amazingly simple gratin, just a thin layer of sautéed onions with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on top, baked in a hot oven to form a crisp, fragile delicacy. When I got home, I decided to replicate it—but with a base of thin bread slices underneath the onions, to make it easier to assemble and serve. To my great delight, the bread became wonderfully crisp in the oven, adding more texture, and at the same time captured the delicious onion juices. The key to wonderful flavor here is slowly cooking the onions in a big skillet—they should be meltingly soft without any browning, and moist without excess liquid. Sweet onions are the best—large Vidalia, Maui, Walla Walla, or any other of the fine varieties now available. A gratinate—the Italian term for a baking dish encrusted with cheese or other crisp topping—fills a big sheet pan. It will serve a large group as an appetizer or a lunch dish, or make a great hors d’oeuvre for a crowd, cut in small pieces. You can bake it ahead for convenience, and serve it at room temperature or briefly warmed in the oven.

Sometimes the best gift in the world on Christmas is to serve your children one of their favorite dishes. And, boy oh boy, does Spenser love cheesy potatoes! Warning: this recipe is extremely addictive. We use smoked paprika to add a hearty smokiness that’s like nothing else out there.

If you’re not from Crescent City, this dish might seem like an unlikely trio of ingredients, but it’s my twist on a much-loved Louisiana combination. In New Orleans, we tend to serve oysters with just about anything—especially if there is beer and hot sauce involved. When I’m traveling, or asked to bring New Orleans-style food to other parts of the world, tasso is one of the things I smuggle. Tasso is another Cajun staple—cured, smoked pork (usually the shoulder), seasoned with red pepper, garlic, and various spices and herbs. Tasso is typically vacuum-packed, so it doesn’t spoil easily. Since the flavor is intense, it’s used more as a seasoning. In other words, 3 pounds of tasso provide the same mileage as 10 pounds of andouille—which I’m not willing to schlep. (So far I’ve managed to infiltrate France, Thailand, and England with tasso discreetly nestled in my luggage—and the authorities were none the wiser.) I’m an eggplant freak, and I can eat it any way, anytime. I have yet to find an eggplant dish that I don’t like—unless it’s one that’s undercooked. Eggplant is a great flavor carrier that stands up well to other ingredients. But you can also make this recipe by substituting sautéed spinach or fennel for the eggplant. A gratin is a nifty appetizer because it can be assembled in advance and requires very little last-minute prep.

You can’t come to the French Quarter without being seduced by a rich, bubbling crabmeat gratin. This is my take on the traditional New Orleans dish—it’s luxurious and surprisingly simple to prepare. For the most elegant presentation, serve this in individual gratin dishes as a lunch or a first course for a special meal. This gratin gets added flavor and crunch from the topping, a Spicer staple.

Warm and bubbly with a golden brown crust, this easy-to-prepare side dish is one of my favorite cold-weather indulgences. I am a big fan of cauliflower’s soft, slightly nutty flavor and don’t think it gets the attention it deserves. It has a remarkable ability to absorb the flavors of whatever it is being cooked with, such as the rich creamy sauce of smooth Monterey Jack, salty Parmesan, and tangy goat cheeses in this gratin.

This simple, delicious side dish was inspired by a meal at one of my favorite Gulf Coast outposts, Stingaree Restaurant. This casual Bolivar Peninsula eatery (there’s a bait shop on the ground floor) serves all-you-can-eat Gulf blue crab, oysters on the half shell, shrimp in many guises, and a seeming barge-load of other fresh seafood dishes. Stingaree is proof that you can’t keep a good thing down—it was among the first to reopen following hurricane Ike, the ferocious September 2008 storm that leveled much of the peninsula. The building was damaged, but unlike many of the peninsula’s structures, it wasn’t swept away, and the owners managed to reopen just five months post-Ike. I like to serve this with any simple fish or shellfish preparation. Try it with Big Easy Whole Flounder, page 73, or Champagne-marinated Shrimp Boil, page 67.

The cream sauce of a vegetable gratin is something I like to eat with brown basmati rice, but barley, couscous, or quinoa would be just as suitable.

It is often worth introducing some sort of richness to vegetables with a heart of starch. Ideal suitors include butter, cream, bacon fat, and honey. Jane Grigson suggests cheese, often in the form of Gruyère or Parmesan, as do others, who have been known to roll a stiff parsnip mash in grated Parmesan and deep-fry it as a croquette. To this list I add my own, a shallow cake along the lines of a pan haggerty (potatoes and onions topped with cheese), made with thin slices of the root layered with grated cheese and herbs. Parsnip haggerty, anyone?

Years ago in France, many homes did not have an oven, so if anything was to be baked, it was taken to the local baker (boulanger) to cook in his oven. This recipe, known in France as pommes boulangère, is a healthy departure from classic potato recipes that use lots of butter and cream. It really shines with freshly harvested potatoes, when they are at their finest. Serve it with Herb Roast Chicken (page 110) for a warming winter meal.

At first glance, Anne Willan, the proper, Cambridge-educated grande dame of cuisine, would seem to have little in common with a Mafia don. Looks can be deceiving: those “in the know” are well aware of the “La Varenne Way.” The La Varenne Way of recipe testing has evolved with Anne’s experience of more than thirty-five years as a teacher, cookbook author, and food writer. As the director of École de Cuisine La Varenne, the cooking school that she founded in Burgundy in 1975, with the encouragement and support of the grand doyenne herself, Julia Child, Willan has shaped and influenced countless professional and amateur cooks all over the world, myself included. La Varenne alumni are called, tongue-in-cheek, the “La Varenne Mafia.” No secret society, the list of capos reads like a Who’s Who of the culinary world. The invaluable training I acquired in France working with Anne opened countless doors and a world of possibilities. Anne is one of the hardest-working individuals I know, and her drive for perfection has long been an inspiration. This rich gratin, typical of simple country French cooking, was inspired by a version I learned while at La Varenne.

Hot, bubbly cheese, buttery toast, and fresh snipped herbs are a captivating combination for a first course. Serve this in individual dishes for a more elegant presentation. In the summer, it is incredible with chopped fresh tomato. In the winter it takes on a completely different taste and feel topped with your favorite tomato sauce. Compound butters (see page 281) are flavored with herbs or spices. This recipe features tarragon butter, which is a classic French combination that makes this simple recipe taste spectacular. The flavoring possibilities for compound butters are vast: I once worked with a cowboy chef who made a compound butter for steak with freshly chopped cilantro, fresh lime juice, and finely chopped jalapeño. Mix it up!

This is based on a French dish popular during the cold winter months. They use Reblochon, a super delicious stinky cheese, but since it’s hard to find here (and expensive), I used Swiss instead. This is so delicious that I cut it into quarters as soon as it comes out of the oven to avoid the fights over who got more. (And I’m not kidding about that.)

Meatloaf is one of my dad’s self-professed specialties. He will spend an hour putting it together, and I swear he adds a pinch of just about every spice in the cabinet. Here we have narrowed down the list substantially, but it is still every bit as good as his. Sorry Dad.

Potatoes and chiles are “New World” stuff, and yet, as it turns out, they have nourished millions of people around the world since they were brought to the “Old World” by European explorers just a few hundred years ago. Here is a simple dish combining the Old World and New World ingredients, stewed together in the pot—in this case, the slow cooker. Unlike conventional scalloped potatoes baked in a gratin pan, where “design” matters, I recommend gently stirring these potatoes once or twice during their cooking time to evenly distribute the good stuff and ensure even cooking.

This recipe is inspired by one that Marion Cunningham created for her book Cooking with Children, when she found that the youngsters in her cooking class didn’t have the patience to stir and stir for 40 minutes. It makes a satisfying supper the first time around, and my version allows you to be flexible with the vegetable embellishments, so you use up some of your leftovers. If you want to have the treat of a delicious crispy polenta cake to enjoy later in the week, increase this recipe by adding an additional 1/4 cup polenta and 3/4 cup more warm water so you’ll have that extra polenta to grill or fry

“Tian” is a Provençal word for a shallow pottery dish, and there are almost as many tians as there are vegetables. The common ingredient is usually cooked rice enlivened with a green vegetable, aromatic seasonings, and cheese. To make it for one, use a shallow, single portion baking dish.

Once, when I was in Cambridge working all day nonstop with Julia Child, as we often did, it was almost 11 p.m. when she finally swept away the manuscript and announced we’d make dinner. She then turned to me and said: “Judith, you make a nice little potato dish while I fix the meat.” Slightly unnerved, I managed to rise to the occasion and put together what I would call a fast stovetop version of the classic potatoes Anna. As I mashed some garlic and salt together and smeared this between the layers of sliced potatoes, Julia was looking on a bit skeptically, and although I used lots of butter, of which she always approved, it wasn’t clarified butter. But when we sat down and she took her first bite, she pronounced the potatoes delicious, and her husband, Paul, toasted me. I was in cook’s heaven. I probably made my potato dish that night in a standard round 5- or 6-inch skillet for the three of us, but in recent years I’ve made it regularly for myself in a 4 1/2-inch-square cast-iron frying pan, which once belonged to my father. After he retired, he liked cooking for himself, and I remember his acquiring this little pan with pride so that he could make himself one perfect fried egg. It’s unlikely that you’ll have such a pan, particularly one imbued with fond memories, but any very small skillet will do.

There were certain food pairings in the Pollock house that never varied. When meatloaf was on the table, it was a given that these scalloped potatoes and green beans were faithfully by its side. No, maybe not a given—a guarantee, something you could bet the farm on. Today we serve these potatoes with more than just meatloaf. In fact, they’re a great sidekick for Beef Burgundy (page 68) and our Coq au Vin (page 78).