Cycle 3 – Item 297

28 (Sun) October 2012

Gratin de Pommes de Terre Crécy

1.0

by me

at home

-Oksu, Seongdong, Seoul, Republic of Korea-

with W and DJ, MIL

Gratin de Pommes de Terre Crécy is a French dish.  It involves potatoes and carrots, thinly sliced and braised in cream with butter and cheese.  The term literally means “to grate,” as in the cheese.  Don’t know what the “Crécy” refers to.

Despite the simple recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the dish turned out to be something of a mess.  The recipe was very emphatic that the temperature throughout the 1- to 1.25-hour cooking period should constantly be maintained just below the point where the liquid would simmer to a bubble, somewhere around 150 degrees centigrade, lest the cream curdle from the heat.  At that temperature, however, the contents were nowhere near ready at the 1-hour mark, same at 1.5.  So I cranked it up to 180 degrees, which produced the desired brown by 2 hours.  Unfortunately, the cream did curdle as a result, breaking down its cohesive properties and leaving solid bits of curd instead of a smooth goo.  And for some reason (perhaps the cream was supposed to act as an emulsifier?), the butter wasn’t properly absorbed and left to pool at the bottom of the pan.  I suspect that the mix had too much moisture to begin with, maybe released from the carrots, rendering it impossible to cook at the proper temperature in the time given.  In the end, the gratin didn’t taste all that bad, appearances notwithstanding.

(See also MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING)

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See also RESTAURANTS IN KOREA)