As we pulled up at Terminal Four my sister rang from Oxford where she was staying with her best friend, sounding tired & definitely not looking forward to the bus journey back to London. I had a rare brainwave and on the way home diverted via Beck’s to abduct lil’sis & Posetta Baddog to take them back to my mother’s for a few days R&R. Lil’sis isn’t too well at the moment & PB is starting to look like a barrel from the lack of walks.
We are a family that likes to eat and last night we cooked supper together. A leg of lamb from the butcher’s van, lentils and a potato gratin. It couldn’t have been simpler.
The gratin is a great dish for impressing people, yet costs around 60p/$1 for enough to feed at least four people. A small 1lb bag of Charlotte potatoes, still in their skins,& half a red onion were sliced on a mandolin in a matter of minutes and then strewn in a buttered ovenproof dish. I poured over enough stock to cover the vegetables and popped them in the oven for 40 minutes.
They came out soft & unctuous, with a sauce thickened by the starch from the potatoes. It's important to use a waxy, salad potato in this dish as, in such thin slices, a floury potato would dissolve into the stock.
If you are making stock from concentrate, use a little less than normal for, as the stock reduces in the oven, it will become a lot saltier. For that reason, do not add any extra salt to the potatoes.
The lentils were even easier. To one small red onion sweated in a little olive oil, I added two cups of small green lentils and two bay leaves, which were then covered in vegetable stock and cooked for about 30 minutes.
So healthy and delicious.