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Chaz'z Temptation...
Sep. 7th, 2006 06:31 pm...is to say "People are strange," far more often than I ought.
A friend gave me a gorgeous great slab of fresh mature line-caught cod. As I have potatoes in the house, and various other veggie goodnesses, and milk (unusually), my first thought was a fish pie; but I revised that, because the fish is just too good to need a sauce. So I shall griddle the fish; and I thought "potatoes, milk - Janssen's Temptation!" At least a poor man's version thereof, as it's more properly made with cream. Hell, it's more properly a dish of its own, rather than an accompaniment, but I don't care. It's nice, and it'll be good against the cod, so hey.
First thing, though, I thought I'd check against a recipe or two, in case I'd forgotten some prime ingredient. Potatoes, cream/milk, onion, anchovies - it would be hard to forget any one of those, but it's always worth checking. So I did; and was instantly reminded of how strange people are.
Not by the one who says, in her list of ingredients, "small tin of anchovies (I leave these out)" - that's not strange, that's weird, and demands a whole different section on its own. It's doubly weird, indeed, first to make the dish without its prime distinguishing ingredient - what she's making, in fact, is pommes dauphinoise with onion in lieu of a rub of garlic - and second to advertise that, to list an absent ingredient...
But anyway, not that. People are strange, because anyone who posts a recipe has presumably cooked it, at least once; and anyone who cooks Janssen's Temptation knows, above all else, how long it needs in the oven. And of the half-dozen recipes I looked at, only one came anywhere near. That was the one that said an hour to an hour and a half; I'm not even going to look before an hour and a half, and I'm budgeting two. But most of these recipes fall into another slot entirely, forty-five minutes to an hour; which is classic, I've seen this before, often and often, but it's just so wrong. After forty-five minutes, your potatoes will still be crunchy. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And surely they know this, surely they've tried it, tested it, tasted it...?
So okay, my way: peel your potatoes and cut them into slices or batons, depending on taste. Peel & slice an onion. Open a tin of anchovies. Butter an ovenproof dish, and begin layering: potatoes, onion, anchovies. Every now and then a scatter of pepper (you will not need salt), a drizzle of the oil from the anchovies, a pour of cream (or, meanly, milk) until the dish is almost full of both potatoes and liquid. Then one last layer of potatoes, dab with butter, cover and slip low into a medium oven, and then leave it. And leave it longer. Don't even look for ninety minutes. You want the top golden, the liquid absorbed, the potato tender and scrumptious. It may take two hours, depends on the oven, but there isn't a domestic oven in the world that will do this in an hour. Trust me. The recipes are lying to you...
A friend gave me a gorgeous great slab of fresh mature line-caught cod. As I have potatoes in the house, and various other veggie goodnesses, and milk (unusually), my first thought was a fish pie; but I revised that, because the fish is just too good to need a sauce. So I shall griddle the fish; and I thought "potatoes, milk - Janssen's Temptation!" At least a poor man's version thereof, as it's more properly made with cream. Hell, it's more properly a dish of its own, rather than an accompaniment, but I don't care. It's nice, and it'll be good against the cod, so hey.
First thing, though, I thought I'd check against a recipe or two, in case I'd forgotten some prime ingredient. Potatoes, cream/milk, onion, anchovies - it would be hard to forget any one of those, but it's always worth checking. So I did; and was instantly reminded of how strange people are.
Not by the one who says, in her list of ingredients, "small tin of anchovies (I leave these out)" - that's not strange, that's weird, and demands a whole different section on its own. It's doubly weird, indeed, first to make the dish without its prime distinguishing ingredient - what she's making, in fact, is pommes dauphinoise with onion in lieu of a rub of garlic - and second to advertise that, to list an absent ingredient...
But anyway, not that. People are strange, because anyone who posts a recipe has presumably cooked it, at least once; and anyone who cooks Janssen's Temptation knows, above all else, how long it needs in the oven. And of the half-dozen recipes I looked at, only one came anywhere near. That was the one that said an hour to an hour and a half; I'm not even going to look before an hour and a half, and I'm budgeting two. But most of these recipes fall into another slot entirely, forty-five minutes to an hour; which is classic, I've seen this before, often and often, but it's just so wrong. After forty-five minutes, your potatoes will still be crunchy. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And surely they know this, surely they've tried it, tested it, tasted it...?
So okay, my way: peel your potatoes and cut them into slices or batons, depending on taste. Peel & slice an onion. Open a tin of anchovies. Butter an ovenproof dish, and begin layering: potatoes, onion, anchovies. Every now and then a scatter of pepper (you will not need salt), a drizzle of the oil from the anchovies, a pour of cream (or, meanly, milk) until the dish is almost full of both potatoes and liquid. Then one last layer of potatoes, dab with butter, cover and slip low into a medium oven, and then leave it. And leave it longer. Don't even look for ninety minutes. You want the top golden, the liquid absorbed, the potato tender and scrumptious. It may take two hours, depends on the oven, but there isn't a domestic oven in the world that will do this in an hour. Trust me. The recipes are lying to you...