Chaz'z Temptation...

[desperance]

...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...

Comments

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

Sounds like wonderful food, though The One I Live With is a vegetarian so I'd have to do the small tin of anchovies (I leave these out) thing if I were cooking it at home. (*makes careful note to at least double the cooking time given in the recipes*)

I don't think anyone has yet come up with a veggie substitute for anchovies.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I don't think anyone has yet come up with a veggie substitute for anchovies.

Nor do I think anyone should try. It's about choice: you choose to live veggie, you have chosen to live without anchovies. Live with it. Celebrate the vegetable, don't spend your time trying to imitate those things you've turned away from... Etc. I'm kind of brutal in this regard. I pretend to have no sympathy with veggies, but this is only because I am ex-veggie myself. I have been there, I have done that; but I was there because it was exciting, it was a whole new way to cook. I never understood those people whose idea of vegetarianism was fake meat. I confess to being kind of curious about Mock Turtle Soup, but this is only because I spent many years believing devoutly in the Mock Turtle...

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

I'm an ex-veggie as well - I shared a flat with a veggie while I was a student and gave it a try for a term, that term lasted nearly 10 years, but I decided that I preferred being able to choose from the entire menu and not to have to eat 'vegetable lasagna' every time I went out to eat.

I like cooking interesting veggie food, and don't mind too much using the fake meats even, but husband person is a vegetarian who doesn't much like vegetables and isn't particularly interested in food anyway. Processed is good, sweet and processed is better, unless it's pizza from his favourite take away place. It makes feeding him a bit of a challenge at times.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I'm an ex-veggie as well - I shared a flat with a veggie while I was a student and gave it a try for a term, that term lasted nearly 10 years, but I decided that I preferred being able to choose from the entire menu and not to have to eat 'vegetable lasagna' every time I went out to eat.

Yup, I was much the same - lived with veggie students, got interested, stayed that way for four and a half years. Then I got bored.

I like cooking interesting veggie food, and don't mind too much using the fake meats even, but husband person is a vegetarian who doesn't much like vegetables and isn't particularly interested in food anyway. Processed is good, sweet and processed is better, unless it's pizza from his favourite take away place. It makes feeding him a bit of a challenge at times.

Goodness. [makes no further comment, because commenting on other people's relationships is Rude; and so retires, making vague 'eek!' noises that he hopes won't be interpreted as comment...]

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

I got used to it, I am very very used to thinking about what kinds of food he will and won't like now, I do it automatically. It's only when I try to explain it to someone else that I realise quite how odd his dietary habits can sound.

I stayed mostly veggie for nearly 10 years, started eating meat again just before I met the husband person. I have great timing - I was a Christian until about the time I married a Reverend as well.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I have great timing - I was a Christian until about the time I married a Reverend as well.

Hee. Only a cad would infer that there's nothing like a close encounter with the church to make you lose your faith (and, as we have established, that would be Rude...).

Two hours, ten minutes. And counting. I'm wondering if perhaps using milk instead of cream somehow slows everything down...? (Actually, I suspect it's about absorption vs thickening - cream will thicken in the cooking where milk just has to evaporate or be absorbed. Or something...)

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should write up my tales of relationships and bad timing sometime. I'm not sure whether it would be a comedy or a tragedy though.

Cream starts off much thicker than milk, and higher fat content so that means that... erm... it takes longer with milk because of factors. *nods wisely*

PS

[desperance.livejournal.com]

The dish has now been in the oven 1hr 45mins. Not ready yet. Easy guide: if you spill milk on the oven floor as you take it out to test it, it's Not Ready Yet. I've moved the shelf up a notch and taken the cover off, but we're looking at another half an hour, easy. It will be gorgeous. Eventually...

Re: PS

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

Thanks. *makes mental note of the doneness test*.

[jeremy-m.livejournal.com]

> The One I Live With is a vegetarian so I'd have to do the small tin of anchovies (I leave these out) thing if I were cooking it at home

Surely for the vegetarian version one should leave out a small tin of vegetables? Although for a similar cost you could leave out a much larger tin of something really nice, like syrup pudding.

Jeremy ("The One I Live With")

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's absolutely right, isn't it? If you're going to leave something out, make it something gorgeous. (Privately, of course, I think anchovies are gorgeous. *heads for bath, thinking of anchovy syrup pudding*)