You say potato, I say Gratin Daphinoise

Grilled Salmon and Gratin Daphinoise

The Culinator rides again! Tonight’s menu was grilled salmon and “Gratin Daphinoise (a version of au Gratin potatoes). Julia Child described this version as the “crem de la crem” of au Gratin potatoes.

It is a very buttery (of course) version using a guerrier Swiss cheese with garlic and boiled milk. Definitely a different version than what you get out of a box but it seemed tasty enough since most of the double batch I'd prepared had disappeared by the end of the meal!

I only used one pan tonight and was only about 45 minutes later serving dinner than planned. That's some progress. The family is more prepared when I let them know I'm going to prepare dinner -- bring a book or a board game (something like Monopoly?). Don't worry, you'll get to eat eventually so we'll just call it an evening of family time!

Part of this adventure is learning and improving my knife skills. I started out being able to use my fingers to count to ten, without fractions, and my goal is to be able to do so in a couple of months as well! Between this recipe and the ratatouille I'm understanding why being fast and accurate with a knife is so important. The only reason this recipe took so long was all the time I spent slicing potatoes, and slicing, and slicing, and slicing. Ratatouille was much the same way but with more variety - zucchini, eggplant, peppers, onions all sliced. As I skim through "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" I shiver a bit when I see that I could be spending about 82% of my life slicing and dicing. Luckily Julia has an answer -- grasp the food you're slicing with those fingers curled, knuckles guiding the blade, thumb pushing the food towards the knife. Easy peasy. Yeah, right.

Of course there's another source of learning besides the book - thank goodness for YouTube! That being said -- No, I still haven't mastered the art of using a knife like Julia Child or Robert Irvine. I did, however, learn something reallllllllly important that will help me have a life while I'm figuring out how to slice and dice like a pro -- a food processor! Using a food processor seemed out of bounds until I was watching one of the many online videos showing Julia Child preparing various dishes. If you've watched "Julie and Julia" you no doubt recall the scene where she's been practicing using a knife and has a huge mountain of onions on her kitchen table. Of course she only uses a knife. Not so! I watched a video of her preparing French Onion Soup and after demonstrating slicing onions with a knife she began to show several other widgets to use and ended with her favorite - a food processor!! Well, if Julia saw the light and considered a food processor fair game then I shall only follow in her footsteps and save a couple of hours when I prepare the next sliced potato dish. I sure hope it works...

Back to this dish -- Although these potatoes are recommended to be served with beef, pork, or lamb I grilled salmon using Costco’s new cedar plank spice blend for salmon. It wasn’t part of Julia Child’s repertoire but perhaps she’d have included it if there had been a Costco in France.

Potatoes will no doubt be several posts coming up as I explore a bunch of new French vocabulary words in Julia's cookbook using broth and other sauces I've never thought of before. Wow, French cooking really is more than just snails and garlic butter!

‘Til next time — Bon Appetit!