Potato Gratin Boulanger

Along with a roast lamb and french style peas, I decided to make some sort of potatoes for dinner, but wasn't sure what! I looked in Stephane Reynauds book Roti, which is a book on roasting different cuts of meat and fish, with recipes for every day. There are also lots of accompaniments, and these potatoes are one of them!

They're really simple and a healthier alternative to a creamy potato bake! You really need to use homemade stock for this recipe, however I did use supermarket brand liquid stock, and it was really nice, however it would be SO much nicer with proper, high quality stock. 


Gratin de Pommes de Terre Boulanger (Potato Gratin Boulanger)


Ingredients
1.5kg potatoes, sliced thinly into rounds
6 onions, sliced thinly
6 garlic cloves, sliced
1L vegetable stock
Bay leaves
thyme
Butter


Method
1) Preheat oven to 180C.


2) Butter a flameproof roasting tin, and start to layer the potatoes until the bottom is covered, then add some slices of onion and garlic, a bay leaf and some thyme sprigs. Repeat this until you fill the container to the top. Season between each layer - just be careful of the salt content if you're using a packaged stock.

3) Cover the potatoes with 1L of vegetable stock and bake in the oven for 45 minutes. Pour over any meat roasting juices just before serving.


The potatoes were soft but held their shape and the stock gave a tasty broth, and added something extra to the tatties!

A potato dish doesn't get much easier than this. If you're cooking for a crowd this is really simple to scale up, especially if you have a slicer attachment of a mix master! Once we'd finished dinner, we had leftovers so I poured the excess stock into french peas to make a soup, and have used the rest of the potatoes to make a shepherds pie with the leftover meat! This is every day food, an easy family dish or low maintenance after work accompaniment to your meal - I'll be making this again for sure!