The 14 Best Gratin Recipes | Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes.com with classic green beans i'll graten that's right when i was a kid i thought for sure that al groton meant with cheese since every recipe i had that had that in the name had cheese but eventually i learned from a chef named steve martin that the french word for cheese was fromage but anyway you're not here for a french lesson so i'll just finish up by telling you oh graton means something that has a cheesy and or bready crust on top in this classic example using fresh green beans is one of my favorites so with that let's go ahead and get started by prepping our beans which as you may know have two ends okay we have this pointy fun end which we're going to leave alone but this other end that attaches to the plant that we want to trim off which we can do by just snapping it off with our fingers which will totally work but if you have a whole bunch to do trimming them off with a knife is going to be a lot faster and to do that we'll take five or six and line them up with all those stem ends lined up in the same direction whoops that one was already trimmed somehow but anyway what we'll do is line up five or six just like that and then give them a little tap of the knife so the tops are nice and even and then we'll simply just trim off that top eighth inch or so and that's it and you might think that even doing more at once would save time but it really doesn't because if you grab a whole handful it's going to take you a long time to line them all up so i think grabbing like five or six at a time is ideal and then what we'll do once those are topped is go ahead and cut them in half which is definitely an optional step but i do recommend it since i'm not a big fan of eating pieces of vegetable almost as long as my fork okay i find that awkward and disconcerting so i am going to take the extra minute and have these and of course you can decide for yourself i mean you are after all the mr green jeans of your green beans but i do think having these in a little smaller sized pieces makes it more user friendly and that's it once those are prepped or ready to cook in some boiling water but not just any boiling water some very very generously salted boiling water all right this is one of the huge keys to making delicious vegetables the water has to be salty and then what we'll do once that comes up to a rolling boil over high heat let's go ahead and transfer in our beans and then give them a nice stir with the strainer we're going to use to remove them with which in case you're wondering in the business we call a spider and it's a tool every cook must have and what we're going to do here is cook these for about five or six minutes or until they are just tender and by the way forget i just said five or six minutes do not go by time right when you think you're getting close go ahead and fish one out and then bite in to see how you're doing and like i said we want this just barely tender all right not crisp not tender crisp not soft just barely tender and then once we've determined that's where they're at we'll go ahead and fish those out into a big bowl of cold water which of course all the cookbooks say should be ice water but that is not necessary as long as you have a decent amount of cold tap water that is going to stop the cooking process which is all we need to have happen so save those ice cubes for your cocktails and then what we'll do as soon as those have been shocked in cold water as we call it and they're basically cool to the touch we'll go ahead and transfer those into a very generously butter casserole dish or pan and it's totally okay if not advantageous if there's a little bit of water attached to those beans all right i'm draining them pretty good but they are still a little bit wet and then what we'll do next is season this up with some freshly ground black pepper a very generous pinch or two of kosher salt and then a little touch of dijon mustard like maybe a teaspoon or possibly a teaspoon and a half then we'll go ahead and give that a nice mix until everything's well coated and even though it's not that much and people might not even taste it that mustard is going to add a little bit of sharpness to help cut through all the richness so even if you're not a big mustard person we're going to need you to put that in anyway and then what we'll do once all that's been thoughtfully tossed together and everything's in a nice even layer is we'll go ahead and pour in our heavy cream or if you're fancy you can also use creme fresh in this which as always would be magnificent and then once our beans have been creamed it's time to scatter over our grated cheese but not too much i'm only using two ounces of grated comte for this which is one of michelle and i's favorite cheeses of all time but a gruyere would also be very traditional and amazing or if you want a white cheddar i think always works beautifully for ogre town and then i'm gonna finish up with a little bit of freshly grated parmesan and please for heaven's sake use the real stuff parmigiano-reggiano and how do you know for sure you're getting the real stuff well that's easy it's actually stamped right on the rind and then once we've applied a light dusting of that we're going to finish this off with some buttered breadcrumbs which is made exactly like it's spelled okay all we have to do is add some melted butter to some dry bread crumbs and then we'll give it a stir until it's well combined and if everything goes according to plan and you used enough butter once mixed it should look like wet sand which this does and that means it's ready to spoon and sprinkle over our cheese and i said spoon and sprinkle not spoon and press okay i don't know how much of a difference it makes but i don't want to press my crumbs and cheese into the beans and cream so we'll go ahead and use a light touch and that's it once that's been crumbled go ahead and finish up with a few shakes of cayenne at which point it's ready to transfer into the center of a 450 degree oven for about 15 or 20 minutes or until it's beautifully browned and bubbling and looks like this oh yeah that is a nice-looking gratan or as my french friends would say graton or something like that and that's it all we need to do is let this cool down for about 10 minutes before we serve it otherwise it's going to taste like burning so i let mine cool down a little bit before i went in for a taste and since i have no other food to serve this next to i'm going to eat it right out of the pan like a savage and as you see that cheese falling to the table you realize that i meant literally like a savage but anyway bad table manners aside this really was incredible i mean yes it's rich yes it's decadent but the beans are still the star of the show and our cheese sauce is enhancing but not covering up the flavor okay one of my complaints about your average american green bean casserole especially the ones you see around the holidays is that there's so much going on with the condensed soup and the ton of cheese and way too many bread crumbs or french fried onions which i'm not saying isn't delicious i'm just saying with some of those recipes you're not even sure you're eating beans but anyway right here i decided to go ahead and spoon some up after all so i can show you how nice it looks on a plate and as i spoon this up you're going to get a great look at that sauce which i think is just the perfect thickness all right not too dense and stodgy but also not thin and runny all right we're right in that sweet spot in between and yes i sure would look good sitting next to your holiday hammer turkey and i know your family's been making that same green bean casserole for decades and there's probably no way they're going to let you make this instead but if they did and you do i think they will absolutely love this and you might start a new holiday family tradition and you can actually save that can of condensed mushroom soup to make soup with although i wouldn't really recommend that either but anyway the point is this is a very easy and amazing side dish and whether you end up serving it for a fancy holiday meal or not i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] mom scala potato gratin that's right these scalloped potatoes were one of my favorite foods growing up but then i went to culinary school and i learned according to classical methods how it was supposed to be made and that's basically how i've been making it ever since but recently for whatever reason i went back and tried to recreate my mother's version and i was reminded why i loved her version so much in the first place and it's that love in that dish that i'm very excited to be sharing so with that let's go ahead and get started with three large russet potatoes which are the ones that look like this and these are your classic baking potato and what we'll do after peeling and rinsing them is go ahead and slice them up and to do that safely we're going to slice off one quarter inch piece but not from the flat side or the narrow side but basically somewhere in between the two and that will allow our potato to sit nice and flat on the cutting board at which point we'll start making nice even cuts at about a 45 degree angle attempting to get them as even as we can and the first major difference between my mom's version and the culinary school version is that my mom's slices were a lot thicker okay at least a quarter inch and maybe a little more versus culinary school where they're a lot lot thinner and i think the main reason for that is my mom did not own any really fancy sharp knives so maybe if she had she would have cut them a little bit thinner but there's no way to know and then what we'll do once our potato is sliced separate the pieces into the good the bad and the ugly and we'll put the bad and the ugly into one pile which is going to be that long piece we first sliced off plus any of the smaller end pieces and then we'll make a good pile featuring all the big beautiful perfect slices all right so good slices in one pile bad and ugly in the other and that's it i went ahead and did that to my other two potatoes and i should probably mention i'm trying to recreate a childhood experience here so i'm definitely slicing these thicker than i normally would but if you do want your thinner and more in the style of the classic technique the rest of this video will still work so you slice those in a thickness you want just as long as they're as consistent as you can get them in case you're wondering the reason we're cutting it a little bit of an angle here is simply to produce a larger slice right that is just basic geometry and then once we have our potato sliced we will very generously butter a casserole dish and if you're keeping score at home this is exactly a two quart size and then once that's out we'll go ahead and place in our first layer of potato which will feature the slices from our bad and ugly pile and we will fit those hopefully in one layer the best we can and then once that first layer is placed in we will give this a very very generous sprinkling of salt followed by a much much lighter application of freshly ground black pepper and depending on your mood maybe a little bit of cayenne and what we'll do once we have that seasoned is scatter over a shockingly small amount of cheese in my case white sharp cheddar okay another major difference with my mom's version is that it was not nearly as rich as the classic french version okay here the cheese is not so much an ingredient as it is a seasoning so we're just going to scatter over a relatively modest amount and then once our first layer is done using the bad and the ugly we can start on layer number two using potatoes from the good pile and i should mention if you do thicker slices you end up doing less cutting but they are possibly a little harder to place in since they're a little too big to overlap easily i know there's always a catch but that's fine part of the fun is you're kind of doing a jigsaw puzzle or spud saw puzzle if you prefer and then we'll go ahead and finish off that second layer exactly like the first with a very generous sprinkling of salt plus a little touch of pepper and cayenne and then finally our light scattering of cheese which by the way if you want to use more go ahead i mean you guys are after all the players of your layers and the mvps of your cheese but if you want to make it like mom you'll use a light hand and i'm not sure if she was just being frugal or just didn't want a lot of cheese all right it was probably the former but what i think was so exciting about rediscovering this dish is that it actually tastes like potatoes and not just like cream and cheese and as we finish this up depending on how many slices you have left if you have to do a little bit of overlapping on the top layer that's fine and maybe even an advantage since i think that makes for a really nice presentation once it's baked and in the spirit of full disclosure my mom did actually do one thing i'm not doing here and that is she dusted a little bit of flour between the layers which i assume she did to thicken the milk up but as you'll see with the final product i don't think it's necessary and i think we just get a little pure cleaner potato flavor without it but anyway we'll go ahead and finish up with our third and last layer assembled exactly the same as the first two except we won't top this with our cheese until we've poured in our milk and yes i said milk and not cream which other than the slice thickness was the biggest difference between the fancy french culinary school method and by the way i do suggest you use whole milk and not two percent or skim milk okay we do want a little bit of richness to it and of course if all you have is two percent you could always dot some pieces of butter between the layers to make up the difference but anyway once our milk has been slowly and carefully poured in and it's coming up almost but not quite to the very top of the potatoes we can go ahead and finish with the rest of our cheese and that's it once that's set we'll go ahead and take that and place it on a foil-lined sheet pan not only to catch potential drips but just to diffuse the heat a little bit so maybe cooks a little slower and a little more evenly at which point we can go ahead and transfer that into the center of a 400 degree oven for about an hour and 15 minutes or until bubbling and beautifully browned and hopefully looking like this and no matter how sure you are and how gorgeous it looks make sure you take a knife and test these potatoes to make sure they're perfectly tender and these were and that's it we should probably let it sit and rest for about 10 minutes before serving and then before i show you what i served it with i really need to go ahead and sneak a few bites and that my friends is pretty much exactly how i remembered okay until they actually invented time machine recipes is as close as we'll ever get but anyway this is my mom's minimalist version just basically potatoes and milk with a little bit of cheese salt and pepper and butter which is why unlike your typical classic french kraton this one actually tastes very much like potatoes or as a james beard award winner would say it is very potato forward but having said that if you want to be richer make it richer or i slice your potatoes thinner and use cream instead of milk and maybe more butter and more cheese but no matter what you use if you're going to sneak a few bites before bringing it to the table make sure you perform the whole push and patch to clean up the crime scene and hide all the evidence oh yeah there we go at which point i went ahead and serve this with a beautiful braised beef short rib that may or may not be an upcoming video featuring what happens when you rub beef short ribs with korean chili paste and then braise them in hard apple cider and besides bringing back happy memories from my childhood the other great thing about this less decadent version is that it's perfect to serve with main courses like this which themselves are very rich and decadent and fatty and anxious but anyway that's it my attempt to make scalp potatoes like my mom who by the way did not call it a scalp potato gratin she just called it scalp potatoes i'm adding the town to get some extra search engine love but no matter what you call this or how you adapt it i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] potato roses that's right and to think all these years you've been eating potato side dishes not shaped like flowers like some kind of barbarian well my friends those days are over and for something that looks and tastes this impressive i think you're going to be pretty shocked with just how simple the technology is behind these so let's go ahead and get started with what might be the most important factor using the right type and size potato and what i'm recommending we use here is the lovely and talented yukon gold potato since not only do these have a beautiful color but i think the starch content of these makes them perfect for this technique and then above and beyond the actual variety we want to choose potatoes that are just slightly smaller than the muffin tins we're going to use which i'm helping you visualize right here by poking this pan with this potato and then once we have procured potatoes with the proper girth we will begin this procedure by melting a stick of butter and we'll use that to generously grease our muffin pan and you might be thinking man a stick of butter that seems like a lot of butter just to grease a pan well it is we're only using a little bit for this we're actually going to save the rest and mix that into our soon to be sliced potatoes so we'll go ahead and butter that muffin tin with reckless abandon like i said reserving the rest until needed and once that's set we can move on to prep our potatoes which is going to be incredibly easy as long as you have one of these vegetable slicers if you don't super hard if not impossible so that is the one catch here and i hope you already have one of those since they're indispensable but if you don't i hope you find this video so enticing that you go out and buy one so we'll start slicing and i usually discard the first few slices because they're kind of small on all skin and then what we're going for here is something that's thin but not too thin which i realize is a terribly inexact measurement so let's go for a close-up so you can see what i'm talking about what is that between a 16th and an eighth so that is the thickness i'm shooting for right there and by the way don't slice these on the table slice them into a nice big bowl because once these are finished we have to toss them with the rest of the ingredients and please do not try to go all the way down to the end okay potatoes are a lot cheaper than fingertips so do not lose a fingernail in the name of frugality in fact if you're smart you should probably use the guard but anyway we're going to go ahead and slice those up and then once those are set we can move on to the seasoning stage so to our sliced potatoes we will add some kosher salt and a generous amount of it the only thing worse than under seasoned potatoes are undercooked potatoes well actually that's a tie they're both terrible so we'll toss in some salt as well as some freshly ground black pepper and then for a little change of paste we'll also add some cayenne and then last but not least some fresh herb in this is very nice so this time i'm gonna go with some minced up rosemary but fresh thyme is also a wonderful choice here and then once our potatoes are seasoned we'll go ahead and drizzle in the rest of our melted butter and give that a very thorough mixing with our hands and so often mixing a big bowl of stuff like this with your fingers feels really good this unfortunately isn't one of those times i gotta be honest i really didn't enjoy that sensation but we have to take one for the team because there's really not another tool that will do as good a job and i'm obviously editing for time but you really got to spend a few minutes with these and make sure it's thoroughly thoroughly mixed okay if there's one thing sliced potatoes love to do it stick together so make sure you separate those as best you can and try to get those as evenly coated with our seasoning and butter as humanly possible and then once that's been accomplished we will introduce our cheese using the old great toss great toss grade toss method so what we'll do is we'll take some parmesan and grate some over and then we'll give that another toss with our hands to mix it in and then once that's incorporated we will grate some more cheese in and repeat the process and i'll usually do that step three or four times it depends on my mood so you're gonna have to decide exactly how much to add but i really don't think you can ruin these by adding too much of course some of you will consider that a challenge and try but anyway to summarize we will add as much grated cheese as we think appropriate and then once that step has been successfully completed we can go ahead and start filling our muffin tins and there really is no special technique involved in doing this other than i guess not letting the pieces of potato kind of fold and bend as they go in so we will go ahead and transfer those potatoes into our pan and no there was no trick photography involved here my three pounds of potatoes pretty much exactly filled up to all of these and then i actually did think of one tip here when you get to the end it doesn't hurt if you finish up with some of the smaller pieces because as you'll see when these cook that's what's going to give it that sort of rose petal appearance and by the way don't be alarmed but when you're done you will have a good amount of water in the bottom of this bowl which was drawn out by the salt and as you can see there is some butter stuck to the sides so if we want we could pour off that water melt that butter and spoon it over the top of these potatoes although i've never done that but you could and then once our potatoes have been panned we'll go ahead and clean those drips up a little bit at which point these are ready to bake so let's go ahead and transfer those into the center of a 400 degree oven for about 45 minutes to an hour or until tender and these are exactly what mine look like 45 minutes later check it out but just because they're pretty and look like roses doesn't mean they're done so i gave it a test with a metal skewer and determined they were not quite tender yet i also determined i need to eat that little piece of potato but anyway i figured out these needed a little more time but this was already looking gorgeous and i didn't want the edges to get too dark so what we'll do before we pop this back in is add a piece of foil to the top so i covered that with foil and i pop mine back in for about 10 minutes and of course your times may vary which is why we don't strictly go by time and we test but anyway i put mine back in for 10 minutes at which point it looked like this it's just as visually stunning as before but this time the potatoes are cooked and that's it our potato roses are done and ready to unmold which is going to be surprisingly easy i just like to take a fork and kind of loosen it up a little bit and if you get that fork underneath that bottom layer of potato it should come out quite easily so we will transfer that onto a plate and that at least in my opinion looks incredible i mean come on that's more beautiful than some actual roses i've seen and while i will fully admit this technique is mostly about appearance the taste and texture of this are fantastic also of course because the top is kind of crusty they are a little challenging to eat just with a fork but that little problem that's actually not really a problem aside this really does taste great and that contrast between those crispy crusty edges and that tender interior i find highly enjoyable so i really do love these and i'm not just talking about the appearance and as i try another one here with the help of a knife i'm reminded of just how versatile these are there are just so many different combinations you could do with the cheeses and the herbs and the seasonings so don't be afraid to try a little experimentation i mean you are the moses of these roses so it's your job to lead these into the promised land of flavor and i'm very confident you will do just that so i really do hope you give these a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] potato and parsnip graton that's right despite their unique and delicious flavor and totally fun to pronounce name parsnips have really never caught on as a popular side dish option but don't worry your old buddy chef john has a plan we're gonna hide these inside a delicious looking potato craton and our friends and family are gonna enjoy parsnips without even knowing it until of course we tell them later after they eat it when it's too late for them to eject but anyway let's get started and the first thing we're going to do is peel our parsnips and there they are i usually use two for this recipe but they were kind of small so i got one regular and two small ones and we're going to go ahead and actually peel these twice once to remove the skin and then we're actually going to use the peeler to slice the parsnips for the graton and that's gonna give us beautiful nice thin slices all right just like that that's gonna be one of the secrets to this recipe but for now we're just gonna peel them and i'm gonna add those to my bowl of cold water that also is holding my peeled yukon gold potatoes this will work with russet also but i really like the yukon gold for this but anyway we're gonna peel our potatoes and our parsnips and then it's ready to prep our pan or baking dish in this case and we're gonna prep that with some garlic and some butter so i'm gonna toss in a little bit of finely chopped garlic along with some melted butter i'm gonna go ahead and spread that all over the bottom and the sides a little bit and once our baking dish has been thoroughly garlic buttered we're gonna go ahead and start building the layers so i'm gonna take one of our three potatoes and i'm gonna give it a nice thin slicing on the japanese vegetable slicer also known as a mandolin and by the way don't be an idiot like me use the guide so you don't cut off your fingertips you're going to need those so anyway we're going to carefully slice one of the three potatoes we're going to arrange that in an even layer over the bottom once that's done we're going to season with salt and pepper and i'm a big believer that when you're making these layered gratons you really want to season each layer individually that's usually a winning strategy okay and once we've seasoned that first layer of potatoes we're going to go ahead and sprinkle in a few time leaves i'm just picking those right off the stem not chopping them and you want to be careful not too many you can overpower a garten like this with too much herb so just a few leaves here and there and then after the time we're going to do a light dusting of real parmesan cheese parmigiano-reggiano and how do you know you're using the real stuff it costs you like 25 a pound if it costs like three dollars a pound that's probably not the good stuff and if you're one of these people that doesn't think there's a big difference between the fake and the real parmesan well you're crazy but anyway a nice light dusting of parmesan and then on top of that we're going to spoon over some creme fraiche and yes you can use heavy cream for this but creme fresh makes it special like crumb fresh makes everything special and by the way you're not allowed to say you can't find it because i showed you how to make it i'll give you a link to that video but anyway we're going to spoon over our creme fraiche and then it's time for the first of two layers of parsnip now if you want you can just peel right over the dish and then arrange them or go ahead and peel off to the side like i am and then place them on and of course be careful make sure you have a good grip the last thing you want is a parsnip slip and you can take a piece of fingernail off with that peeler so be careful of that so we're going to go ahead and peel half the parsnips and lay them over the top and of course you're arranging and distributing evilly that just goes without saying or almost went without saying and then don't forget after the parsnips go on a little pinch of salt for those remember we're seasoning as we go and at that point we're going to repeat the process we're going to put down our second layer of potato and then all the rest of the ingredients in the same order we just showed you so some more salt some more freshly ground black pepper another scattering of thyme leaves we're gonna make it rain parmesan again followed by more creme fraiche and if you've never used it before creme fraiche is like a delicious delicious sour cream that does not break or separate when you cook it it's fairly magical and then just like the first layer after the creme fraiche we're going to go ahead and top with the rest of our peeled parsnips and of course like the first layer parsnips we're gonna give that a little dusting of salt and then of course we're gonna finish with a potato layer so slice up that last potato and arrange that over the top beautifully and if you're keeping score at home that is three layers of potato two layers of parsnip and once we're done arranging that last potato on top we'll season that up with a little bit of salt and then we're going to pour over some chicken broth about a cup or so and since i was testing and recording the amount used i went little by little so i'm going to pour a little in i'm going to let it settle and i'm going to keep going here until i think i have the right amount and yes of course if you're of the vegetarian persuasion you could certainly use vegetable stock here whatever that is and that looks pretty good so it's almost but not quite up to the top so let me give it the old shake a shaker and possibly a very brief old tapatapa and then to finish this up we're going to go ahead and spoon over the last of the creme fresh without wrecking our beautiful potato shingle design and then to finish this off a little dusty in a cayenne it's going to give that top a nice color and a little bit of heat of course and then last but not least a final dusting of parmesan i'm going to clean off the edges and we're going to put that in the center of a 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes to an hour or until it looks like a beautiful potato and parsnip graton all right the top should be golden brown and a knife should go in with zero effort there are very few things more evil than an undercooked potato gratin so make sure you cook it enough and if you do you're going to be looking at one of the great winter side dishes of all time but really this would be absolutely delicious all year round and you go ahead and put that next to some boring roast chicken and ubiquitous cal side dish and you actually have something a little special and like i said at the beginning parsnips have such a unique and delicious flavor it's just a shame they're not more popular used in dishes like this and as you can see it obviously works wonderfully as a main course side dish but this is also amazing as a brunch or breakfast potato go ahead and picture that with some crisp bacon next to it and a poached egg over the top oh yeah i want that right now so anyway if you were looking for a way to get more parsnips in your diet which i know you weren't but just for the sake of argument if you were i really hope you give this potato graton with benefits a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy scallop graton that's right scalp cortana is a very generic name for a dish that can be made in a variety of ways from something super light and simple featuring nothing more than just scallops and butter too much richer and decadent variations featuring ruby sauces usually top with tons of cheese and breadcrumbs but here we're definitely keeping it on the lighter side mostly because i think that's the best way to enjoy the flavor of fresh scallops but anyway let's go ahead and get started with the sauce so in a bowl we're going to start with some creme fraiche or heavy cream both are going to work perfectly here and pretty much do the same thing except of course since creme fraiche is fermented you are going to get a little more tanginess a little more flavor and then to that we're going to add some freshly grated lemon zest and one of the common lemon questions i get is when to use juice and when to use zest and basically what it comes down to is when you want lemon flavor but not the acidity of lemon you go with the zest so that's what we're going with here because i'm going to add some white wine which is going to provide plenty of acidity so we'll do some fresh lemon zest we will also do a pinch of cayenne and a little bit of kosher salt but not too much the great thing about scallops is they come naturally seasoned by the sea so we'll be a little bit careful with the salt and then last but not least a little splash of white wine nothing too expensive but definitely something drinkable as i've said for years if it's not drinkable it's not eatable when in doubt use sauvignon blanc so we'll do a little bit of white wine and we'll stir that together and once we have that mixed together we're ready to introduce our scallops and there's mine i got eight nice big scallops i'm gonna do four per person i know thank you mr math and what i want you to look for is something called diver or day boat scallops which should look exactly like this they should be glistening yet dry and have a beautiful sweet fresh smell to them okay what we definitely don't want is anything that's been soaked in a disgusting preservative brine okay so make sure you're talking to the person you're buying these scallops from and as usual i'll give a ton more info on the blog about how to know you're getting the right ones and what we'll do is we'll transfer those scallops into our cream and wine mixture and we'll toss them around and give them a little bath and once those are coated what we'll do is we'll just set that aside for about five minutes so it's too short of a time to call it a marinade but we will let those scallops get acquainted with the sauce for a few minutes while we prepare our ramekins or other baking dish so i'm going to use these earthenware ramekins you may remember these from such videos as brandad and what we'll do because the origins of this recipe are french we will generously brush those with butter and by the way it may or may not be obvious that you can just do these all in one casserole dish if you want but personally i think they just look much cooler presented in this fashion but that's totally up to you you are the el capitan of your scallop gratin but anyway once our baking dishes have been lubricated generously with butter we'll go ahead and divide up our scallops between the two and of course after we've done that we will also evenly distribute our creamy wine mixture and as you'll see what's going to happen here is these cook these amazingly sweet juices will leak out from the scallop and create something that's just beyond delicious so yes the scallops do come out amazing in this recipe but they almost take a backseat to the incredible juices that are going to be created in this ramekin basically what i'm getting at is make sure you have lots of crusty bread around but anyway once we have our scallops and sauce portioned out we'll go ahead and we'll finish off the tops and to do that i'm going to put a little sprinkling of freshly chopped tarragon as you longtime viewers know that's my favorite all-time seafood herb but other sweet delicate type herbs would work things like dill sorrel chervil even italian parsley would work so a little bit of fresh herb and then we'll go ahead and dust the top with some real parmesan cheese some parmigiano-reggiano okay as i mentioned in the intro we do want to keep these on the lighter side so unlike many seafood gratins we're not going to bury our beautiful scallops with a thick sauce and handfuls of cheese and breadcrumbs so we'll just do a relatively light dusting and then before we pop these in the oven we will drip over a little more melted butter which is optional but highly recommended as they say in france it's not really a graton unless you've drizzled some butter on it sounds a lot better in french so we'll drizzle on a little bit of butter that's going to help give it its signature caramelized look and at that point these are ready for the oven so what we'll do is we'll pop these in a very hot 450 degree oven for just about three or four minutes just to get them started because what we'll do at that point is we'll switch our oven setting to broil and we will broil these on high about eight inches away from the heat until the tops are browned and the scallops are just cooked through and by the way my tripod doesn't go low enough so i had to sit on the floor to get this shot which is why it looks like one of those cop shows from the 90s but anyway like i said we'll start them in a hot oven and we'll finish under the broiler until they look like this the surface should be beautifully browned and like i said the scallops should be just barely cooked through and as predicted those scallops are going to be swimming around in some of the most delicious stuff you've ever tasted in fact i couldn't wait oh man that's good and as far as determining the perfect doneness for your scallops the best way i can describe it is that the scallops will go from mushy and translucent to slightly springy and opaque which you're going to get a great look at when we go in for the official taste so i'm going in with the spoon and what you should be feeling is something that's very tender still kind of soft but not mushy okay your spoon should cut through nicely although you should try to cut all the way through so a small piece doesn't snap back and splash a little butter on your shirt but anyway that's an occupational hazard and above and beyond the texture the flavor should be amazing fresh scallops have such a beautiful sweet flavor they're very mild there's no off-putting fishiness and this is the shot right here we can really see what i was talking about about going from mushy translucent to a firmer slightly springy opaqueness i mean look at that that's absolutely perfect and as i've already referred to this is really just an excuse to dip french bread into that cooking liquid which is tremendous in fact it's so good don't make the rookie mistake of eating it all with your first couple scallops okay because you want to be able to enjoy that throughout the entire process i mean the last thing you want is to get down to that final scallop and be staring at a dry ramekin that would not be a happy ending so just a little something to keep in mind but anyway that's it scallop graton so simple so easy in fact if you've never cooked scallops before in your life this is a pretty good recipe to start with this pretty much cooks itself basically you just keep an eye on things let your broiler do most of the work you just make sure you have a spoon and plenty of bread around all right so i really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy lobster thermador that's right i'm very excited to show you my take on this iconic special occasion dish and not only is this going to look great and taste amazing it's also going to be easy to eat which is not always something we can say about your typical lobster recipe it's almost as if they've developed some kind of evolutionary defense mechanism to help protect them from being consumed but here because we're using tails and separating the meat from the shell ahead of time we're going to end up with something extremely user friendly that by the way only looks hard to make as you're about to see and first up we're going to need to prep our tails before we cook them and what i have here are four approximately four ounce each lobster tails although this technique will work the same with any size and to prep these what we need to do is take some scissors and cut through that lighter softer bottom shell right where it attaches on the side to that thicker upper shell so we will cut from the big end all the way to the tail end right where those two shells meet on both sides and by doing that once this is cooked we're going to be able to pull out all the meats and that shell we cut and then once our lobster meat mixture is prepped we'll go ahead and stuff that right back into the shell to create what most people think is a pretty impressive presentation so we'll go ahead and make our two cuts on the bottom of each tail at which point we'll head to the stove to almost cook these all the way but not quite and we'll do that in some melted butter over medium high heat so we'll go ahead and place those in cut side down and yes i'm also tossing in any of those little flippers that came off and what we'll do is cook this covered for about five minutes or so until like i said they're just about all the way cooked through okay don't forget this is going to get cooked again once our shells are stuffed so we don't want to overcook them at this stage so what we'll do is start those cut side down and then after about three minutes we'll go ahead and uncover those and turn them over to the shell side or at least one side of the shell side because they're kind of curvy and then once those are turned we'll recover it cook that for one minute uncover it turn those to the other side of the shell and then go ahead and give those one last minute at which point if everything goes according to plan they should be just about almost cooked through all right let's say 85 to 90 percent okay so to recap about three minutes on the cut side and then a couple minutes on the shell side and once that's set what we'll want to do is turn off the heat and remove those lobster tails to a bowl along with any other shell remnants we've added because we're just about to use this pan to cook our shallots so once everything's been removed we'll put the heat back on to medium and add a nice chunk of butter along with some minced up shallots and a pinch of salt and what we'll do is cook those stirring for about three or four minutes until they sort of soften up and turn translucent and as these cook the moisture from those shells it should start to deglaze the bottom of the pan of any of those lobster juices to start to caramelize on and then what we'll do after a few minutes once our shallots are looking a little something like this is go ahead and toss in our diced mushrooms if we're using these are optional although i consider them personally mandatory and we'll go ahead and cook those stirring for about maybe five or six minutes until they sort of turn a golden brown and not only are these mushrooms going to help increase the volume of our stuffing which of course in the business we call filler but they're also like flavor sponges and they're going to absorb all that caramelized lobster flavor from the pan and since once cooked they have a similar texture it's going to seem like you actually have more lobster than you do so like i said we'll go ahead and cook those until they're sort of golden and looking something like this at which point we're going to toss in about a tablespoon of flour and we'll go ahead and stir that in until the mushrooms are coated and then we'll cook this for an additional two minutes to take the raw tasting edge off that starch and don't be surprised if some of that flour starts to stick to the bottom of the pan totally normal and not a bad thing because what we're going to do after cooking the flour for a couple minutes is deglaze with a splash of cognac or if times are tough just some brandy and what we'll do is pour that in and then ignite it with the slider to burn off all the alcohol which it would have done anyway but if people are watching that's kind of fun to do people seem to like explosions but anyway we're going to flambe with some cognac and as soon as that liquor disappears which is only going to take a few seconds we will quickly pour in some cold milk and give everything a stir and then what's going to happen is this comes back up to temperatures a couple things okay any and all goodness left on the bottom of the pan should be fully dissolved and also once this mixture gets hot enough to start simmering you'll notice it should thicken up nicely and as with all sauces that are thickened with flour once it does start boiling that's as thick as it's going to get and if it's too thick you could always thin out with a little more milk but this one looked just about perfect and then what we'll do once that's thickened up and is bubbling is go ahead and turn off the heat and stir in a couple tablespoons of creme fraiche or if you prefer some heavy cream with maybe a little squeeze a lemon to mimic the acidity from the creme fraiche and what we'll do is just stir that in and then with the heat off we'll just let this cool a little bit while we move on to finish prepping our towels which should be cool enough to handle by now and what we'll do is attempt to pull that meat out of the shell by sticking our thumb underneath like this although it's probably easier if we take that center shell off first and be careful do not waste any scraps of meat okay if there's any meat attached to the shell pull it off and reserve it and hopefully by getting your finger under like this most of that meat is going to come off in one section and that is pretty much this entire step okay we're removing meat from shell and shell for meat and by the way if you have trouble peeling that meat away from the shell with your finger sometimes you just need to start it by scraping with a spoon and then it should come off but anyway do what you got to do and hopefully you'll end up with a nice pile of meat like this and of course four empty now ready to use shells which we'll go ahead and transfer onto a sheet pan on top of some crinkled up foil then i form some channels to hold the shells in place and then we'll move back to the cutting board to cut up our tail meat into some bite-sized pieces and as we slice these in half you always want to check to see if these need to be deveined and these really didn't have too much although there were a few little pieces i'm going to okay so just like when you're cleaning shrimp if you see any pieces of what we call the vein go ahead and pull that out since that can be a little bit gritty but other than a few little pieces mine were relatively clean then once we've checked for that we'll go ahead and cut this up into like half inch pieces and once our lobster meat's been cut up we'll go ahead and add a tool bowl and we'll go ahead and transfer in our sauce which is now slightly cooled and appearing much thicker but don't worry it's going to thin out when it's hot and then we'll finish this up with a pinch of salt and also more than a couple shakes of cayenne and then last but not least a generous application of freshly chopped tarragon which i believe to be the ultimate lobster herb and we'll go ahead and take a spoon and mix this all together and by the way feel free to customize this filling to your liking i mean you are after all the dinosaur of your lobster thermador and back in dinan's day they would added things like mustard and egg yolks and greer cheese right back then this would have been a much richer dish but in my opinion if this mixture is too rich you're sort of hiding that beautiful lobster which is what i want to be the star of the show so suit yourself and we'll talk about that on the blog post but i like to stay with a relatively light approach and then once that's mixed up we'll go ahead and stuff that evenly into our four shells which i highly recommend doing over the bowl not over the foil since if you drop some it's really annoying to pick up off the foil and then once we have that mixture divvied up as evenly as we can we will finish these off by sprinkling over the following three things first a tiny bit of dry bread crumb all right just a little touch maybe half a teaspoon per tail followed by an equally light application of freshly grated parmesan okay just a little dusting and then last but not least because this is a french dish after all we will drizzle over a little bit of melted butter and that's it once that's been applied these are finally ready to roast which we'll do in the center of a 450 degree oven for about 10 minutes or so or until nicely browned and our meat is heated through and if you want and i usually do i'll finish them for about a minute under the broiler so as to get some nice color on the surface and when they're done they should hopefully look something like this which i think is just absolutely beautiful and at this point you'll be happy to know we do not have to let these rest in fact don't we'll go ahead and serve those up immediately possibly next to a nice salad or one of these prop salads that looks like a real salad and not only does this look visually impressive and like it was super hard to make but your guests have to do virtually no work getting this on a fork and up to their mouth but just being easy to eat wouldn't really matter if this wasn't also intensely delicious in fact this was so delicious i totally forgot you're not supposed to push food onto your fork with your finger so please excuse my atrocious table manners and i switched and tried to do it with a spoon and fork but that didn't feel right so i went back to the finger and i know i said i used a relatively light approach here which i did but this is still relatively rich and decadent and we have just enough that creamy sauce coating the lobster without overpowering it and covering it up so i just absolutely loved how this came out but anyway that's it my take on lobster thermador when it comes to extravagant expenses special occasion recipe ideas this one is one of my favorites and just between you and me because we're using frozen lobster tails they're not even really that expensive to make so for all those reasons and more i really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] coqui st jacques that's right french for shells of saint james who apparently was the patron saint of mollusk bass gertons and you know this recipe is awesome because the french called it scallops as if once you made this you'd never make any other scallop recipe again which once you taste this is not far off this is incredibly delicious and actually for something fancy quote unquote it's pretty easy to make all right let's get started first step uh we're gonna go ahead and saute some shallots and some butter of course over medium heat in a skillet and we'll give those an occasional stir but while those are cooking let's go ahead and prep our mushrooms which reminds me i heard a chef on tv say you should prep everything for a recipe before you start it that's not true had you prepped the mushrooms already you'd just be staring at a pan of sauteing shell it's waiting for them to be done and that's just not good time management so we're going to use the sauteing time to slice these up and once our shallots have turned translucent and started to get a little bit golden we're gonna go ahead and dump in the mushrooms along with a nice pinch of freshly ground black pepper and salt of course and we'll give that a stir and we'll also turn up our heat to medium-high because you know the deal with mushrooms a lot of water takes a while for them to dehydrate and start sauteing so this is going to take a few minutes but basically we want to get these to the golden brown stage unlike certain recipes we don't want them really dark and caramelized so something just about like that is going to be perfect and when our mushrooms are looking good we're going to go ahead and dump in some white wine anything's going to work well actually that's not true ironically the only thing that doesn't work would be something that says cooking wine there's no such thing as cooking wine and drinking wine there's just wine so if you wouldn't drink it do not use it in this dish and as soon as that comes up to a simmer we're going to go ahead and place in our scallops for a quick poaching and depending on the size we're only going to poach those in this wine mixture for about two minutes per side don't forget these get finished under a very hot broiler so we don't want to cook them all the way through now so basically they're going to firm up and they're going to spring back slightly to the touch so for me it was about two minutes per side again depends on the size and of course the smaller ones you're going to take out first and give the bigger ones a few more seconds but anyway like i said those took me about two minutes per side a little bit undercooked is probably better than a little bit overcooked but these are going to be awesome no matter what so relax so at that point we can turn off the heat and remove the scallops to a plate or bowl and reserve them and then we're going to go ahead and pour that poaching mixture through a strainer we're obviously going to reserve that mushroom shallot mixture of course so set that aside with your scallops and we're going to pour the strained liquid back into our pan and please i implore you you're also going to want to pour in any accumulated juices from your scallops that juices the essence of scallop flavor so add that in we're also going to want to turn the heat back on to high and pour in some heavy cream and pro tip if you pour it from the side instead of in the center you'll get a very cool double fractal i think that's a double fractal i learned that trick from chef rorschach and then all we're going to do is we're going to reduce this stirring occasionally until it reduces by about half and becomes slightly thickened and by the way we're using a cream reduction technique here more often you'll see a roux used in this sauce but i prefer this method i don't have anything against ruse as you know i use them all the time in other words routinely but here i think it's totally unnecessary and i think this reduction method gives you a better taste and texture so we're going to reduce that down and please don't walk away especially since you're on high heat in fact when it gets to this point you can lower the heat a little bit maybe down to medium low so it doesn't go too quick and what we're looking for is this like i said it's going to reduce by about half it's going to slightly thicken if you drag the spatula through you'll see the mark for about a half a second and that's perfect so right here i want you to turn off your heat and let it sit there for one minute exactly because what we're going to do next is whip in an egg yolk but we're not going to use proper technique we're going to dump it right in and whisk it quickly and why we can get away with that is because we know how to whisk quickly so as long as that mixture is not boiling and you whisk it in super quickly you do not need to temper the egg yolk and by the way if you really want to annoy a culinary instructor show them that part of this video you'll probably learn some french swear words but anyway we're going to whisk in that egg yolk and at that point i'm going to move this over to my work table and we're going to add the last few flavorings the first of which would be a little shake of cayenne followed by some freshly minced tarragon a beautiful beautiful shellfish herb and then finally a little grain of lemon zest we use lemon zest when we want lemon flavor but we don't want the acidity we have plenty from the wine but a little lemon flavor from the zest is going to be lovely so we'll stir that in and our sauce is done and incredibly gorgeous and of course you're going to taste this and adjust for salt and when we're happy with that we're going to set that aside and begin final assembly and for that we need these scallop shells those are actual real scallop shells from the ocean and were any actual scallops harmed in the harvesting of these shells oh yeah quite a bit so we're going to take four of these scallop shells and we're going to go ahead and divide up our now room temperature mushroom and shallot mixture first divide it up and then once you got the same amount in each kind of spread it out kind of cover the bottom and then on top of that we're going to go ahead and divide up our scallops now i used a pound of scallops which is going to give me about three proportion and of course you might have an odd scallop or two you can just break those up and sneak those in between that's totally gonna work don't worry so divide your scallops as evenly as possible and then once our scallops are portioned go ahead and take your sauce and spoon it slowly and seductively over those scallops make sure the whole surface is covered the excess is gonna run down and in all the nooks and crannies of the mushroom and shallots and by the way if you have a little bit of extra sauce which is a possibility spread it on some toast broil it and you will be eating one of the best snacks in history trust me try that and then once those are sauce we're going to go ahead and turn our broiler onto high and we're going to finish these with a little bit of grated greer cheese some people like parmesan i prefer the gruyere and not too much just a little sprinkling these are not supposed to be scalloped nachos so just a little bit and then just for some color on top you can give it a little sprinkling of paprika or cayenne i'm not going to tell you which one i used it'll just be a mystery and then let's go ahead and place those on a sheet pan and i like to put down a little piece of crinkled up foil so those all sit nice and straight that's going to prevent them from moving out of position or sliding around when you move the pan and at that point those are going to go under the broiler not too close i was about 10 inches away from a broiler set on high and you're going to broil those for about five minutes or six minutes or until everything's hot the edges are brew bruleed and that cheese is browned and bubbling in other words it's going to look like this now i've never been to france but i can't imagine these looking any better over there i mean that's just a beautiful sight right there and for more good news you don't have to let these cool transfer these onto a cloth or napkin line plate i'm going to garnish with the old crisscross harrigan leaves and that is ready to eat coqui saint jacques forget about one of the world's most delicious scallop dishes this is simply one of the world's most delicious dishes period just a perfect combination of flavors one of those rare dishes that's rich and decadent yet still fairly light and of course st james was also the patron saint of easy special occasion appetizers and also the patron saint of making things up and this really would be a beautiful starter to any of those fancy holiday meals especially since you can make them ahead and on the blog post i'm gonna explain how to do these for a big group like a boss and by boss i mean caterer all right so if you've not experienced the magic that is kokkil sinjak i hope you give these a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] creamy cotton potato gratin right i got a food wish for a classic cream cod recently which by the way was one of my childhood favorites but instead of doing the traditional version i decided i would try to make it a little bit fancier or as we say in the business more refined and present basically all the same ingredients except in an individually sized beautifully browned and bubbling graton form and not to spoil the ending but i was very very happy with how this came out so with that let's go ahead and get started by making some mashed potatoes and what i have here are two peeled and quartered russets which of course is the official potato of mashed potatoes and as usual we'll want to make sure we add a generous amount of salt to the water at which point we'll bring that up to a boil and then adjust our heat to maintain a nice steady but general simmer and we will cook this until our potatoes are perfectly tender and while that's happening we can go ahead and pull together the rest of our ingredients which will include some finely diced shallots which by the way every store has nowadays we will also need some freshly chopped tarragon which as you know is my favorite seafood herb we will also need a little bit of lemon zest along with some of the freshly squeezed juice and of course we can make creamy cod without cream right that's just cod speaking of which i have about a pound of pacific cod which is skinless and boneless and one of the reasons i was pointing to everything with a knife is because what we'll do here before we start is cut this fish into like two inch size pieces cutting across a fillet as shown and what that's going to do is help it cook a little more evenly and maybe faster plus i think it's going to look nicer and by the way don't cut on a plate with a knife use a cutting board all right sometimes i take a few shortcuts when i'm filming that i would not recommend for the non-filmer but anyway that aside while our potatoes are cooking we can get the rest of our ingredients together at which point we'll head back to the stove to see if they're done which of course we'll test by giving them the old polka poka and while we don't want these collapsing and falling apart that knife should slide in with virtually no effort and that's it once those are cooked we can go ahead and drain them and not to brag but i am a really fast drainer check it out and then to our potatoes we will add a little bit of cayenne a nice big pinch of salt and about two tablespoons of butter per potato at which point we'll go ahead and give these a nice mashing until they're as smooth as we can get them and other than giving these a quick taste for salt our mashed potato component is done and if you're wondering what happened to the milk or the cream or the buttermilk well you know what we don't want to add that stuff here all right we just want potato and butter reason being this is going to get covered with a very rich cream sauce and as you'll see we're going to be fine in that area later when we serve this up and then what we'll do once we're happy with how our potatoes look feel and taste is transfer some into the bottom of some lightly buttered baking dishes oh we definitely want to use a pan under these dishes since there's a 100 chance he's bubble over and once we transfer that in we'll kind of smooth it out and make a little bit of a wall in the center and while you can put in as much potato as you want remember we still have to fit in our fish and our cream sauce and yes of course you can do this in one big casserole dish and i should mention one big potato is probably enough for two portions so yes what i'm trying to say is i did make extra mashed potatoes which very well may appear as potato pancakes tomorrow morning but anyway once that's set we can head back to the stove to prep our sauce and fish which we'll start by melting some butter over medium-high heat to which we will add our shallots along with a nice pinch of salt and what we'll do is saute these stirring for about three or four minutes or till our shallots just start to turn golden and the reason we don't want to brown these is because brown shallots are sweet shallots and we do not want these to become too sweet all right the cream we're going to use is already kind of rich and sweet so to me the flavor of caramelized shallots will not work in this too well so as soon as they look a little something like this we'll go ahead and dump in our cream which will of course stop the browning process we can also go ahead and toss in our lemon zest as well as maybe another shake of cayenne and one more pinch of salt and we'll bring this up to a boil still on medium high and please be careful cream loves to boil over so make sure you keep an eye on it and then what we'll do once our cream is boiling enthusiastically is go ahead and carefully transfer in our pieces of cod which we are only going to cook for about two minutes okay so toss it in and toss it around and give it a little basting and as i mentioned earlier the cutting of the fish is optional or if you have two fairly equally sized fillets you can try to use the whole piece but when buying cod it can be very tough to find two pieces exactly the same size and shape which is why i do recommend cutting it up and serving it this way plus i just think it looks cooler and then after simmering in that sauce for about a minute we can go ahead and flip those pieces over and we will let it simmer in that cream for another minute at which point we're going to do two things we are going to stir in our freshly squeezed lemon juice but very important we're also going to turn off the heat all right so the flame goes off and we're going to stir in our lemon and no we are not cooking it through at this point we are just giving it a head start as well as flavoring our sauce which is why after about 30 seconds of stirring that lemon in we're going to remove that from the stove and then divide our pieces of fish evenly over the top of our potatoes and of course make sure you're mixing and matching big and small pieces alright don't put all the big ones in one and all the small ones in another not only would that be weird but your two portions are not going to cook evenly and then besides portioning the fish we will also spoon over about half the sauce in the pan which is only going to be phase one of the saucing because once we've done like two or three spoons of this sauce over each one we are gonna head back over to the stove and place this back over medium-high heat and we're gonna bring it up to a boil oh and keep an eye on the sides as this comes up to temp if some of that cream starts to caramelize onto the edges just go ahead and scrape it down and stir it in and you'll see as this starts to boil it's going to thicken up rapidly which is exactly what we're trying to do and as soon as your cream thickens up it looks like this what we'll do is turn off the heat and quickly stir in our tarragon and yes of course if you want to use another fish friendly herb like dill go for it i mean you are after all the sweeney todd of your cream cod but while any herb will work for me the most killer version is one done with terrigan all right i just think that flavor pairs the best and that's it as soon as that's stirred in we can go ahead and top our cod with sauce part two and what i was thinking here is that thinner sauce would attach itself to the potatoes and kind of get absorbed in and then this much thicker target infused cream would sort of stick to and stay on top of the fish and then for one final touch a very very light dusting of parmesan cheese oh yeah the real stuff parmigiano-reggiano and i meant to light dusting this is not supposed to taste cheesy we're just adding a little extra touch of savoriness not to mention it's going to help this brown even more beautifully and that's it these are now ready to transfer into the center of a 450 degree oven for about 10 to 15 minutes or until our fish is cooked through and everything's beautifully browned and bubbly and hopefully looks like this and if you want severe burns on your tongue go ahead and dig right in but i highly recommend you let these sit for about five minutes before carefully transferring that onto a plate and yes this is every bit as rich as it looks so if at all possible try to serve a nice big green salad with this but anyway i let mine cool down a little bit and then grab a spoon and dug right in and even though i really do love classic cream cod i have to say as far as an eating experience goes i really do think this is superior all right there are very few things that won't benefit from being browned in a hot oven and while i really do love the cod component in this dish and how beautiful it is in that rich creamy herbaceous sauce which is brightened up with that little bit of lemon what i actually love most about this are those mashed potatoes underneath which even though they started off plain have now soaked in that sauce and have magically turned into some of the best mashed potatoes you will ever have but anyway that's it what i'm calling creamy cod and potato gratin if you like basic more traditional creamy cod i'm pretty sure you're gonna love this and while i really do think it looks great in these individual size baking dishes if you're making it for a larger group and don't have enough of those you can just do everything in one larger pan all right just scale it up and it should work just about the same but whether you go banquet style or make it like this i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] bay corn that's right if you like bacon and you like corn you are absolutely gonna love this cheesy jalapeno and bacon spiked cream corn which i'm officially presenting as a side dish but truth be told i actually ate this all by itself and it really was magnificent so i think next to like a salad this would be a great main course also and by the way other than the bacon this is pretty much a vegetarian dish so with that let's go ahead and get started by adding a half a pound of bacon to this dry skillet which is over medium high heat and the first thing we're going to want to do here is cook this stirring occasionally until it's almost but not quite cooked crisp and as you'll see most of the fat's going to render out which we will then use to cook our other ingredients in and if there's one thing i know about other ingredients is that cooking them in bacon fat is almost always a great idea so like i said we'll go ahead and cook our bacon until almost crisp and while we're waiting for that to happen let's go ahead and talk corn and this is one of those recipes that will work equally well whether you shave these kernels off fresh corn or just thaw and drain some frozen corn like i'm doing here in fact if it's early in the season the frozen corn might actually work better since it'll be a little sweeter but either way we're going to need about two pounds and then what we'll do once our bacon is almost but not quite crisp is go ahead and add about half of our corn in which we will then lightly toast in this hot bacon fat and of course since i love to give you options for this step you could add all the corn or none of the corn but i like to split the difference and toast some of it just to provide a little extra sweetness and bring out some of those subtle caramely notes but anyway you decide but personally like i said i like to do about half and cook it until those kernels just start to take on a little golden brown color and then once that happens we'll go ahead and introduce the rest of our vegetation including a whole bunch of minced garlic as well as some sliced green onions mostly the light and white parts and we can save those darker green parts to garnish later and then for some beautiful bittersweet heat we will toss in a couple diced jalapeno peppers and stir all this together and then what we should do is cook this for about three or four minutes or until those veggies start to soften and sweeten up oh and you may have noticed i didn't drain off any of that bacon fat when we cooked the bacon okay i wanted to make sure we had plenty to saute all the rest of the stuff which we definitely did which means we can probably get rid of some of that fat now if we want and a great trick for doing that while we're cooking with stuff still in the pan is to just sort of push everything off to one side and then by simply taking a wadded up paper towel and some tongs we can tilt the pan which will have the excess oil running to that end where it can be quickly and easily absorbed so feel free to do that at any point during the cooking process and then the other thing we can do while our veggies are cooking is go ahead and add our seasonings which will include some kosher salt some freshly ground black pepper and of course the obligatory shakes of cayenne and we'll go ahead and stir all that in and we'll continue on medium high until we think our veggies have cooked long enough at which point we'll go ahead and introduce our heavy cream and by the way the recipe which inspired this actually uses mayonnaise and sweetened condensed milk instead of cream which seemed a little overly rich for me and what's the word i'm looking for insane so it sounds kind of funny to say but we are actually doing a lighter version by using heavy cream but anyway we'll go ahead and stir that in and wait for it to come to a boil and then once that happens we'll go ahead and dump in the rest of our corn and we'll continue stirring it cooking until we're sure that's all heated through and then once we're positive that's happened what we'll do is turn off the heat and stir in a lot of cheese and i'm going with one part mozzarella to two parts monterey jack although as usual please use whatever cheeses you want i mean you are after all the jason bourne of this cheesy bacon but the original recipe just uses mozzarella so i thought i would semi honor that with the addition of some monterey jack which is kind of like mozzarella only has a little more flavor but regardless of what you use we'll go ahead and stir that in and then let me give you a little heads up here one thing i learned about this recipe is that if you want the cheese all nice and stringy and stretchy you have to brown the top and serve this immediately because if you wait like an hour like i did you will not experience the same effect as you're about to see but anyway whether you wait or do it right away we're going to go ahead and finish the top with cheese before browning it and here you can see me doing this very intricate pattern that i thought would look super cool but as you're about to see once it was brown you could not tell i did this so yes this was a complete waste of time but you know what i regret nothing i mean come on we gotta try things even if they don't end up working okay the attempt is still heroic so i went ahead and cheesed the top and then finished up with one last dusting of cayenne and that's it once that's set we'll go ahead and pop that in a very hot oven or preferably under a broiler for about five to ten minutes or until everything is heated through and the top is beautifully browned and hopefully looking a little something like this which i think looks amazing and really doesn't need a garnish but if we have some of those green onion tops around we might as well slice those up and throw them on besides it's a proven scientific fact that eating raw onions even a small amount helps prevent disease so keep that in mind if you're one of these i don't like onions people i mean you should still do it for your family and that's it our bakehorn is done and ready to enjoy probably as a side dish but i didn't actually have any other food to serve next to this so i just went ahead and ate this all by itself and it really was fantastic oh and like i said if you let this sit that cheese loses all its stringiness and it basically just sort of dissolves into the cream to form one of the best cheesy sauces you've ever had and of course all that bacon and jalapeno don't hurt in fact i'm going to switch to a spoon so i can get more of that stuff and every single ingredient in this from the cheese to the green onions to our peppers and bacon are just absolutely perfect pairings with sweet corn i mean it really does not get much better than this so basically this is my new all-time favorite cream corn recipe oh and by the way if it's still piping hot the texture is going to be fairly loose but as this cools it will thicken up which will make this even more side dish like and this stuff would be perfect serve room temperature at a picnic or a barbecue but anyway that's it a little something we call bay corn and by we call i mean of course the bun shop in la calls it that which is where the original recipe that inspired this is from but anyway clever names aside this is a beautiful delicious and easy to make corn side dish that's equally amazing hot warm or room temp which is why i really do hope you give it a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] truffled cauliflower graton that's right this only sounds like it's too expensive to make but i'm about to show you a great trick which is going to allow you to enjoy the magic of truffles without breaking the bank in fact this product is so affordable you could literally buy enough for this recipe with the contents of your average piggy bank and what is this mysterious too good to be true ingredient this truffle pecorino oh man this stuff's amazing it's a classic italian pecorino cheese studded with real black truffles and of course it tastes great otherwise we wouldn't be using it but the aroma of this stuff is just incredible which is pretty much how it works with a truffle most of the taste sensation you're getting is actually coming from your nose but anyway we're going to take a fairly modest sized wedge and grate it up and i'll go into detail on the blog about where to find this cheese it's pretty easy and of course all those little pieces of truffle are now being finely shaved which is releasing even more flavor and aroma so let's go ahead and grate that up and set it aside and what we're going to do is add that to our white sauce which is the next step so we're going to start the sauce by adding some butter to a heavy bottomed saucepan set on medium heat and to that i'm going to add some flour and sure you're supposed to wait for the butter to melt but i never do and what is the effect nothing so we're going to stir that flour into the butter and eventually that butter melted and it came together and looked like this and then all we're going to do is cook this mixture which as you well know is called a roux for about two or three minutes just to take the raw edge off the flour and how do you know it's done it will smell like cooked pie crust oh yeah your nose is a very underrated tool in the kitchen and i'm not just talking about nose print cookies but anyway we're going to cook that roux on medium heat for two or three minutes at which point we're going to turn off the heat just turn it right off because the next step is to introduce the cold milk and i wanted to make the point that you can just dump everything in and stir you don't have to add it gradually as long as the milk is cold and the roots hot you will not get lumps so that's what i was attempting to do here except the measuring cup slipped and i spilled some which was unfortunate but besides making a mess it really didn't cause any problems with the sauce the real problem is it's distracting you from the point i'm trying to make that if your milk's cold you can just dump it all in at once and whisk so we're just going to dump all that in at once we're going to whisk fairly vigorously until you think it's incorporated and then and only then will we turn our heat back on to medium-high and cook this stirring until it thickens and as you all know that's not going to happen until this comes up to a simmer all right so here it's starting to get a little thick and you'll see a couple minutes later this comes up to temperature and starts to bubble it will thicken up beautifully so that's looking good and at that point we can turn off the heat and it's actually a little tough to see the thickness with the whisk so let me switch to a ladle and right there you can see it a little better a beautifully thick and smooth sauce and at this point with the heat off we're going to go ahead and add the rest of the ingredients so let's go ahead and season this up i'm going to do that with some cayenne pepper and some salt of course and we're also going to want a nice pinching nutmeg in this and of course i'm gonna freshly grate mine it's much better so a little touch of nutmeg and we'll give that a mix and then last but not least we will add our already grated cheese and by the way your sauce didn't all of a sudden get lumpy pecorino is a pretty firm cheese and because we have the heat off here those shreds are not going to melt totally which is exactly what we want all right don't forget this is going to get baked so just add that stir it in and simply set it aside until you need it and it will thicken up as it cools do not be alarmed it's not going to cause any problems and we will reserve that until our cauliflower is ready so let's take a head of cauliflower and remove the core oh be careful cory things are a very common cause of cuts in the kitchen and really other than the very very center of the core you can use everything so once we've removed that we're just going to cut these into pretty big pieces i don't like it too small you don't want it falling apart so i'm going to cut mine about this size and if you're not sure how much you should be prepping i kind of like to fill the casserole dish as i'm cutting that way i know have the perfect amount but anyway bottom line you need enough rock cauliflower florets for one 9 by 12 or 9 by 13 casserole dish and then once our cauliflower is cut we're going to give it a quick blanch in salted water put a lot of salt in there you should actually taste the salt in the water and once that water's boiling and properly salted we'll go ahead and add our cauliflower in and set the timer for six minutes we're not really cooking this all the way through we're just taking the raw edge off so don't worry if it doesn't come back to the boil until the last minute or two of your timer and then once your timer rings we're going to drain that very very thoroughly this is obviously edited but let that sit and drain well at which point we're going to transfer it into a buttered casserole dish and by the way if you enjoyed me spilling the milk check this out as i'm dumping it in one of the pieces flies out which i try to catch thereby causing me to kick the tripod so yes if you're putting together the food wishes trivia game this might qualify as my clumsiest video ever but anyway we're gonna transfer that cauliflower in and then i like to take a minute and take my tongs and kind of turn the pieces of vegetable so this sides up and the stems are down i think it just looks nicer and once that's set let's go ahead and dump over our truffled white sauce which as i warned you has thickened up no problem just dump it over take your spatula and spread it over evenly and again the waterier the vegetable you're going to make a craton out of the thicker this bechamel sauce needs to be so you'll see when it bakes this is going to be perfect and once we've spread that out nice and evenly we're definitely going to want to give it the whole tapatapa and we'll even throw in an old shake a shaker which is going to settle all that sauce down and around our cauliflower and then before this goes in a very hot oven we're going to give it a very very light dusting of plain breadcrumbs cover the surface but not too much just a light dusting and then on top of the breadcrumb we're going to do a little bit of parmesan can you just use more truffle pecorino of course but for me the parmesan's a little nuttier a little more intense for the top just personal preference and what's going to happen is that cheese is going to fuse on to that breadcrumb which is going to fuse onto the white sauce which is all going to fuse onto the cauliflower you got to love fusion and then we'll finish off with a little drizzle of olive oil i also decided to give it one last little shake of cayenne mostly because of muscle memory and at that point it's ready to bake so let's pop that in the center of a 425 degree oven for about a half hour or until it's beautifully golden brown and bubbling so don't take it out til you see that but once it's bubbling and beautifully golden brown your truffled cauliflower groton is done and you can definitely serve yours just like this but because i got to do a few pictures i'm going to sprinkle a few chives on hey i got him in the backyard why not and if you've never had truffles before you're in for a huge treat and probably surprise it has a very earthy very subtle flavor and what's generally described as an intoxicating aroma and i agree i mean i'm just trying a little bite here from the corner and i'm pretty intoxicated about it and even though we power boiled it and baked it for a half hour those pieces of cauliflower should still be intact and not falling apart as you can see here although you know what that's gonna be easier to see if i put this on a plate sorry but i was sans entree so i didn't have any meat to serve this with but i can't even pretend to be concerned about that this was just so incredible but anyway that's it truffled cauliflower gratan if you're looking for a very memorable special occasion side dish featuring truffles that you don't have to win the lottery first to make then this is for you so i really hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] broccoli soup au gratin that's right i was eating some french onion soup a while back and i thought to myself this beautifully brown cheesy crouton would probably be fantastic on other soups like broccoli for example so i decided to give it a try and what followed was exciting and educational but also upsetting and confusing so i don't want to give too much away but let's just say you have a surprise ending to look forward to all right so that should hold you and in the meantime we'll go ahead and get started the same way we start almost all soup recipes by sauteing a diced onion with some salt in melted butter over medium heat until it starts to soften up and turn translucent which will take you i don't know about five or six minutes but as usual forget about the time just cook those onions stirring until they soften up and sort of look like this and once that happens we can go ahead and toss in a couple cloves of minced garlic and we'll cook that stirring but only for about a minute okay as usual we don't want any color on that garlic so we will saute that garlic in the onions for about 60 seconds at which point we can go ahead and dump in our cooking liquid which in my case is going to be chicken broth or if you're going vegetarian here of course you can use veggie stock whatever that is and once that's in what we'll do is raise our heat to high because we need to bring this up to a simmer before we add our broccoli which ideally we will prep while waiting for our liquid to come up to a simmer and what follows is my preferred method for cutting this for soup all right what i like to do first is kind of cut off all those florets since that part of the broccoli cooks a lot faster than the stem so what i'll do is trim those off and then possibly cut some of those in half if the stem is still a little big and then once that's set we can turn our attention to the much tougher much thicker stem part which i like to have and then quarter before cutting up in fairly small pieces in this way the flower portions of the vegetable are going to be way way overcooked by the time the stems tender and i continued on using that method until i had about three pounds of trim broccoli which is about a pound more than i usually use for this soup but because i was going to finish this agroton style with that cheesy crouton i thought it would be a lot better if i made the soup thicker but anyway once our broccoli is prepped assuming our stock has come to a simmer we can go ahead and transfer that in and i do realize it looks like i have way too much vegetable and not enough liquid but it's actually okay because what i'm going to do with this on high heat is cover it and let it cook for a couple minutes like that until the broccoli kind of softens up a bit and we can really see what we have so that's what i did and a few minutes later it looked like this and i could tell i had just enough liquid and of course if you don't you could add a splash but i determined this to be fine and what we'll do is reduce our heat to medium low and simmer that stirring occasionally for about 10 minutes or so or until that broccoli is very tender so this is me about 10 minutes later checking things out and i could kind of tell just by stirring it it was fine but as you know we always like a second opinion so i grabbed a fork and gave it the old polka polka and determined yes it was in fact tender which means we can turn off the heat and blend this completely smooth which i'm going to do with a stick blender but of course doing it in batches in a traditional blender will work beautifully okay so that took me a few minutes but eventually i got that nicely pureed and what we'll do once that's been accomplished is go ahead and add the rest of the ingredients which will definitely include a nice big splash of heavy cream as well as we'll do a little touch of freshly grated nutmeg which is very traditional in a cream based soup and there's probably a really good reason for that we will also do some freshly ground black pepper as well as the customary shaker cayenne and then last but not least a very generous application of salt and then what we'll do at this point is go ahead and stir that in while simultaneously returning that to medium-low heat and as soon as we're confident our soup is nice and hot again we can go ahead and serve it but not before tasting for seasoning and by seasoning i mostly mean salt all right generally the difference between a good vegetable soup and a great vegetable soup is like a teaspoon of salt so we're going to need to taste this and almost certainly add some more salt and once our soup is tasting exactly like we want and it's come back to temperature we're pretty much ready to serve but before we do we're going to need to make some nice crispy butter croutons which i'm going to do in the oven by buttering both sides of a couple pieces of stale bread and once those slices have been sufficiently slathered we'll go ahead and pop those into a 375 degree oven until they're nicely browned and crispy okay we want those pretty much cooked all the way through so those are looking just about perfect right there and then once our croutons are done and our soup is ready we can move on to final assembly so i'm going to use the same pan we did our croutons on and we will fill up some oven proof crocks probably the same ones you use for french onion soup and we will fill those almost but not quite to the top because of course we have to leave room for our crouton which almost fit in but i had to do a little trimming but that's okay we can put those trim pieces along the side and then once our crocs have been croutoned we'll go ahead and add our grated cheese over the top and i'm doing a blend that's like one third grier cheese and two-thirds sharp cheddar and it looks like i'm being super generous with the cheese but you'll see this actually melts down to a pretty thin layer so if you want to put a little more and be even more generous go ahead you are after all the dan fouts of your cheese amounts but anyway that looked like a good amount to me and then what we'll do once our crocs have been croutoned and cheesed is transfer those under the broiler for approximately five to six minutes or until our cheese is beautifully browned and bubbly and because it's pretty common for broilers to have hot spots i do like to rotate mine after a few minutes but unfortunately my oven turns off if i open the door so i can't show too much of this scintillating footage but anyway we're going to go ahead and finish those under a hot broiler until they look a little something like this check it out man do those look good and i cannot wait to grab a spoon and get into that and since we don't need to let these rest that's exactly what i did after scattering over a few chives and i was so excited as i took this first spoonful which seemed really really thick like i was trying to make it thick but this was like really really really thick i think partly because i sat for a few minutes while i took pictures and that crouton sucked in some of the moisture but also i think that it was just way way way too thick and when i started eating it with the bread or at least attempting to i quickly realized this is terrible this is not good at all right instead of making broccoli soup all groton i'd accidentally made wet broccoli bread pudding and no one's ever walked into a restaurant thinking man i hope they have wet broccoli bread pudding today so at this point i was very disappointed and upset and borderline despondent so it was clear i had failed spectacularly but there was no way i was going to let the food win so having determined the main problem was the soup being too thick i tried doing another crock but before i did i thinned out the soup and passed it through a fine strainer which not only made this thinner but significantly improved the texture and once i ladled in my new and improved soup i went ahead and topped it with the crouton and the cheese as usual and while it came out pretty much looking the same it was way way better like night and day right by doing a thinner soup the contrast between that cheesy crouton and creamy liquefied broccoli was way more successful which isn't saying much because the other one was really terrible but i actually really did enjoy this and i felt a lot better that i didn't give up of course appearance wise we still have a problem since as soon as you try to eat some of the toast it still disappears below the surface but i have an idea to fix that also by cutting up our bread next time you're doing smaller square croutons then topping it with the cheese so that we can eat it spoon by spoon without wrecking the whole raft so that's what i'm going to do next time if there's a next time but anyway that's it the epic saga of my broccoli soup all ground comes to an end with a relatively happy ending so i really do hope you give this a try soon with a much thinner soup and maybe a bunch of small croutons instead of one big one but either way head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] potatoes roaming off that's right i'm not always certain how authentic the recipes are that i post but this time i am really certain since i was shown how to make this incredible potato side dish by its creator chef john shank although now that i'm remembering he did credit his mom back in buffalo showing him how to make it but the point is i learned this directly from him in his steakhouse in las vegas about 10 years ago and it really was one of the most memorable parts of the trip in that it's one of the few things i can remember but anyway let's go ahead and get started by buying some very large russet baking potatoes okay except no substitutes it has to be large rusted potatoes for this and what we want to do is make sure we scrub those very clean since we are going to use the skins for this recipe and then what we're going to do is go ahead and wrap these in foil and by the way you only need three large potatoes for this recipe but i'm gonna do four since i had four and i'll just save one to fry with some eggs so don't let that throw you off we only need three and then what we'll do once wrapped is go ahead and give them the old polka polka with some kind of small pointy knife and that will allow steam from the inside of the potato to escape while these big and that's it once foiled and poked we can go ahead and pop those into the center of a 400 degree oven for approximately an hour and a quarter or until very tender and of course since we never want to guess in the kitchen we're going to go ahead and test those with a knife and if that doesn't slide right in they're not done put them back in for a while but these were perfect and then what we'll do as soon as these are cool enough to handle is go ahead and unwrap them at which point we want to let these cool all the way down to room temp because one of the secrets to this recipe is wrapping these and popping them in the fridge overnight before we use them and i guess it doesn't have to be overnight but they really do need to be completely cold when we grade them all right so this is me the next day pulling them out and what we'll do is go ahead and grate these with the skins on a cheese grater and if you're not big on potato skins and you're a little bit worried about this don't be okay they're almost imperceivable in the final dish although having said that when you get down to the end of a potato you'll probably be left with a large piece of skin which you can discard so i went ahead and grated three potatoes as shown at which point we can go ahead and start adding the rest of the ingredients including some type of onion and in my case shallot which in case you're not familiar sort of looks like a small red onion and it's often described as a cross between an onion and garlic but i don't actually love that description i mean kind of sorta but it really is a unique oniony flavor and by the way no matter which kind of onion we use we really do want to dice it very finely with a very sharp knife okay because in the classic recipe this does not get cooked before we mix it in and by the way in the blog post i'm going to talk about all your other options for this as well as i will also talk about the amounts since i used a really large amount and probably more than the average person will want but anyway bottom line we're going to need some minced onion and then once that's prep we'll go ahead and grab a couple forks with which we're going to mix everything together and we will go ahead and toss our freshly minced shallots in along with what looks like a ridiculous amount of salt but it's not because that's large grain kosher salt so it always looks like more than it is and you really do need like a teaspoon of kosher salt per large baked potato for something like this and then besides the salt we're also going to want to season this with some pepper but not freshly ground black pepper this time we're going to use freshly ground white pepper which i don't use a lot of but that's what chef john recommended and then we will also do a little touch of cayenne even though that is not in the original recipe and then what we'll do before we add the rest of our ingredients is give this a quick mix using the old fork toss and clean method which means we dig down underneath with our forks and then toss everything up and then after doing that a time or two we clean off our forks and repeat and the reason we're using this method is one of the secrets to this dish is not to mash these potatoes so we really do want to be gentle and then what we'll do once that's been mixed is stop and add our cheese which should be a nice sharp white cheddar and then once that's in we will mix it until just combined using the exact same fork toss and clean method and sure you probably could use your fingertips for this but i really do think the forks will cause less smashing and mashing oh and can you use a different cheese if you want sure should you no please use a white cheddar and for heaven's sake grate it yourself okay there are pre-grated cheddars and there are great cheddars but there are no great pre-grated cheddars but anyway we'll go ahead and very carefully mix in our cheese at which point we can add the last ingredient lots and lots of sour cream and please not the low-fat one we're gonna need that fat and then once we have that dolloped here and there we'll go ahead and fork that in again being as gentle as we possibly can okay above and beyond the flavor one of the things that makes this dish so incredible is that if done properly we end up with the texture of a perfectly baked potato that has just been freshly mixed with some sour cream so we will very carefully toss in that sour cream until just barely combined at which point we will stop and very carefully transfer this into some kind of buttered baking dish and as we're transferring this in it's critical not to compress the potatoes any more than it is necessary to get them into this dish okay so we want to pile these up as high as we possibly can and then just kind of use the tip of our fork to settle everything down a bit and by the way this will kind of sink and settle down as it cooks so it really literally can't be too high and then to finish this off i'm going to do a little dusting of cayenne over the top and by the way if you wanted to toss a little extra cheese on the top go ahead but there's so much already mixed in i really don't think you need to and i actually think it looks better if you don't but suit yourself and that's it we are now ready to transfer that into the center of a 425 degree oven for about 30 minutes or so or until it's piping hot all the way through and the top is browned and it looks just like a magnificent steakhouse side dish and that's it we really don't have anything left to do except start eating and i really would have trouble picking my favorite all-time potato side dish but believe me this would be way up near the top of the list and even though it kind of looks like a mashed potato casserole the texture is not even close this really is so much lighter and fluffier and is meant to mimic the texture of a freshly baked potato that you've just mixed with sour cream and this really is almost identical to that experience and maybe even more so which is all thanks to cooking and chilling and grating those potatoes first and also of course being very gentle as we mix this and making sure we're not compressing it and of course if you want to dress this up with maybe a little bit of bacon or some chopped herbs go ahead this is the classic version but that's up to you i mean you are after all the david hasselhoff of your potatoes romanov and speaking of large hunks of meat don't just eat this out of the dish use it as an excuse to buy a couple nice big strip steaks which you will then sear to a beautiful medium rare and then serve with the pan drippings and that my friends is really how you want to enjoy these incredibly delicious potatoes even if you're a vegetarian maybe do a cheat day and try this it really is tremendous i mean if there's a better protein and starch pairing than this i really want to try that but anyway that's it my 100 authentic version of potatoes romanov so sincere thanks to chef john and of course his mom for showing me how to do this classic and i have no idea why it took me 10 years to do a video for it hopefully you do not wait that long which is why i'll finish up by saying i really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] root vegetable gratin root vegetables are so good for you and you can tell because you know they don't taste that good but in this casserole they actually are very delicious and this is so easy to make how easy even a congressman can make this all right maybe it's not that easy but it is very simple and here's how you do it so you're going to want an assortment of vegetables i have a big old parsnip some yukon gold potatoes turnip rutabaga and celery root so basically for prep we are going to peel and slice the vegetables for the rutabaga for the turnip i'm just going to use a regular potato peeler i'm going to cut those in half so they're easier to slice all right the celery root has a little more of a sort of rough irregular skin so i just use a knife to peel that one but regardless peel your vegetables and then you're going to want to use one of these a cheap plastic vegetable slicer also known as a mandolin and you're going to set it to make nice thin slices by the way you see me switching here to the plastic guard this is good but it's not something you'd actually sacrifice fingertips for so be careful use the plastic guard and you can see we're slicing these nice and thin eighth of an inch probably the potatoes i'll just leave the skin on wash thoroughly and by the way i know potatoes aren't a root they're tuber so save your comments and emails and while you're slicing not a bad idea throw them in some cold water so they don't oxidize all right so i sliced my parsnip and my vegetables were ready so what we're going to do here is we're going to take a big pot of boiling water we're going to salt it very well and we're going to blanch those vegetables for three minutes okay so what we're doing here we're going to soften the vegetables just a hair we're going to mellow the flavor out just a little bit and we're also going to season it as it absorbs some of the salt from that water so throw them in throw the cover back on of course we're on high heat the whole way here and after three minutes you're simply going to drain those you don't need to rinse them just drain them really well then we're going to take a 9 by 13 standard casserole baking dish i'm going to put a little bit of extra virgin olive oil in the bottom that's not so they don't stick that's mostly for flavor i'm going to dump in my veggies now if you want to spend a half hour laying those in by hand so they're all nicely layered go ahead not me i dumped them all in and i just used my tongs to kind of even them out you're going to see later we're going to do a trick that makes them all perfectly perfectly even all right next up we have to prepare our cream mixture i have some butter in a saute pan over medium heat i'm going to add some chopped garlic and i'm gonna cook it in that butter until it starts to sing what does that mean listen hear that as soon as the garlic starts to sizzle dump in your cream we don't want the garlic to brown so dump in the cream i'm also gonna grate in some fresh nutmeg you can use the powder stuff but buy a nutmeg and actually grate a little in yourself a pinch of cayenne and some fresh thyme thyme is the official herb of root vegetable gratins why it's just how it is don't question it it works it's been time tested and then to lighten things up instead of going all cream we are going to put in some chicken stock or chicken broth i'm going to throw in a pinch of salt you could use vegetable broth here i only use chicken stock so this would not be vegetarian and what we're going to do is we're going to turn the heat up to medium high and as soon as this comes up to a simmer we're going to turn it off and we're going to pour it over our root vegetables in the dish now if you want you can strain out the garlic i don't i like it rustic by the way rustic the lazy chef's favorite adjective but you'll see as i even this out it's not going to matter because i'm going to make sure everything is distributed evenly and all that garlic most of it will settle down into those vegetables anyway now if you want to you can grab your spatula or some tongs and pull some of the nicer bigger rounder slices of vegetable up to the top for a cooler looking surface really does not matter okay so once that's done we're going to definitely give it the old shake shaker and the old tapatapa all right i'm gonna finish with a nice application of freshly grated reggiano parmesan cheese they're good stuff i'm gonna cover loosely with foil okay so it's covered but it's not airtight all right it's just kind of formed around the pan i'm going to put that on a baking sheet in case there's a boil over put that into a 375 degree oven for about 40 minutes but it's not done yet at that point we're going to take off the foil and here's why i didn't have you bother layering all the vegetables earlier at this point if you take a spatula and just kind of push it down and give it a little shake and a little wiggle all those root vegetables will just even out and you will have the same density the same thickness throughout okay you can test it with a paring knife the vegetables should be almost tender but not quite now we're gonna put another bit of parmesan on top so we get some nice browning happening on top all right so i'm gonna leave it uncovered i'm gonna put it back in the oven for another i don't know let's say half hour it's done when it's bubbling when it's browned and when the vegetables are perfectly tender so mine took about an hour and fifteen minutes altogether and i know i say this every time you gotta let this sit at least 15-20 minutes but after 20 minutes you should be able to cut this spoon it up serve it next to something delicious which obviously i did not have so i'm serving it a la carte great side dish for any time of the year but especially around the holidays oh and by the way fun fact as i was making this i was listening to the roots and speaking of the roots you are so gonna quest love this you people over 50 ask your kids to explain that reference to you anyway i hope you give this delicious side dish a try root veggies they're good for you and they can taste good so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more information as usual and as always enjoy [Music] no bake mac and cheese with a crispy potato chip or ton this is such a cool trick macaroni and cheese with a crispy topping that doesn't go in the oven unbelievable and here's what i did so i took one bag of those kettle style extra super crunchy potato chips i'm using a white cheddar flavored or a new york cheddar flavored version you know which one i'm talking about right so take your potato chips throw them in a bag pound them with something i suggest a rolling pin until you have crumbs about that size all right not too small not powder but not large chunks either all right just about like that all right we're going to take those dump them in a large non-stick skillet put the heat on medium i'm going to add a pad of butter all right unsalted butter about a tablespoon i'm also going to add a few tablespoons of plain bread crumb and freshly grated reggiano parmesan all right the real stuff all right you got gotta look for the reggiano ask the cheese person no fake parmesan in this it won't work all right so the butter is gonna melt and then basically on medium heat or maybe a little lower than medium but just about medium you're gonna toast all this in the butter the potato chip crumbs the bread crumbs and the parmesan cheese of course you're going to toast all that in the pan until golden brown now you got to keep an eye on it the potato chips are already kind of golden colored so you're going to have to keep it moving and keep watching you'll actually start to smell it you'll start to smell that parmesan caramelizing and you'll see on the edges see that just the slightest bit of browning happening on the edges all right so you don't want to go too far but you want to make sure they're very well toasted and caramelized alright when that's done turn off the heat set aside so our topping is done i'm going to take a lot of cheese i'm using a combination of orange extra sharp cheddar and the white cheese there is cave age gruyere i'm going to give all the specific recipe ingredient amounts in the post as i always do on food wishes and then we're going to need one batch prepared bechamel sauce all right i'm also going to give the measurements for that so simple we've done it in many recipes but i will link to the video in case you're not clear so when you're going to put in the cheese turn the heat off or to as low as it goes if you have like an ultra low setting you cannot boil cheese you cannot cook cheese it will get all grainy and separated put it in there stir it around till it melts when it melts you're ready to use it and what are we going to use it on boiled elbow macaroni so i'm going to boil about a cup of elbow macaroni in salted water i just want to make a couple portions now when you're doing a no-bake mac and cheese cook the pasta all the way we usually undercook it a little if we're going to put it in the oven but this was cooked till it was tender i'm going to drain it really well and there's no measurements here i'm going to stir in enough cheese until i have a beautiful mixture the batch of cheese sauce that i'm going to give you the amounts for is enough for a one pound box of macaroni but i'm only using a cup here because i don't want to waste and by the way with the extra cheese sauce you can just keep that in the fridge and microwave it when you need it to loosen it up the graton topping can be made ahead and just warmed up in a pan briefly before serving so all this stuff can be made ahead of time and then you simply boil your pasta when you want to eat and you can see just how amazing and delicious that looks creamy rich so all we did was take a standard white sauce added our cheese to it and mixed it in with cooked pasta and you're thinking hey that looks pretty good and it is good but when you go ahead and then top with crispy buttery cheesy potato chip crumbs unbelievable all right usually i try to describe how awesome stuff is so you get all inspired to cook it this time i can't because it's too awesome to describe its awesomeness is infinite that'd be kind of a cool t-shirt anyway there it is i'm digging in just simply incredible okay so i really hope you give this a try this will work on any mac and cheese recipe you like you can even use this on a baked mac and cheese just don't saute it in the pan as long just give it a couple minutes top the mac and cheese and bake that half hour like you usually do it'll still work so you can use this as a traditional topping if you want but really it's designed for this use here macaroni cheese in a bowl top with a crispy topping and you are in mac and cheese heaven i hope you give this a try all the ingredients for all the different parts are on the site including a link to the sauce and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,169,189

Keywords: thanksgiving, green bean casserole, best green bean casserole, green bean casserole recipe, thanksgiving sides, best thanksgiving sides, what to make for thanksgiving, best potato gratin recipe, best casserole recipe, main dish casserole recipes, easy main dish casserole recipes, gratin recipe, make ahead dinner recipes, meals to make-ahead and reheat, easy meals to reheat in microwave, vegetable gratin casserole, chef john best casserole recipes, comfort food recipes

Id: SpVKHTaPwy0

Length: 100min 43sec (6043 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2022