Don't Sweat the Aubergine

oven dish is fine.)
    Put the cream and some milk (about 150ml to start with) into a saucepan of roughly the same diameter as the gratin dish; add the garlic, nutmeg and a little salt, and tip in the potatoes. Arrange them as economically as possible, and add more milk, if you need to, until it comes level with the top layer. Heat the pan gently. When it starts to bubble, tip the contents into the gratin dish, tidy up the potatoes, and bake for about 1 1/2 hours, or until the surface is browned and the potatoes are sitting in a reduced, wobbly liquid.
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VARIATIONS
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    Another way to prepare gratin dauphinois is with cream only. Unless you use an artery-blocking quantity of the stuff, you’ll probably find that it doesn’t cover the potatoes; so, in order to cook the exposed potatoes (by steaming) and to prevent the cream from reducing and thickening too quickly, cover the gratin dish with foil. (Nevertheless, it’s probably worth using a little more cream than in the main recipe – 350ml, say.) After about 50 minutes (at gas mark 3/160°C), check on progress: if the potatoes are tender but the cream is still runny, uncover the dish and cook for 10 minutes or so longer. If the potatoes are not tender, you may need to turn up the oven. If the potatoes are not tender and the cream has evaporated, er … did you cover the dish tightly enough?
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WHY YOU DO IT
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    1 • What potatoes, and how many? Waxy potatoes such as Charlottes work best, because they retain their textures. But any will do.
    ‘Small portions please,’ write Alastair Little and Richard Whittington in their recipe (
Keep It Simple
) for gratin dauphinois. ‘I’ll serve and eat as much of it as I like, thank you very much,’ is my response to that; but I concede that a portion of dauphinois containing the equivalent of one medium-sized potato for each person is about right.
    2 • How much liquid? One way of cooking gratin dauphinois is to layer the potatoes in a dish, and then pour over hot milk and cream; but it’s hard to know how much milk and cream you’ll need. That’s a reason why I suggest putting the ingredients into a saucepan first: then you can add liquid until you have enough. A second reason is to enable you to heat the ingredients. It might take them half an hour to reach simmering point if placed cold in the oven.
    3 • How strong do you want the garlic? You could flavour the dauphinois with a hint of garlic by rubbing a cut clove over the gratin dish, which, if it’s earthenware, will absorb some garlic and give it back to the dauphinois during cooking. Or, for a stronger flavour, cut up the garlic and then crush it (using a mortar and pestle, or with the back of a strong knife on a chopping board) with some salt. Mix it with the butter or oil that you smear over the dish.
    4 • Clarified butter . The milk solids in ordinary butter can cause food to stick. Smear on the clarified butter or the oil with your fingers, or with a paper towel (which of course will absorb a good deal of it). To clarify butter: melt unsalted butter in a saucepan over a very low heat. Pour the yellow butter into a cup or jar, leaving behind any foam or solid material. Cover, and refrigerate.
    5 • Oven heat . It is impossible to give a recipe that you can guarantee will work every time. Containers will vary in heat conduction and surface areas; potatoes will vary in their propensities to absorb liquid. I can prepare a dauphinois one week and find it in perfect condition after an hour in the oven; the next week, I will follow a similar formula and find that at the same point the potatoes are still swimming in milk and cream.
    Most recipes suggest that gas mark 5/190°C for 50 minutes to an hour will work; and, often, it will. I prefer to cook my dauphinois more slowly, at gas mark 3/160°C, for about an hour and a half. Check it after 30 minutes. Is it bubbling gently? Good. Check it after 45 minutes. Has it started to thicken? Not at all? Then turn up the oven. Keep checking. The dauphinois is ready when the surface has browned and the potatoes are sitting in a thick, reduced cream. The one issue you don’t need to worry about is whether the potatoes will be tender: the milk and cream are excellent aids to cooking.
OTHER BAKED, SLICED POTATO DISHES
    There’s a variation on the cream-only version of gratin dauphinois in Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers’ first River Café book. You fry cubes of pancetta (100g for 4, say) and garlic before adding