Now let’s cook
A gratin with porcini tucked between the layers of potato. The dill waits on top.
Ingredients
- 30 g dried porcinishop-bought dried porcini (Boletus edulis): the flesh of this mushroom does not darken when dried
- 400 ml waterplain tap water
- 15 g butterchurned from cow’s-milk cream
- 1500 g potatotubers eaten as a vegetable
- 8 g saltfine table salt
- 1 g black pepperground black pepper
- 4 g garlicfresh garlic: the cloves are peeled and grated
- 1000 ml milkcow’s milk
- 300 ml whipping cream30% fat or more
- ½ tsp nutmega spice made from the seed of the nutmeg tree
- 100 g butterchurned from cow’s-milk cream
- 15 g dillfresh dill leaves, used as an aromatic seasoning
Method
Rinse 30 g of shop-bought dried porcini, cover them with 400 ml of water and leave for 20 minutes.
Lift the porcini out of the water and strain the liquid through a fine sieve. Pour it into a small pan and boil it down to 120 ml.
Chop the porcini finely and fry them in 15 g of butter over a medium heat for 5 minutes, until no liquid is left in the pan.
Heat the oven to 190 °C.
Peel the potatoes, cut them into rounds 3–5 mm thick, then salt and pepper them.
Cut the garlic clove in half, rub the inside of a heatproof dish with it, then crush the garlic. In a large pan, combine the milk, the cream, the mushroom liquid, the crushed garlic and the nutmeg, add the potatoes, bring the mixture to the boil and take the pan off the heat at once.
Move half of the potatoes into the dish with a slotted spoon, spread the porcini evenly over them and cover with the rest of the potatoes. Pour in the liquid from the pan: it should cover the potatoes completely. Cut 100 g of butter into small pieces and scatter them over the top.
Turn the oven down to 150 °C and bake the gratin for 45 minutes, until the potatoes are tender: a knife should slide in without effort.
Scatter the chopped dill over the gratin and serve hot.
