I recently bought a small black ceramic baking dish from Tiger. I love that store. If I was a rich girl, I will buy everything I love from that store and just create a little Mad Hatter Tea Party all for myself. Now, that’s an idea…
Back to the baking dish – it was a small dish, and it is perfect for small individual servings of baked food, like moussaka or lasagna. I decided to bake a small side dish that will go well with a big main meal – like roasted chicken. I also found a big piece of celeriac at the supermarket recently, and I thought it’d be great to have a celeriac and potato au gratin dish.
You can use as much celeriac or potato as you want. I like a 50-50% combination myself.
The portions I stated below are not for the tiny black baking dish you see above, but for a normal sized baking dish. You can use a smaller dish, and make more layers, of course, or use several different small-sized dishes and make individual cute portions!
This au gratin is simple, and I did not use onions or garlic as I wanted the flavour of the celeriac to stand on its own.
Ingredients:
- 1kg of potatoes, peeled and sliced thinly to about 1 cm slices (or thinner, if you can)
- 1kg of celeriac, peeled and sliced thinly to about 1 cm slices (or thinner, if you can)
- 250ml of cream
- 250ml of milk
- 2 tsps of dijon mustard
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Water
- A bit of olive oil, to grease the baking dish, and to lightly pour on top of the gratin just before baking.
Preparation:
- Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C.
- Grease your baking dish with a little olive oil.
- In a big bowl, place the sliced potatoes and season lightly with some salt and pepper, and toss to coat. Do the same with the celeriac in a different bowl.
- Arrange the bottom of the dish with a layer of potatoes and then the next layer with the celeriac. Do that until you run out of potatoes and/or celeriac or until you have reached the top of your baking dish. Make sure to leave a bit of space as the cream liquid might spill over while its baking if the dish is too full.
- Season the last layer with a little more salt and freshly ground black pepper.
- In a pot, combine the cream, milk and mustard and whisk while gently heating it up on low heat. Once its all mixed thoroughly, pour the mixture over the potato and celeriac layers until it has reached all the way to the top. If it doesn’t, add water.
- Garnish with a light thin layer of olive oil, as this will help the top layer to brown slightly later.
- Cover with foil, and place in the oven to bake, for about 50 minutes. I usually bake the dish uncovered for the last 10 minutes for some colour.
- Serve as a side dish. It goes really well with roast meats!
airinie 