Potato Gratin, Easy-peasy and Delicious

I don't make enough of this stuff! It is so easy to make and every one just wolfs it down. So much so that this time I made two dishes of it so we could get a second meal out of it.

Preparation time: 25 min. Serves 4 

Ingredients:

6	Potatoes
200 ml	Cream (or soy substitute)
	Salt and Pepper
1 tbsp.	Finely chopped fresh herbs
1 cup	Grated cheese

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200 C, 400 F or 180 C if you have a fan oven.

Peel and slice the potatoes. The thinner you slice the potatoes the quicker it will cook and the better it will taste.

Arrange the potatoes in a heat proof flan dish.

Pour over the cream ( I use half whipping cream and half soy based cream in order to lower the fat content). Make sure that your potatoes are covered with liquid. They should not be swimming in it, but every potato should have something on it, else they will not cook properly.

Sprinkle with salt, pepper and the herbs. For herbs I used thyme and rosemary because I still have them in a pot left over from some other recipes, but you could use anything or nothing at all! Finally sprinkle with cheese.

Stick it in the oven and once you can stick a fork through the potatoes and the cheese is melted take it out and enjoy. I can't tell you how long it will take since I don't know how fat your slices will be or how large your potatoes were. Mine took about 20 - 30 minutes. Just wait for the cheese to melt, the cream to bubble and then try pricking it with your fork.

Sorry, it was consumed to fast to be able to take pictures of the final product!!

We enjoyed our potato gratin with vegetarian schnitzel and steamed beans. But they can be eaten with anything.

Half an Hour Vegetarian Pumpkin and Potato Soup

Well this one was never truly meant to be! My shopping schedule is all off due to the kids vacations and as usual I forgot that on Sunday the shops are closed. Something that I have never quite been able to get used to. The fridge was almost bare except for some butternut squash and a few potatoes. So I decided to throw them "all" together and make a soup. I happened to have half a loaf of bread left over from yesterday and a few cheeses so I figured we could manage.

Oh and I forgot to mention it was day 2 of the girls musical performance so I only had ... yes, you guessed it, 30 minutes to prepare dinner. When we picked up the girls their first question (as always) was "what are we having for dinner?". They were not too happy when I said soup and bread.

I pretty much grew up eating soup. My mum's soup is famous! I remember my aunt, uncle and cousins coming to visit one evening and they joined us for dinner quite sporadically. My mum made soup and my aunt asked my mum what she put in it because it was delicious. The reason that this stuck in my mind was that my mum made the soup from the beans left over from lunch! Actually whatever was left over from lunch went into the pot together with onions, garlic, water and a vegetable cube. It was then boiled, put in the liquidizer and served with bread and butter. Hmmm delicious... if you only knew! Okay that's not to say that my mum didn't make soups from scratch. She did that all the time, with spinach soup being our all time favourite. Always made with organically grown spinach, freshly plucked from the back garden. And in case you are wondering left over soups really do taste good, depending on what was left over of course!

Serves 4; Preparation time 30 mins.

Ingredients:

3 tbsp.	Olive Oil
1 small	Onion
2 cloves	Garlic
500 g	Butternut squash or Pumpkin
250 g	Potatoes
750 ml	Water
1	Vegetable cube
12 stems	Thyme
	Salt & Pepper

Method:

Soup is ultra easy to make. First peel the pumpkin and potatoes and then cube them. The smaller the better because they will cook quicker and be easier to pulverize at the end. Also dice the onion and the garlic.

Then take a large saucepan and heat it on high. Throw in the oil, onions and garlic and stir fry until soft. Around 1-2 minutes. Then add the pumpkin and potatoes and mix it well. Let it fry for 5 minutes or so, stirring to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. 

Add the water, vegetable cube, salt and pepper stir it all up, put the lid on and let it boil. Reduce the heat as necessary. 

Now I have this thyme plant left over from making the caramelized leek quiche so I decided to put some of that in too. But I really could not be bothered with picking the leaves off so I just took around 12 stems of about 7 - 8 cm length and chopped them up. I picked out a few of the harder stems once I was done chopping and threw the rest of the leaves into the bubbling pot.

The vegetables didn't have to boil for more than 10 minutes and they were done. I then pulled out my Kenwood stick mixer (Stab or Bamix depending on where you live and your age!), stuck it in the pot and mashed everything up. If you want a lumpy soup you can just use a potato masher. If you only have a liquidizer your in for bad luck because you can't put hot liquid in a traditional liquidizer. Actually there is a way around it. If you prepare the vegetables with a minimum amount of water you can then add cold water to them once they are cooked. This is usually cool enough to use in a liquidizer. However, afterwards you have to heat it up again. 

The girls just looked at the soup and said "what is it?" After I explained what was in it our oldest agreed to having one soup spoon full and the youngest demanded half a spoon. But half spoons don't exist (according to my husband) so she had to make do with a whole spoon. Then they tried it and couldn't get enough of it! I had to fight to have some left over so that I could pack it up as a school lunch for the next day!!! So it was successful (otherwise I would not be sharing it here, no?).