I'll miss summer and Sunday mornings filling our bags at the farmer's market, but I'll take a crisp fall afternoon spent checking out pumpkins and eating apple cider donuts still warm in the paper bag (like we did today). I also love the excuse to cook and eat big warm meals. I can't remember exactly what the occasion was last year around this time, but Mark and I decided to spend a Saturday night making a complicated, multi-course dinner for ourselves. We'd never cooked duck at home before, so that became our project.
The duck was fabulous, but I'll save that for another post. Today I'm going to share the recipe for one of our sides, a recipe we've made again since and shared with family: Potato-Bacon Gratin. The recipe comes from
Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin. I love that this cookbook divides itself not by ingredient or course, but by season. For this meal, we also made a great salad from this book, Barbara's apples and Asian pears with radicchio, mint and buttermilk dressing. That also deserves its own post.
Anyway, back to bacon. This recipe is beautiful in its simplicity, but don't be deceived by that either -- the flavors are more than the sum of their parts:
1/2 pound slab applewood smoked bacon
4 cups thinly sliced onions
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons thyme leaves
2 1/4 pound Yukon Gold potatoes
About 2 cups heavy cream
Kosher salt and black pepper
Heat the oven to 350. Cut the bacon into pieces (lardons) and cook in a large saute pan over medium-high heat for five minutes or so. Remove the bacon to drain but leave the fat in the pan.
Add the onions, two teaspoons thyme, one teaspoon salt and some pepper. Cook for 15 minutes or until the onions start to caramelize. Turn the heat down to low and cook another 10 minutes, stirring often, until the onions are deep, golden brown. Remove from heat.
Use a mandoline to slice the potatoes into the thinnest rounds you can handle. We bought our mandoline specifically for this recipe and we use it all the time now; I recommend investing in one!
Pour 1/2 cup cream evenly onto the bottom of a 9x9 gratin dish. Place one layer of potatoes side-by-side, slightly overlapping, on the bottom. Top with a third of the onions, scatter a third of the bacon on top. Arrange a second layer of potatoes, drizzle 1/4 cup cream over it, season with salt, pepper and a pinch of thyme. Press the potatoes down to let the cream soak up through the layers.
Top with another layer of potatoes, onions and bacon. Drizzle over a little more cream and salt and pepper. Press down again. Drizzle with 1/2 cup cream and two layers of potatoes, salt and pepper. Press. Scatter the rest of the onions and bacon over the potatoes and drizzle with 1/3 cup cream. Season one last time. The cream should cover the potatoes but not be soupy.
Cover tightly with two layers of foil. Bake an hour and a half. Uncover and turn the oven up to 425 and bake for another 20 minutes or until the top is golden brown.
