Monday, November 7, 2011

Collard Green & Sweet Potato Gratin

Next up, a delicious gratin to use up our collard greens! A friend of mine made this gratin a couple of weeks ago, but with Chard instead of Collards. I was eager to try making it myself, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. My only problem was the cooking time. Our oven isn't very accurate & usually under- or overcooks foods, regardless of how hard we try to prevent it. This time, it overcooked yet without cooking down the liquids as much as necessary. I guess the heat was too high (though I had it at 400 just like the recipe states) because it cooked quickly & then browned, rather than slowly cooking through the dish. But, regardless, it still tasted fabulous! I highly recommend this dish to anyone who has an abundance of greens (aka, anyone in a winter CSA). The pairing of sweet potato & greens is something magical.

Recipe from Smitten Kitchen

The making of the gratin:

Making the Béchamel sauce (flour, butter, scalded milk, garlic) 

A layer of sweet potatoes in the dish, with parsley, thyme, salt, & pepper.

The greens! I love that this recipe utilizes every bit- stems & all! 

Mmm, cheesy. The dish with the Béchamel sauce & Gruyere cheese, before the oven.

Before going into the oven to bake down the Béchamel.

After about 40 minutes at 400 degrees fahrenheit. 
We had a fun night eating this dish, too. A dear friend of ours, Marie, came over & ate with us, then we all watched Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone. Nathan had a random itch to watch it, and we gladly obliged. It was a really fun, low-key evening, which I definitely needed after the most stressful on-call weekend ever. Every week, someone from my department takes home the "on-call" phone in case there are any emergencies with our residents or, more often, a resident counselor calls out of work. I had the joy of being on-call this week & weekend.... and I spent what felt like the majority of my weekend dealing with super stressful situations. I need my weekends to recoup from the stress of the week, so this on-call weekend was almost more than I could bare. Thankfully, I have the most fabulous boss & she told me to take a half-day off work one day this week. Awesome, right? She's the best. 

My hopes are high for this week. Nathan & I are having a movie date out, at a movie theater (because I got free movie tickets from work). We're also having dinner Friday night with one of my friends from home whose boyfriend might be applying to Vandy Div. I haven't seen her in 4 or 5 years, and I'm really excited to catch up with her. 

In other news, my cats sill love to sleep in weird positions:

Her legs are going the opposite direction of her paws. How is that comfortable?!

No comments: