Potato and ham gratin

Wednesday 27 June

We had a knuckle of first-cut ham just sitting around, and there were potatoes sprouting in the bin. A potato and ham gratin is the logical solution, but you can be misled by many of the recipes out there. Most say to slice the potatoes thin but not to cook them; instead, you are supposed to make a complicated bechamel and cheese sauce for them and bake, very slowly, until they're tender. Which as far as I've seen, will be never.

It's more practical to pre-cook the potatoes until they're edible. If they're boiling-type potatoes or Yukon Golds, you can slice and parboil them; we had small Russets, so we gave six of them two ten-minute rides in the microwave, essentially steaming them. Then we sliced them a quarter-inch thick. The ham was sliced into thin flakes, and we grated about a half pound of Colby-Jack cheese. All this got layered into a buttered casserole, in the order: ham, potatoes, cheese. We paused at the last layer of potatoes, poked a few holes in the layers, and poured over about a half cup of cream into which we'd whisked a dab of Dijon mustard - wish we'd still had some of our whole-grain, but this would do. Then we topped it with the final layer of cheese, covered the casserole, and baked at the People's Temperature for about 15 minutes covered, then another 20 uncovered, till it was browned and bubbly. Despite our hunger, we let it rest for 10 minutes more, which makes it good solid food rather than palate-burning molten lava.