The seeds for last night’s dinner were sown a few days ago when Arlene took my shopping list to the market and came back with a quart of heavy whipping cream. “It’s the only size they had left,” she said. I used the few tablespoons I needed, snuck a bit of cream into other dishes for a few days and realized that I had a lot of cream ready to go bad. So I helped it along. The liquid went into a clean glass jar with a spoonful of yogurt stirred in. I covered it with the most porous, un-maskworthy tea towel in the kitchen and let it sit out overnight. the next day I had a lot of crème fraîche, which would keep. I figured a use would eventually reveal itself. I screwed the lid on the jar and popped it into the fridge.
Fast forward to yesterday when an unbelievably gorgeous box of produce arrived at my door.* It was from The Chef’s Garden, an Ohio farm that until the crisis kept Michelin-starred restaurants in micro greens and other tender young vegetables. Now in order to survive they’re doing home deliveries, which I couldn’t recommend more. In the box were two clamshells, one filled with pea tendrils and the other with young arugula (past the sprout stage but before pubescent leaf variegation). These two, mixed in a salad bowl with the best oil and vinegar in the house (walnut oil and Banyuls wine vinegar) and a sprinkle of salt, had to be the star voice in that evening’s meal. Playing backup was a quick pickle made with the small, sharp green and watermelon radishes from the box. I followed a recipe as best I could remember from a convo with Linsey — salt, rice vinegar, red pepper flake, ginger, garlic, soy sauce and a good bit of sugar.
The only protein I had in the fridge that wouldn’t try to upstage the salad? Yes, eggs. I made a mushroom omelette. I hot-seared cubed button mushroom in oil in the bottom of my cranked-to-infernal Dutch oven in oil, then finished them with butter, garlic and some of the fennel shoots and baby basil from the produce box. They were so good we all ate spoonfuls like an amuse before dinner, but the rest went into the omelette with some shredded gruyère.
Now came the component of the meal that went straight to the geekiest geekitude of my curious cook’s mind. I wanted to make a potato gratin, but since there was cheese in the omelette, I really didn’t want to make the superrich, bubbly, gooey, cheesy kind of gratin, but one that was more about the potatoes.
I remember interviewing a great Atlanta maître d’ named Claude Guillaume many years ago for a story I wrote on gratin dishes, and he told me he grew up eating a dauphinois glazed with crème fraîche rather than cheese. With this thought, I wanted to run naked through the streets of Syracuse.
I also upped the ante by giving myself the challenge of preparing a gratin that would cook through with ever covering it, letting crust and caramelization sneak into the crags of loosely scattered potatoes. I’d need high heat, a wide-but-shallow baking dish and thick, skin-on slices of a potato variety that would keep its integrity. Yukon Gold.
I sliced seven or eight potatoes and tossed them in a large bowl with about a cup and a half of the crème fraîche, which I had seasoned to a pitch with salt, white pepper, nutmeg and garlic. Stupidly but not deal-breakingly-so, I added some slivered green onion that contributed little flavor but burnt on the top. I buttered the dish, laid about a third of the potatoes down and scattered a handful of shredded gruyère. Three layers, finished with the remainder of the cream from the bowl drizzled over the top.
I had the oven preheated to 400 and after about 10 minutes was worried that it would brown too much before cooking through, so I cranked it to 500 for another 8-10 minutes. It came out really well, and after everything else on the table was gone, it continued to be immensely pickable. I liked this first draft enough to want to try it again, playing with the temperature and the proportions to get the best and best tasting crags.
And as good as it was, nothing could beat the flavor of that salad. The rest was cooking, that was spring.
*A quick note on my personal ethics. I’ve known and been friendly with Lee Jones from The Chef’s Garden since I visited his farm for a story I wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He sent me the produce as a gift. I don’t feel comfortable recommending a product I didn’t pay for, so before writing this post I went online and sent the exact same box to my brother. I’m sure I’ll be ordering plenty more. Also, YOU’RE WELCOME, ROBERT.