Every culinary repertoire should have a dish that is dead simple and yet has the cachet of being something special, the kind of dish that when you put it on the table, everyone says, “Oh, wow, I just love…” whatever it is. My dish is a经典法国土豆, which takes about 15 minutes to get into the oven, is made from ingredients that you probably already have in your kitchen, and is the perfect complement to both “fancy” main dishes, like rack of lamb or beef tenderloin, and “homey” dishes, like roast chicken or meatloaf.

You’ll find many versions of this dish, called gratin dauphinoise in French (pronounced gra-TAN doh-fee-NWAHZ); mine is a simple marriage of potatoes and cream, with a few seasonings and a sprinkle of cheese. After 40 minutes in the oven, this gratin becomes so much more than just potatoes and cream—textures change, flavors develop, and the thing transforms itself into a nutty, rich, satin-textured whole that’s way more than the sum of its fairly commonplace parts.

Make it Your Way:Use the土豆格兰丁食谱制造商to create a gratin recipe with all您的最喜欢的口味，附加和浇头。

The potatoes are low-fat, but the cream’s not

I think Yukon Golds are perfect for this dish. Actually, I think Yukon Golds are perfect for a lot of dishes. They have a sweet, nutty flavor, and they’re a great balance between being starchy —so they get soft and creamy when cooked—and being waxy (like a boiling potato)—so they keep their shape better than baking potatoes. But if you can’t find Yukons, do use a starchier potato, which should be labeled baking potato, Idaho, russet, or russet Burbank. You want the potato to have some starch to mingle with the cream during cooking, and you want the slices themselves to have a buttery-soft final texture.

As for the cream, let me say this: if you’re looking for a low-fat dish, this is not it.这道菜充满了奶油，不，没有替代品。There are versions of potato gratin that use half-and-half, or even stock, but for the kind of dish that makes your guests keep saying, “Oh, I think I’ll just have one more little slice,” and makes you keep thinking, “Oh, I hope they don’t eat the whole thing—I want some for breakfast,” you need real cream, and lots of it. And there’s a technical reason for using cream, too: when a milk product is cooked with an acid (potatoes are quite acid), it can curdle unless the butterfat content is 25% or higher.

我在菜的顶部放了一层细腻的谷色奶酪。请注意，我说精致，因为如果奶酪太粗切碎了，或者奶酪的层太厚，它可能会与下面的土豆变得坚硬和分开。因此，请使用刨丝器上的细孔，不要试图在奶酪上装载。进口的gruyère，emmental或comté将具有完美的坚果味味。

尽管这道菜非常容易组装，但您确实必须注意切土豆。它们必须非常统一且非常薄 - 均匀，因为您希望它们都以相同的速度烹饪，因此每口咬均匀且稀薄，因为薄是这道菜魔术的关键。这样想：如果您有两磅切成薄片的土豆，这意味着您有很多切片，因此有很多表面可以使淀粉出来，奶油要进入。奶油和马铃薯的交集使质地如此出色，并且有更多的切片，您的每口都有更多的交叉点。

因此，由于完美的切片至关重要，因此使这道菜成为您的动力锐化刀。如果您一直想要一个，或者购买曼托林切片机。幸运的是，获得完美的圆形切片并不重要，因为我们不会享受完美的重叠外观。这意味着您可以在左上图中使用窍门，以使马铃薯一直稳定，直到您将其切成薄片。

唯一的其他警告这dish is be careful of cooking it in too hot an oven or for too long. While you must cook it long enough for the alchemy to take place, if you go too far, the cream will separate and the butterfat will start to break out. Watch for this as the potatoes go through distinct stages of cooking: first you’ll see lots of mad bubbling of cream, which makes you say, “This can’t possibly be right; it’s swimming in cream.” Next, the amplitude of the bubbling decreases, but the frequency stays high because the cream is getting thicker; the top of the gratin also starts to brown. The last phase is small bubbles, thick cream, and just the first few drops of yellow butterfat appearing around the edges of the pan. Take the dish out of the oven the moment you see any butterfat.

The other key to this dish is not to serve it right away—give it a good 15-minute rest; it will still be hot on the plate, but the cream will form a more clingy cloak around the potatoes. This is actually a very important thing to know about a lot of food—roasts, steaks, lasagne, fruit pies. Letting the dish cool and relax a bit before serving it lets liquids redistribute, textures even out, sauces thicken up, and flavors come to the fore.

关于这道菜的最后一件事是，第二天它很美味，很冷，也许只是在烤箱里散发出几分钟的寒意，或者在微波炉中几秒钟。配上一个冷gratin dauphinoise的楔子，配以简单的绿色沙拉，穿着相当锋利的醋汁，理想地用核桃油制成，并祝贺自己是一个很好的厨师。