Showing posts with label casserole. Show all posts
Showing posts with label casserole. Show all posts

Friday 13 February 2015

All-About-The-Sauce-Potato-Casserole

Over the past week I've collected some photographs of what I've made, but it's kind of hard to decide what to post next for you. Right now there was the choice between....hmm...should I tell you? No, I won't so it will still be a surprise in case I decide to write about the other things as well ;-)

Today you're seeing something that is a really great winter dish that doesn't require any fancy summer-ish ingredients.


This is it!

In this case it is a potato-broccoli casserole, but in fact it's all about the sauce. Over time my Mum and I have had several versions of this dish with potatoes plus several varying vegetables. Without the sauce, though the dish wouldn't be as good as it is. I had this with my housemate during the week and the thing she said to me was that the sauce was really nice (was this a British understatement for "great"? - I'd hope so), so this must be the key factor.


vegetables
350 gpotatoes
250 gbroccoli
sauce
1onion
20 gbutter
about 4 tbsp = 35 gmillet flour (you can make that in any blender from millet grains)
125 gcashew milk (grind 15 g cashew nuts and blend again with 110 g water)
250 gvegetable stock
salt
pepper
1/4 tsppaprika powder (sweet if possible)
nutmeg

  1. First of all, cut the potatoes (unpeeled) into halves if they're big or leave them whole if they are small. Make sure that all pieces are relatively evenly sized. Cut the broccoli roughly in smaller florets. You can use the stems as well. You don't need to make them as small as you want to eat them though, it's less fiddly if you do that after steaming,
  2. Place all vegetables in a steaming basker or a metal sieve and steam over boiling water for about 15 minutes or until as soft as you like it. In the meantime prepare the sauce.
  3. Prepare cashew milk, vegetable stock and millet flour.
  4. Finely chop the onion. Gently heat butter in a small pot and fry the onion in the butter. When fried, add vegetable stock and cashew milk. Bring to a boil. With a fork whisk in millet flour. Over low heat cook for a bit and keep stirring. The mixture should thicken up and get creamy after a short while. If it doesn't add some more flour. Season with spices to your liking.
  5. When potatoes and broccoli are tender, cut potatoes in slices and the broccoli into bite-sized pieces. Grease a small casserole dish with butter and first put in potato slices and then the broccoli pieces on top. Evenly distribute the sauce on top.
  6. Bake at 250 °C (or as hot as your oven goes) for about 20 minutes until the top is slightly browned.

Instead of millet flour you could also use regular flour, but millet flour makes the sauce have a nicer looking yellow colour.

You could vary this by for example adding some fried mushroom (this adds a dirty pan, though) or by  cooking potato slices and zucchini in a bit of vegetable stock. I recommend you try it as written and then you'll be able to make up your mind as to what vegetables go well with the sauce until maybe I've made the other varieties of the dish as well ;-)

Ah, by the way I've added a print button to the blog! When you open a specific post (not the home-site, but by clicking on the title of the post) you can now find it under the post and can optimise each page to the way you'd like to print it! In case you ever want to print something which I sincerely hope :-)