STEEMIT IRON CHEF 🥔🥔🥔 A kind of Gratin Dauphinois or The good taste of pure simplicity!

Yes! @progressivechef invited for another round of STEEMIT IRON CHEF. I think this is going to be interesting and mouthwatering again. Thank you @progressivechef for launching this challenge. Everone is so motivated and interested to supply quality content! I get to see very inspiring recipes a lot. The hubby is happy too ... 😜 ... he motivates me to stay on track (I am not sure whether he thinks about the rewards or about the good foods he gets to eat every week.)

Read some more information about SIC and this week's challenge in this Link and also smile about some really hilarious potato heads ... A must see! 🤣

My dish is a pure plantbased version of the timeless french classic: the great Gratin dauphinois. I always loved this dish and I made it countless times during my time as a vegetarian. I didn't need anything to come with it. I enjoyed the pure taste of potatoes topped with the flavors of garlic, black pepper and some herbs.

So, shouldn't I make a dish I adore so much myself for my SIC friends? It is not very complicated to make but oh, soo good! I replaced the dairy products and modified the main ingredient, the potato, a bit compared by the original recipe to make it my own creation and to create a slight different look. To make it a whole dish and to add the beautiful colors I can't resist on the Green Markets, I made two different salads to be served with the gratin. One of the salads is a classic salad made of different lettuces and the second is vegetable based.

These are the ingredients I used for everything:

Main ingredients for the Gratin Dauphinois:

• about 10 potatoes (depending on their size. I took half french purple potatoes and a red skinned waxy potato with the beautiful name Laura)
• 200ml of a plant based cream (I took oat cream. In my opinion it's characteristic flavor is more neutral than soybased cream or milk)
• 200ml of a plant based milk (this was oatmilk)
• 50ml of a good extra virgin olive oil
• 1 glove of garlic
• 1 tsp. of sea salt
• 1 tsp. of nutrional yeast
• dried and fresh thyme and tried rosmary
• half a tsp. fresh ground black pepper 

Preparations:

Grease an ovenproof dish with olive oil and rub the bottom and the walls of the dish with a half of the garlic. Wash the potatoes carefully and cut them in very thin slices. (In contrary to the original recipe I didn't peel them because the peel was a particular aspect in their looks, especially for Laura with the red skin but the usual yellow inside. Also I hoped, the special earthy taste of the peel would make my creation more unique)

Place alternating layers of the red and the purple potatoes in the dish accurately (I always placed the short side of a small cutting board in front of the last line to avoid it slipping into the dish).

Cut the garlic into fine cubes and springle them evenly over the potatoes slices as well as the dried thyme and rosemary.

Mix cream, milk, olive oil, salt and pepper and the nutritional yeast and pour it carefully over the potatoes. Put the dish into the preheated oven (180 degrees Celsius) and bake for 50 minutes.

In between prepare the salads. The lettuces I used were reddish lamb lettuce, baby spinach and a head lettuce I have never seen before in my entire life: its color were pale yellow with purple spots on them. Beautiful like a rose!

The dressing for it was made of a plain white vinegar and Aceto Balsamico, extra virgin olive oil, a bit of an Olio al Limone, pear juice and a tsp. of mustard, salt and pepper. It tasted light and pleasant fruity.

The vegetable salad was made of some cooked scarlet runner beans, one small navette (kind of turnip) and a yellow beet. I cut the navette in pieces and the beet in sclices and mixed them with the beans and some olive oil, vinegar, some apple juice and salt and pepper. I almost forgot to mention the green stuff in this salad. It is a vegetable that i discovered for us just recently. It is glasswort (Salicornia), a salt-loving plant, which grows in the salty mud of the shallow waters of salt marshes for the pleasure of gourmets. It is crispy and juicy and salty and perfekt for salads. We loved it instantly.

The aromas of the gratin in the oven smelled amazing in between...

This was the look when it came out of the oven:

We loved it! I couldn't stop eating even when I was filled already. It was addictive! Smooth and creamy inside and a bit crispy on top. The good thing was there were no specific tastes of the plant besed milk or cream. Everything blend together perfectly. 

Now I hope you like it too and I wish all the other participants to this wonderful challenge a good work and great success for their entries! ☀️