Tonight's dinner plan was that I'd make a potato gratin with other half of the asparagus bunch used in last night's dinner. I reconsidered and decided instead to use the farm fresh eggs and rainbow chard I bought at the farmer's market this past weekend.
I looked through my kitchen journal from last year - at a meal I made for a full moon dinner one night in April. Tonight's dinner was based on that recipe.
Two Yukon gold potatoes were sliced thinly using a mandolin slicer and placed in a gratin dish.
To that I added olive oil, two diced shallots, two diced cloves of garlic, sea salt, and freshly ground pepper. There was no obsessive and pretty layering. No sauteeing the shallots and garlic with the olive oil separately before adding it to the potatoes. It was messy, unstructured, and disorganized. Kind of like life at times.
Four leaves of the rainbow chard were sliced thinly and added on top of the potatoes.
In a pot, I mixed four eggs with 1/2 liter of whole milk and about 100 ml of heavy cream. The herbs I added include fresh chives and thyme.
After pouring this custard mixture over the potatoes and chard, I grated fresh Parmesan and lemon zest over the entire casserole.
This messy dinner fare was baked for about 50 minutes at 375F, covered halfway through baking. Despite the unconventional and haphazard method, the taste was exceptional.
