Gratin

✅ The essentials

A gratin is something already cooked, pasta, potatoes, vegetables, fish, put in a dish with a sauce or cream, cheese on top, and twenty to thirty minutes in the oven. It is the dish for leftovers and the one children eat. It gets made ahead and waits in the fridge until the oven.

🍳 The method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 °C (400 °F). Butter a dish.
2. Put the cooked filling in the dish: pasta, boiled or sautéed vegetables, chicken or ham, leftovers.
3. Pour the sauce over, a béchamel, or cream with a beaten egg for a faster version, and mix a little so it goes down everywhere.
4. Cover with grated cheese, 80 to 100 g for four, and a little breadcrumb or butter in pieces for the crunch.
5. Bake twenty to thirty minutes, until it bubbles on the edges and the top is golden. Let it rest five minutes before serving, it is burning hot.

⚖️ The quantities

For four: 300 g dry pasta, cooked, 500 ml béchamel, 150 g ham, 100 g grated gruyère. A dish of 25 by 20 centimetres.

⏱️ How long it takes

Forty minutes, twenty-five of which in the oven where you do nothing. If the pasta and the béchamel were made the day before, ten minutes of assembly and the oven.

🩹 If it goes wrong

The top is golden but the inside is lukewarm: the dish came out of the fridge, cover with foil and put it back ten minutes. Too dry: not enough sauce, next time a little more milk in the béchamel. Not browned: three minutes under the grill, watching, it goes fast.

🍽️ Make it tonight

The ham and pasta gratin, with yesterday's pasta and a ten-minute béchamel.

🥘 The linked base recipe: Ham and pasta gratin (serves 4)

• 300 g short pasta (penne, macaroni, small shells)
• 1 béchamel (40 g butter, 40 g flour, 500 ml milk)
• 150 g cooked ham
• 100 g grated gruyère
• Salt, pepper, nutmeg