Thursday, 25 November 2010

Improvised version of Potatoes Florentine

I was tired of the same old potatoes and decided to improvise a dish by adding creamed spinach and tomatoes to see what happened. Of course, the dishes containing spinach acquire the posh "Florentine" title, which helps awaken the taste buds...

Ingredients

2 or 3 medium potatoes per person
Enough creamed spinach for a generous layer
Fresh cream
2 or 3 tomatoes, again to make a layer
Grated cheese (I used Emmenthal, but Cheddar works just as well)
Salt & pepper to taste

Preparation

Wash and/or peel the potatoes. Parboil them, slice them and reserve (at this point, I drizzled them with olive oil and kept them in the pan where they were cooked). Chop the spinach, season with salt & pepper and a pich of nutmeg, then add some fresh cream. Slice the tomatoes and grate the cheese. In an ovenproof dish, put a layer of creamed spinach on the bottom, a layer of tomatoes, a layer of grated cheese and finish with a layer of potatoes. Place in a pre-heated oven until the potatoes are golden. I cheated on the spinach and used frozen épinards à la crème. I was improvising, after all... I regret not using some garlic (that was very out of character!) and I think it would make the dish a lot better.

You may wish to alter the order of the layers (but not the potato layer) or add some grated cheese on top of the potatoes for the last ten minutes or so. Introduce any variations according to your own tastes and see where it takes you. The idea is to make potatoes more interesting...

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