Gratin leger de coucourdon/Light Pumpkin Gratin, Sauce aux Airelles/Cranberry Sauce

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2009

Lydie’s cookbook has two recipes for pumpkin gratin: one that is standard and one that is a lighter version. I decided to try the lighter version. My husband arrived from his travels, quite jet-lagged. As a result, we did not have a traditional Thanksgiving. If we had had a traditional Thanksgiving I had thought of making this pumpkin gratin. Since it was still on my mind, I decided to make it the day after Thanksgiving and serve it up with one of those store-bought roasted chickens. This recipe calls for diced pumpkin baked in the oven with garlic, parsley, bread crumbs, and covered over with skim milk. I never would have thought that it would coalesce into a rich, creamy texture, but it did. It was very simple to put together. Then it is baked in the oven for 1½ hours. It was made particularly simple for me because I couldn’t find pumpkin at our local grocer’s. Instead, I substituted already cut acorn squash. No more chopping and peeling pumpkin for me! I suppose I’ll have to make the standard version as well someday (and use pumpkin!), given my goal of making all of the recipes in the cookbook. I feel little incentive for it, though, because this recipe was so good and so uncomplicated compared to the other version.

These recipes left me wondering what defines a gratin. I always thought it meant something in a cheese sauce. So, I consulted my trusty Wikipedia. It said: “an ingredient is topped with a browned crust, often using breadcrumbs, grated cheese, egg and/or butter”. Well, I guess the operative word is “often”. I learned that it needn’t have cheese, or egg or butter for that matter. This recipe is a real find. What a way to have gratin without all the rich ingredients. I learned that a gratin is also defined by a gratin pan – a shallow baking dish. I don’t have one of these but it worked out just fine.

Lydie has a recipe for homemade cranberry sauce. My husband always makes homemade cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving, with a little zest of orange grated in for a lovely flavor. The trouble is, the sauce almost never gels. I thought I would try Lydie’s recipe to see if it would gel. It didn’t. I referenced other cookbooks of mine and learned that the key to gelling is having enough sugar. I guess I’ll try again in the near future, since I’m on tap to make Christmas dinner this year and am determined to have gelled cranberry sauce (as well as the canned jelly type, which my sister prefers)!