And On Father's Day de-I Did Not Cook

Earlier in the week, my beloved Wife said to me what did I want her to cook for Father's Day. She had already had it in her mind she would make waffles from scratch with bacon for the breakfast component. I did a quick inventory of the things I know Wife excels at and for dinner, the obvious choice to me was THE POTATO DISH (more on that in just a bit).

As I do almost all our cooking now, I hadn't even considered that I wouldn't be cooking on Father's Day but it was lovely. For the waffles, Wife uses a recipe from the trusty Joy of Cooking (our addition is 1973) which calls for the separation of egg yolks and whites with the whites beat into stiff peaks and folded into the flour, fat and egg yolk mixture. Sadly our waffle iron sucks. We use it so infrequently that we are not motivated to replace it. Waffles chez de-I is usually with butter and real maple syrup. We had made some homemade apricot preserves recently and I thought adding the slightly tart fruit component would be a nice juxtaposition...and it was!

Now on to the Potato Dish. This is a Wife original creation dating back to when the children were young in the 1980s. No one quite remembers just how she devised it. She didn't look to any cookbooks which were unusual for her. It is along the lines of a scalloped potato or gratin of potato but seems to have its own uniqueness from what I've tried over the decades.

It is sliced potatoes with a small number of chopped onions, a lot of cheese - US American Cheese precisely - a lot of melted butter and a small amount of milk. These go into a butter baking dish, are backed until the potatoes are cooked through. Then the broiler is put on to crisp up the top. At its best, it is a wonderful suspension of cheese and butter held together by potatoes.

OMG Yum!

Wife, in classic family cuisine the world over has never measured anything nor written anything down related to this so most of us in the family who try to duplicate it fail.  We had a perfunctory Hebrew National Jumbo Hot Dog with this to add a bit more protein and fat to the already protein and fat-laden meal. And for the wine, I had a 2013 Barbaresco!

Thanks Wife! Really wonderful