I had my first Au-gartin in Barbeque Nation and I fell in love with it. I love the creamy texture with lots of vegetables topped with my favorite one - Cheese! I had tried making it at home using the microwave. While it was good to taste, my audience (sister and husband) were not immensely impressed (after much hype from me). The reason being - the cheese never gets to cook or brown using the microwave. I didnt know that an OTG will do wonders for au-gratin. Suddenly last week, I had a glow bulb moment and Thought why not try au-gratin making in my little darling (otg) and tried it yesterday. I used different variety of vegetables along with potato and we both loved it. One is free to use any vegetable that doesn't go soggy easily like carrots, beans, cauliflower. This is one easy but very tasty dish.
Recipe:
Ingredients:
- Mixed Vegetables sliced - 2 cups (I used Leeks, Broccoli and Yellow Zucchini)
- Potato cubed - 1 cup
- White sauce or Bechamel Sauce - 1 cup
- Grated Cheese - Just enough to cover the vegetables
- Breadcrumbs - 1 cup
- Salt - as req.
- Oil - less than 1 tbsp
- Water - required for boiling potato.
Preparation:
- Take a pan, heat oil. Fry leeks. Put in the zucchini and broccoli. Cook until half done with enough salt.
- Boil potatoes (not too soft, but firm). Add salt.
- To prepare the white sauce, take a heavy bottom pan. Heat butter. Add 2 tablespoon of maida.
- Fry until raw smell goes off.
- While continuously stirring, add little quantity of milk and stir quickly. Repeat the process until there is a smooth white liquid .
- Bring it to boil while stirring continuously. Add enough salt and white pepper powder.
- Now take a baking pan and fill the first layer with boiled potatoes.
- Next layer is formed with the cooked vegetables.
- Pour the white sauce all over these vegetables and spread it evenly.
- Fill the next layer with breadcrumbs and press slightly with your hand.
- Cheese forms the final layer and spread it evenly all over the breadcrumbs.
- Preheat the oven on 180°C for 10 mins. Bake the Au-gratin for 20 mins until the vegetables and sauce is firm.
- If required, toast for 5 mins to get the crunchy brown layer of cheese.
- Our Au-gratin was just good with some fresh home made garlic bread.
aame
Gosh u are super !!! I love augratin too !!!! Btw i had been wondering for all such baking pursuits would a microwave oven suffice or an otg is better? Do we need to have both ? I intend on having one of these when back home and since u got a idea of both so you can tell me better ! 🙂 🙂
CHCooks
For baking, OTG is the best V 🙂 I mean, if you want that crusty top and bottom layers on your cake and also... for crispy cookies - OTG is the best.. My OTG is the best thing that ever happened to me in my cooking adventure 🙂
You can do a lot with microwave too.. I mean the normal cooking as well which is not possible with OTG. I have both of them and find both useful but for different purposes 🙂
If you only want to do baking, toasting or grilling - go for an OTG. if you want another fast means of cooking, go for microwave (high end models lets you do a lot compared to the basic ones).. Hope my comment was of some use to you 😀
aame
Yeah this surely helped 🙂 I would love to go for an OTG but i guess i would have to miss out on the reheat feature on the microwave 😛 Anyways let’s see 🙂 Thanks so much for the detailed input 🙂
CHCooks
hahaha.. thats true 🙂 you are most welcome!
CHCooks
and A big thankuuu 🙂
mydearbakes
This is a fantastic recipe, thanks so much for sharing! =)
CHCooks
Do try it out 🙂
Archana Radhakrishnan
Heyyy can u pl also share ur white sauce recipe? Would help cooking novices like me 🙂
Ramya
Hi Archana, I dont have a separate recipe post for white sauce.. but here is how I make it most often.
https://cookingfromheart.com/2015/10/16/creamy-spinach-sweetcorn-fettuccine-alfredo-low-calorie-recipe/
Archana Radhakrishnan
This helps.. thanks!! 🙂
Ramya
🙂