Serve this hearty gratin with grilled bluefish or roast chicken. Sit outside. Sip something cool. Tell stories. Have seconds.
Serves 4 to 5
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, plus more for rubbing dish
- 12 ounces (3/4 pound) Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled, cut into medium dice (about 2 ½ cups)
- Kosher salt
- 3/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs
- 1/2 cup finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 ½ teaspoons finely chopped fresh thyme leaves
- 1 cup diced yellow onion
- 2 teaspoons minced fresh garlic
- 2 cups fresh corn kernels (from 3 to 4 ears)
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 1/3 cup low-sodium chicken broth or water
- ½ teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
- Freshly ground pepper
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Rub a 5- or 6-cup shallow gratin dish (or a 9 ½-inch-diameter pie plate) with a little butter.
2. Put the potatoes and 2 teaspoons salt in a large saucepan and cover them generously with water. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook until just shy of completely tender, about 8 to 10 minutes. Drain well.
3. In a small bowl, combine the breadcrumbs, 2 tablespoons of the Parmesan, 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, ½ teaspoon of the thyme, and a pinch of salt. Mix well.
4. In a medium nonstick skillet, heat 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon of the olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the onions and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring, until softened and just starting to turn golden, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and stir well to incorporate it. Add the corn kernels, ¼ teaspoon salt, and a few grinds of fresh pepper. Cook, stirring, until the corn has lost its raw look, is glistening, and is slightly shrunken, 2 to 3 minutes. Take the pan off the heat and let the mixture cool for a couple of minutes.
5. Combine the heavy cream and the chicken broth or water in a liquid measure. Add the lemon zest, the remaining thyme, ½ teaspoon kosher salt, and a few grinds of pepper. Stir to mix well.
6. Combine the potatoes and the corn mixture and transfer to gratin dish, arranging as evenly as possible. Sprinkle the remaining Parmesan over the vegetables, and pour the cream mixture over everything, distributing the herbs and lemon as well as possible. (You can stir them gently in the pan to distribute better.) Be sure to scrape out any seasonings left in the liquid measure. Sprinkle the breadcrumb mixture evenly over all.
7. Bake until the crumb topping is deep golden and the juices should have bubbled below the surface of the vegetables, leaving browned bits in a line around the edge of the pan, 35 to 45 minutes.
This looks delicious, but can I make it without cream? Is there a substitute?
Hi Carol,
The cream definitely adds body and carries the other flavors in the dish (fat does that!) so you would miss it if you cut it out altogether. But as long as you have an equal amount of another liquid, the dish would work. So there is already 1/3 cup chicken broth; you could substitute another 1/2 cup — low sodium — chicken broth for the 1/2 cup cream. Or if you can do a little cream, keep some in and just make sure the liquid measurements still add up to be the same. Heavy cream has a unique ability to withstand the heat of baking, so another dairy product wouldn’t work as well as a stand in. There is probably something that I’m not thinking about right now that would work, but simplest would be chicken broth or a combo of broth and water.
Hi! Is this easy to double?
Hi Lauren,
You can definitely double this, though I think I’d use two baking dishes of the same size, instead of one large one. It’s really the surface area you want to keep an eye on–you want to keep the ingredients relatively shallow (not piled up in one deep vessel) so that the liquids cook down and over everything in the right amount of time. But since the potatoes are partially cooked ahead (unlike some gratins where they cook completely in the oven), a little variation won’t be a big deal. You can always add a tad more chicken broth/heavy cream (at the start) if you use one big baking dish.
This is absolutely fantastic. I prepared everything in my cast iron enamel skillet and baked it in the skillet, so the baking time was a bit shorter. When the corn was in season at our farmers market, I froze a whole bunch and I’m glad I did.
The recipe is a little involved, but we were totally amazed by the result.
Marie, smart of you to buy and freeze your corn — then you can make this all fall! Glad you enjoyed it. And thanks for letting us know you did it all in a cast iron skillet — gonna try that!!