Carrot, Parsnip and Potato Gratin

Rainy week. A week of low gray skies and wet pavement and wipers on intermittent and coffee refilled more often than was medically advisable. I drove two short runs and one long one, came home Thursday night with my hair flat and my back sore and my mood quiet, and Dave had made pot roast. Dave never makes pot roast. Dave makes pot roast when he can tell I need pot roast without being asked. Forty-one years from now, when I am sixty-eight and he is sixty-nine, he will make pot roast on bad days. I am already living in a marriage that is going to hold.

The cookbook is at fifty-six thousand. I wrote the chapter about Gayle this week — about the recipe cards in the shoebox she gave me in July, about the 1978 cigarette burn on the formica table, about growing up with a mother who cooked every night not because she loved cooking but because she loved the people she was feeding, and about how that distinction took me thirty years to understand. The chapter made me cry and then made me laugh and then made me cry again. Sarah read it Friday and called me Friday night. She said, "Brenda. I have never worked on a chapter like this." I said, "Thank you." She said, "I don't know if that's praise or warning." She laughed. I laughed. We were laughing together about my book at nine p.m. on a Friday. My life is not the life I expected. My life is better than the life I expected.

Amber got a response from UNK — early acceptance. She came home Wednesday with the letter in her hand and her face like a kid who has seen a ghost and can't decide whether she believes in ghosts. Social work program. Full admission. In-state tuition. She is going to UNK. We always knew. She still had to see it on paper. I hugged her hard. Dave hugged her harder. Tyler said, "Cool." Justin said, "You'll be gone." Amber said, "I'll be an hour away." Justin said, "I know," and he walked out of the room. Amber looked at me. I said, "Give him a day." She gave him a day. Thursday he came down to breakfast and said, "I'm proud of you." She said, "Thanks." That was the entire conversation. That was enough.

Josie is reading Charlotte's Web for the first time. She came into my room Saturday night crying. I said, "What's wrong?" She said, "Wilbur is going to be sad." I said, "Wilbur is going to be okay." She said, "But he won't understand." I said, "No, baby, he won't. But you will." She slept in my bed that night. Dave moved to the couch. I held my eleven-year-old and thought about Charlotte and about all the people who die in books and all the people who die outside of books, and I thought: the first time you understand death from a book is different from the first time you understand it from life, and Josie got to have the first one first. That is a mercy.

Dave made the pot roast, so this gratin was mine to make the next time — because there is always a next time, and because a meal like that deserves a side dish that does the same quiet work. Carrots and parsnips and potatoes, layered in cream and baked until the edges go gold: it’s not a complicated thing, but it’s a generous one, and that felt exactly right for the kind of week where you need food that asks nothing of you except that you sit down and eat it.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 1 hr | Total Time: 1 hr 20 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 lb Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/8-inch thick
3/4 lb parsnips (about 3 medium), peeled and sliced 1/8-inch thick
3/4 lb carrots (about 4 medium), peeled and sliced 1/8-inch thick
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup whole milk
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves (or 1/2 tsp dried)
1 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup shredded Gruyère cheese, divided
1 tbsp unsalted butter, for greasing the dish

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Heat oven to 375°F. Butter a 9x13-inch or equivalent 2-quart baking dish generously.
Warm the cream. In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, combine the heavy cream, milk, garlic, thyme, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Heat until just steaming, about 3 to 4 minutes. Do not boil. Remove from heat.
Layer the vegetables. Arrange one-third of the potato slices in an overlapping layer on the bottom of the prepared dish. Top with half the parsnip slices, then half the carrot slices. Sprinkle with 1/3 cup of the Gruyère. Repeat with another layer of potatoes, the remaining parsnips and carrots, and another 1/3 cup cheese. Finish with the remaining potato slices on top.
Add the cream. Pour the warm cream mixture evenly over the layered vegetables, pressing down gently so the liquid seeps through the layers.
Cover and bake. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 45 minutes, until the vegetables are tender when pierced with a knife.
Brown the top. Remove the foil, sprinkle the remaining 1/3 cup Gruyère evenly over the top, and bake uncovered for an additional 15 minutes until the cheese is golden and bubbling at the edges.
Rest before serving. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving so the cream thickens and the layers hold together when scooped.

Nutrition (per serving)

Carrot, Parsnip and Potato Gratin — What You Make When Someone Already Made the Pot Roast