New potatoes, spinach & Gruyère bake

The title says Gruyère but I couldn't find any in the supermarket. Damn coronavirus!
This recipe works with any strong cheese, mature Cheddar, goat's cheese. Improvise!

Serves: 4 persons.

Ingredients:
  • 600g new potatoes, scrubbed & halved/quartered depending on size
  • 200g baby spinach (1 bag), roughly chopped
  • 2 tbsp cornflour
  • 150ml milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 250ml double cream
  • 100g cheese, grated
  • ½ tsp nutmeg
  • Salt and pepper to taste
Method:
  1. Boil the potatoes in salted water for 10-15min, until tender. Drain and keep to one side.
  2. Blend the cornflour with 4 tbsp milk in a bowl. Break in the eggs and whisk together. Whisk in the rest of the milk and cream. Add the nutmeg and the majority of the cheese and season. Leave a bit of the cheese to put on top of the dish half way through baking.
  3. Lightly grease a baking dish with butter.
  4. Mix the potatoes, spinach and egg mixture in the baking dish.

  5. Bake for 20min in the oven at 200°C.
  6. Remove the dish from the oven, mix the potatoes, spinach and egg mixture in the dish so that all spinach cooks through. 
  7. Spread the remaining of the cheese on top and bake for a further 20min until golden.


End product:


I had a problem with this recipe. It's so simple, how can there be problems? Well, when you improvise too much there are usually problems!
The original recipe called for spinach, not baby spinach, and recommended cooking them in advance, squeezing the water of them and roughly chop. It's not yet the season for full grown spinach so I decided to use what's usually available: baby spinach. I wasn't going to cook (kill) them in advance as 30min in the oven would be more than enough to cook them through. So I decided to use them raw but forgot that they will release water and therefore thinner the egg mixture. In the end it wasn't as bad as it could have been. There was a bit of runny mixture in the bottom of the dish but I think that using 2 tbsp cornflour (as oppose to 1 as the recipe said and I used) will probably sort the problem.

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