Lockdown cooking: vegetables and cheese

We've been "working on" that potée I made on Sunday, right after the latest confinement was ordered. Both of us had to go to see the dentist — me early Monday morning, and Walt on Tuesday at noontime. On Monday, I just re-heated the meat and vegetables — that was lunch with some broth to drink and some hot sauce to liven up the meal. That's the photo above. It was a good lunch, but just more of the same as on Sunday.

On Tuesday, I had some time on my hands — a couple of hours — while Walt drove down to Luçay-le-Mâle for his noontime consultation with the dentist. I spent a lot of that time dicing up the potée vegetables and meat that were left. I wasn't sure whether they would become soup or something else. Our respective drives down to Luçay were uneventful, by the way. No gendarmes were out checking people's attestations. That's the document we are required to have filled out, signed, and on our person to justify our déplacement.

Yesterday, I decided to turn all the potée leftovers into a gratin, using cream or milk and cheese. I opened the cheese drawer in the refrigerator and noticed that we had a log of local goat cheese that was really dry and hard. We also had some parmesan and a little tub of Italian ricotta. An internet search turned up a recipe for making a cheese sauce using those — at least the with ricotta and parmesan.

I figured the hard goat cheese could be grated and added into the mixture, and it turned out to be very good. What you do is thin the ricotta by mixing it with some cream and/or milk. Then you stir in the finely grated hard cheeses. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, spices, and herbs. Pour it over the diced vegetables and meats. Bake it for 25 to 30 minutes, until it is bubbling in the pan and browned on the top. Delicious.