I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Two recipes this week, neither sufficient for an article by itself. The first is a variant on the gratins of which I am so fond. For the second, I return to my roots and prepare something medieval.

We get a weekly bag of fresh, organic veg from a local farm, and we love it. This being the north of England, we get a reasonably large amount of root vegetables. Potatoes are an important crop, and we get them every week. For a while now, we've also been getting lots of carrots, some parsnips, and, now and again, beets. Sometimes I'll lacto-ferment the carrots and beets, but I often finding myself inventing new ways to prepare them - or variations on old ways. This gratinoid is the latter.

As for the other ...

We had a medieval gathering a few weeks ago, and I'm always looking for good, portable foods to bring. I had dipped back into Le Ménagier de Paris and found a recipe for what Greco and Rose translate as waffles - with cheese in!

343. Waffles are made in 4 ways:
First, beat eggs in a bowl, then add salt and wine, toss in some flour, and mix them together, then spread the batter a little at a time into two irons, each time as much batter as the size of slice of cheese. Press it between the two irons, and cook one side; then turn and cook the other.
...
The third manner is for poured waffles, called "poured" simply because the batter is thinner, like clear broth, made as above. Add finely grated cheese and mix all together.
- The Good Wife's Guide, Greco and Rose, p. 334

• 3 small-to-middling sized potatoes
• 2 carrots
• 1 large parsnip
• 1 onion
• 3 eggs
• 2/3 cup milk
• 200 gm cheese, I used cheddar
• 3 tablespoons of prepared mustard, or more if you like

Place the dish in a moderate oven. My oven is currently misbehaving, so I can't give an accurate temperature, but something in a 175C/350F should be about right - a bit higher might be nice. Let it bake for an hour and a half, until the veg is cooked through. The result is a thick, custardy, mustardy sauce over the mixed vegetables - delicious. I stuck some sprouting broccoli in the oven with the gratonoid for the last half-hour or so to roast.

Cheesy Pancakes

• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup wine
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup grated cheese (or more, if you really like cheese)
• pinch salt

I used red plonk for the wine, since that's what I had to hand, but white wine would probably be better - not so much for flavour as for colour. For cheese, I used my standard cheddar - different cheeses would yield different results, of course.

There's little else to be said here, except that they went over well, and we tried them again at another event a little later, using different cheese and wine, and they were still good.