BAKING BAD.

This big, beautiful gratin of caramelised tomatoes and potatoes with onions and herbs doesn't need butter, cream or cheese. (Hang on, that's Baking Good, not Bad).

There are pommes dauphinoise, in which sliced potatoes are baked in garlic-infused cream until soft and crusty and golden. Then there are pommes boulangere, in which sliced potatoes are baked in herb-infused stock until soft and crusty and golden.

Then there are pommes dupleixois, shown here, in which sliced potatoes are baked with tomatoes and onions until soft and crusty and golden.

NO CONTEST.

This simple potato and tomato bake has three advantages.

• First, it requires no cream, milk or cheese, and uses olive oil instead of butter.  I’m not claiming it’s healthy, but I am claiming it’s not unhealthy.

• Second, it’s a great way of turning bland winter tomatoes into something more complex and interesting. The slow cooking (first baking under foil to steam the potatoes until tender, then uncovered, for browning) seems to bring out all the sweetness and acidity that we miss from our summer tomatoes and that goes right through the inner, melting heart of potato.

• Third, it’s just beautiful to eat; so much so that I warn you that you might want to double the recipe. Just two of us ate nearly all of this one, made of one kilogram of potatoes and 500 grams of tomatoes, when it was really just a support act for a swordfish steak. Regrets, I have none.

POTATO AND TOMATO BAKE

For 4 as a side dish

• 1 kg red-skinned potatoes, peeled (pontiacs, desirees)

• 500 g medium tomatoes

• 1 red onion, finely sliced

• 2 garlic cloves, finely sliced

• about 3 tbsp olive oil

• sea salt and pepper

• 1 tsp dried oregano

• 200 ml boiling water or stock

• 2 sprigs rosemary

Heat oven to 180C. Lightly oil a big ovenproof gratin dish, at least 5 cm deep.

Slice the potatoes and tomatoes into rounds, about 5mm thick.

Arrange a layer of potatoes in the base of the dish, and scatter with onion, garlic, oregano and sea salt, then a layer of tomatoes and more onion, garlic, oregano, sea salt.

Finish with a layer of potatoes, tomatoes, red onion, oregano and rosemary. Drizzle with olive oil and season well.

Pour boiling water or stock down the side of the dish to reach half way up the veg.

Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour, until the potatoes are tender.

Remove foil, drizzle with a little olive oil, and raise heat to 200C.

Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until the top is gloriously browned and the juices have diminished to just a puddle. Serve hot (reheats like a dream).

TIPS:

• Put on some music while you do the slicing. Stand up straight, shoulders back, weight on your heels, don’t hunch, work on your core (when not dancing).

• Slice the tomatoes cross-wise, not lengthwise (it’s prettier).

• Don’t rinse the sliced potatoes or you’ll wash off the starch that helps bind it all.

• Build in anchovy fillets or capers throughout the layers, but don’t strew anchovies on top as I did, or they will incinerate into ash-chovy.

• Chopped bacon would be good scattered on top. Possibly very good.

• Push the heat towards the end to get the top browned and caramelised, and reduce the liquid to just an oily slurry underneath.

• “It’s done when it says it’s done”. (Had to get a Breaking Bad quote in somehow).

• Serve with baked snapper, roast chicken, grilled lamb chops, a couple of snags, or just a nice salad of bitter winter greens.

• Try not to eat it all in one sitting, maybe.

• When you do eat it all in one sitting, enjoy.

Another day, another before and after - I think you can tell which is which.

Special thanks to my right-hand man, Terry Durack, for combing the nearby streets and lane ways for some rosemary. Thank you, also, to the stranger who grew the rosemary. Terry would, of course, have asked your permission had you been home.

I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution. It’s time, folks.