Friday Fail: Root Vegetable Gratin

Our second Friday Fail features some root vegetables that we were desperate to get cleared out of the fridge to make room for a new batch.  It turned out to be about the whitest dish I have ever made, as well as the blandest. 

I remember eating potato gratin as a child, and generally liked it.  Probably because it had massive amounts of cream, butter, and cheese.  And potatoes.  All very good things, in my opinion.  So I thought that mixing the dish up with some additional vegetables would make a nice dish that made good use of our winter CSA veggies. 

I used thinly sliced potatoes, celeriac, rutabaga, parsnips, and leeks for the bulk of the dish.  The recipe (I somehow have misplaced it!) called for quickly boiling the veggies before adding them to the baking dish. 

Meanwhile, garlic got sauteed in butter before heavy cream and some spices were added into the mixture.  After the liquid had come to a simmer, it got poured on the vegetables in the dish with a topping of gruyere cheese, bought specially for this dish, and parmesan. 

After baking for about an hour, the dish was supposed to be done.  I poked the vegetables with a fork and they were tender enough, and the cheese was browned enough, so I pulled it out of the oven. 

Unfortunately, the liquid mixture remained very liquidy and didn't really absorb into the veggies or thicken up like I thought it would.  It generally tasted pretty bland, with the exception of getting a bite with a lot of cheese.  It wasn't inedible, but it wasn't very pleasant to eat either.  I think there needed to be more spice and a way for the sauce to thicken up a bit.  Looking back through all the similar recipes I could find, none of them do anything differently to the sauce than what I did, so I'm not sure what went wrong.  Unfortunately, I had made a pretty large amount of this stuff, and most of it went to waste because we couldn't bring ourselves to eat it again.  If anyone has suggestions or has eaten a truly delicious root vegetable gratin, I am not opposed to trying it again at some point, but until then we will be finding other ways to clear out our fridge.