Potato casserole from the Schüttinsel

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 1,000 g waxy potatoes
• 6 eggs
• 1 stalk(s) leek
• n. B. Salt, coarse from the mill
• 2 tsp, stripped marjoram, shredded
• 1 tsp, leveled caraway seeds, ground
• 1 tsp, levelled pepper, mixed from the mill
• 60 g butter
• 3 tbsp, leveled flour
• 500 ml milk, 3.5%
• 100 g quark, 40%
• 100 g crème fraîche

Instructions

Working time approx. 30 minutes; Total time approx. 30 minutes

Gratin German-Slovak style, as a vegetarian main course or side dish

Take the butter out of the refrigerator in good time so it doesn’t get too hard. Peel and boil the potatoes, then slice them slightly thicker than for fried potatoes. Hard-boil the eggs and slice them. Divide the leeks into three thirds; cut the bottom, white third into thin slices and press the individual rings out with your hand so they fall loosely. Cut the middle third into rings, and these in turn into fine strips. Reserve the top third, with the firmer green parts, for another purpose. Grind the marjoram in a mortar until finely ground. Grease a deep casserole dish with a little butter, then layer the potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and leek rings, starting with the white parts. Season each layer with salt and marjoram, caraway, and pepper. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F); check the temperature with an oven thermometer. Melt the butter in a pan, sauté the tender green parts of the leeks for 3 minutes, sprinkle in the flour, and toast briefly. Deglaze with the milk, add the quark and crème fraîche and heat until hot, stirring but do not boil. Spread the mixture over the baking dish. Make sure that some of the mixture runs down the sides by creating a gap with a spoon. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes. Before the end of the cooking time, check that the dish is not getting too brown. The dish was served on the Schütt as a main course (calorie information for main course). However, in slightly smaller portions it is also very good as a side dish to roasts and grilled dishes. Where does the recipe handed down in my family come from? The Little Danube (Malý Dunaj) is the old main branch and today’s tributary of the river that leaves the Danube in what is now the Slovak Republic near Bratislava (formerly Pressburg) and rejoins it near Komárno. The Danube and the Little Danube form the Great Schüttinsel (Žitný ostrov), one of the largest river islands in Europe at approximately 1,900 km². This old recipe originates from there, from the time when the area was a German-speaking island predominantly inhabited by Germans.