For the Dauphinoise (and blue cheese sauce):
Two medium potatoes and one handful of sliced mushrooms per person. To soften the spuds you can either par-boil them or follow my cheat's tip and slice them first and then nuke for about 3-4 minutes in a closed casserole dish. They do not require any additional water as they steam in their own moisture.
Grease an ovenable dish and put in one layer of potatoes, followed by a layer of mushrooms, finishing with another of potatoes.
A friend - one of the most inspired chef-restaurateurs I have ever come across - had given me a tub of blue cheese and mushroom sauce, made with dolcelatte; it was getting close to the end of its natural life.
If I'd cooked this from scratch I would have made a basic white sauce - milk and cornflour, probably - and crumbled in some blue cheese; as the sauce I'd been given was quite strong I diluted 3 dessertspoons of it with an equal amount of double cream and poured this over the potatoes and mushrooms, making sure it seeped into the gaps. This was then baked in a hot oven for about 45 minutes.
When I first met Hannah she had a lifelong aversion to fish and carrots - she's still allergic to shellfish - but is now happy to eat salmon (and battered fish from the chippy).
The salmon was wrapped with one rasher of bacon each, secured with a cocktail stick, and baked in a hot oven for about 20 minutes.
Hannah also knew there was some shredded carrot in the vegetable bed but did not insist I pick the bits out before serving hers. I marinated a stir-fry mix from the supermarket in 1 dessertspoon of olive oil, the same of sesame oil; 1 dessertspoon of soy sauce, 1 tsp of ginger puree and 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar. After about half-an-hour I drained the veg and steamed for about 10 minutes (washing my steamer reservoir out afterwards).
