Luke's Microwave Corner: Potato Bake

NB: My apologies for the odd formatting on the last couple of blogs. Especially concerning the picture spacing. Blogger has had some technical issues recently and this seems to be one of the side effects. I could go and edit the HTML, but that would require copious amounts of work on my part as the coding is horrible for a start, and I'm also not the best at that sort of work anyway. So please bear with me in the meantime...


Avid readers (are there any?) might remember that I mentioned the possibility of a remote contributor to the blog. And if you don't remember, you can see for yourself by having a look at the 'Coming up' section of this blog.

Remote is probably the wrong word to use right at the moment as I'm still living in Witney, however once I move away it will definitely be a remote contribution!

All that to say that Luke is occasionally going to pop a recipe on here when he gets his act together (and more regularly when he gets better - get well soon pal!). You may have seen Luke in previous blogs. I think he's been on at least two others.

He has a bit of a reputation for only cooking things he can put in the microwave. Which is not good. To pander to this though, we've decided that he should come up with a recipe that can be cooked in the microwave and would still make a decent(ish) meal. So without further ado, please enjoy Luke's Microwave Corner, Episode 1...

***

For your microwaveable potato bake you will need:
- 1kg potatoes
- 4 onions
- 4 slices bacon
- 300g mozzarella cheese
- 1pt milk
- 25g flour
- 25g butter

Start by peeling the potatoes and slicing them very very thinly - the thinner the better. The thinner they are the quicker they'll cook, which is exactly what you want.

Do the same with the onions, and then dice up the slices of bacon. Start to layer this up in a microwaveable dish, starting with the potato, then the onion, then the bacon, and repeat. Finish with a layer of potato on top.

The next step is to make a white sauce. I couldn't think of a way of doing this in the microwave, so unfortunately this part has to break the rules slightly. It's just a standard white sauce recipe - melt the butter and flour together and then whisk in the pint of milk a bit at a time until you get a reasonably thick sauce. Crack in some pepper and salt for flavour.

Once your sauce has thickened up, throw in the cheese and give it a good whisk to ensure that it's all melted and evenly distributed throughout. Take the sauce off the heat and pour it over the top of your layered potatoes.

Into the microwave it goes for about twenty minutes...

Remove carefully...

And serve. To complete the Luke effect, you must pour on lashings of tomato ketchup and more salt.

Not a bad start for the microwave blog - but I'm sure we can do better! Let me know if you have any ideas and I'll pass them on to Luke.

***

Coming up:
- Soufflé tomorrow... probably try pistachio and cheese.
- Still got a few bits and pieces that I can upload. I'll try to find some time to turn them into a coherent blog.