Help choose a dish for October 'Dish of the Month'

Morning Glory

Morning Glory

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We need to decide on a Dish of the Month for October. Each month we choose a different and accessible dish so that most of us can join in, cook and post the results. So far we have had Frittata, Burgers, Pizza and Tortilla based dishes, Savoury Pies, Indian Food, Pasta Salad & Pancakes/waffles.

Any suggestions are welcome but it needs to be a dish that can be made vegan if required with fairly easily available ingredients and a dish which offers the chance for different interpretations. Past suggestions have included potato salad, macaroni cheese, chilli, bread, risotto and sandwiches.

Please feel free to add suggestions with the above criteria in mind. We will make a decision based on which dishes get most mentions - so please join in and support a suggestion or come up with an idea.
 
Is gratin a wide enough category? I know it can be made vegan, and there is a lot of variety, both sweet and savory.
 
I've just made one of those in pie form :cry:
Ok, what are we calling a gratin?
I realise that I know several forms of gratin, from a potato gratin (pretty straight forward layered potatoes) to a leek and mushroom gratin that had an almost crumble like topping on it (made mostly of breadcrumbs, oil and cheese).
 
We dislike pumpkin. How about a winter/fall squash dish. That allows those that like pumpkin and those that don't to participate.
 
That is fine as long as summer squash (zucchini, yellow and non hard skin squash) can't be used. We can get acorn, butter nut and spaghetti squash year round here.
 
Squash or pumpkin is an ingredient not a dish - the Dish of the Month is a bit more defined as a type of dish to make it distinct from the Recipe Challenge which is about an ingredient.

If we were to decide pumpkin pie it would count me out as well.

A gratin is classically defined as a layered dis baked in the oven - Potato Dauphinoise is a famous example. However it has also come to mean 'au gratin' - a dish with a browned topping - typically breadcrumbs or cheese. So we could include either interpretation.

I suspect that TastyReuben meant the latter type.
 
morning glory said:
I suspect that @TastyReuben meant the latter type.
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Really, I don't know if I had anything too specific in mind, either/both are fine with me.

I bought leeks for a soup I'm making later this week. Leeks come in bundles of two, and I need just the one for the soup (1/2 recipe), so I frequently make a potato-and-leek gratin (1/2 recipe) with the other one, so when I read this topic, I had gratin on my mind, and I know that "gratin" encompasses a lot of different things, so I thought that might be nice.
 
cookieee said:
maybe casserole/gratin?
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Casserole has a different meaning in the UK - it refers to slow cooked dish such as a stew. A dish where the ingredients are slow cooked in liquid in a dish with a lid (either in the oven or stove-top). The typical 'casserole dish' used would be what is called a Dutch oven in the USA.

So we call this a casserole dish:

32764
 
So what can we do? Start having separate games? That doesn't sound right. How about we don't call it casserole, but anything that you bake in an open container in the oven? The open container oven-bake game. lol
Oh dear, that would leave us wide open for too many things. Like apple pie, etc. Could stipulate main course. What a long title. The Open Container Main Course Oven-Bake challenge. Wow, digging myself into a deeper hole here folks. lol
 
cookieee said:
So what can we do? Start having separate games?
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No - course not! We just have to avoid terms which have different meanings. As far as I understand, a casserole in the States is anything baked in a dish in the oven. We simply don't have a generic equivalent, perhaps because its such a broad category. The nearest is probably 'oven baked' dishes - or 'bakes'.
 
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