Cooking with basic ingredients

Last night I cooked two dishes: baked chicken with Spanish smoked paprika (I brought it with me from Santa Barbara) and Gratin Dauphinoise, my favorite potato dish. I learned this Alpine dish when I was in Grenoble, France, so it's appropriate to make it here in the Rocky Mountains, I think. Also, it requires no special condiments or spices. It's made of sliced potatoes, a chopped shallot (could be onion or garlic), milk (I discovered long ago that it's good with skim milk though the authentic version uses cream), real gruere cheese, and butter. I heat the milk with a bit of salt and pour it over the vegetables, cheese, and butter, which are layered in the baking dish. After baking it for an hour at 300, I turned it up to 425 and put the chicken in the oven. That's it: very basic.

So far, here are the only condiments I have:

Mayonnaise, olive oil, white wine viengar, Dijon mustard. And you can see my temporary kitchen.