Post Potato

Hello.

I promised you a picture and more details if the potatoes went well, so here it is:

It's like a carb lasagne. What a dream pairing.

Dauphinoise potatoes are the crème de la crème of potato products, and I mean that quite literally. There's about 250ml of heavy cream in this photograph, and another 250ml of milk. There are also four rashers of smoked bacon in there. Dauphinoise potatoes don't normally have bacon, but bacon improves everything, especially potato and cheese dishes. I can't recommend this enough, so here's how you make it.

Start by preheating your oven to 375F (190C). Then peel and verrry thinly slice four large potatoes. All the recipes I've seen for this say "3mm" but if you've got a knife that actually measures that, then I envy you. I normally cut them thin enough that if I hold the potato slice by one end I can gently wobble the other. Any thinner and they'll burn, any thicker and you'll need to leave them in the over for ages and all your cream will evaporate.

While you slice your potatoes, put your cream and milk in a pan and gently heat it through with salt, pepper and some nutmeg. It's very important that you don't let it boil.

Fry some bacon 'til it's crispy and put it to one side. Then cut one or two large cloves of garlic in half and rub them all over the inside of your casserole dish. Line the dish with butter and put a layer of potato slices on the bottom. Then add some bacon and grated cheese, followed by another layer of potato slices. Repeat this until you have four or five layers of potato. Then pour over the warm cream/milk. It should just cover the potatoes. Add some more if you need to.

Put the dish in your preheated oven for 20 minutes. The cream should be bubbling up at the edges by this point. Then remove from the oven, press the potatoes down into the cream with a spatula, grate some more cheese on top if you want (you may as well, there are already about 60,000 calories in the dish) and return to the oven for another 30 minutes. It's done when it's golden and bubbling on top.

Try it. Seriously. And let me know how it goes.