Scalloped Potatoes with Cheese from @MysteryMacRae

 

Scalloped potatoes are one of our family favorites. They’re a lovely, warm addition to a winter meal and great for warming up your kitchen as they bake. It’s a versatile dish, too. Leave out the cheese or use a variety other than cheddar. Add bits of ham or bacon. Add leftover broccoli florets. Add bouillon to your milk, use powdered milk instead of fresh, add spicier seasonings. Make the dish your own.

Scalloped Potatoes with Cheese

Serves 6 (or more)

 

Ingredients

5 or 6 baking potatoes or equivalent smaller potatoes (about 7 cups sliced) 

1 1/2 Cheese (we use extra sharp cheddar cheese but use whatever you like)

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, divided

1 1/4 cups milk (whole milk, 2%, or cream if you’re feeling extravagant)

1 cube or 1 teaspoon bouillon (we use vegetable)

1 teaspoon salt (less if using bouillon with high salt content), divided

1/4 teaspoon black pepper (or more to taste), divided

(Sometimes I add dry mustard)

Paprika for sprinkling

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 350.

Grease a 10-inch baking dish.

Peel and slice potatoes thinly. A food processor is a tremendous time saver here.

Arrange 1/3 of potato slices in prepared dish. Sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of the flour, 1/3 of the salt and pepper, and 1/3 of the cheese. Repeat twice more with remaining potato slices, flour, seasoning to taste, and cheese. Sprinkle paprika over top of last layer of cheese.

 

 

Add the bouillon to the milk (and dry mustard if using), and heat to scalding. Pour the milk mixture over the potatoes. 

Bake for 1 1/2 hours, covering dish for first half hour.

Serve.

 

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Twitter  or Instagram.

  

Mom's Easy, Everyday Scalloped Potatoes from Lucy Burdette

LUCY BURDETTE:  I know you can find recipes for fancy, delicious scalloped potatoes that take more time than you can spare for an everyday dinner. (In fact, here is one of my favorites.) But today's potatoes are the potatoes my mother (who loved to eat but not to cook) used to make, often served with a pot roast or meatloaf or some other big hunk of meat:). They taste quite a bit better than plain baked potatoes, but they're pretty darned fast.

INGREDIENTS

3 medium baking potatoes
1 onion, sliced
(sliced peppers are optional)
3-4 oz cheese, grated (I like cheddar)
about 3 tablespoons flour
2-3 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper
3/4 cup milk

Wash the potatoes and slice them on the thin side. Slice the onion and the peppers if using. Grate the cheese. Oil an 8 by 8 inch pan well. 

Layer in the potatoes, onions, cheese, and peppers, sprinkling about a tablespoon of flour over each layer, and dotting with butter. Add salt and pepper to taste, and sprinkle the last bit of cheese over the top. Pour in the milk. Cover the pan with foil and bake at 350 for an hour to hour and a quarter, until milk is bubbling and potatoes are soft. If you remember (I didn't), remove the foil halfway through so the cheese can brown on the top. 

Serve with your favorite easy meat and a green vegetable.

 






Lucy Burdette is the author of the Key West food critic mysteries. MURDER WITH GANACHE will be out in February, but you can pre-order it now.

Follow Lucy on Facebook, or Twitter, or Pinterest! She loves it when you pin her stuff:)

Lucy Burdette’s Supper Club Scalloped Potatoes

My mother used to make scalloped potatoes when I was growing up and we adored them. I don't think there was a formal recipe, but she would layer sliced raw potatoes, sliced onions and green peppers, and shredded cheddar. Then she’d sprinkle some flour on the vegetables and cut a few pieces of butter up and drop those in before building the next layer. When the pan was filled, she carefully poured in milk until it just reached the top of the potatoes. Then it was popped into the oven, delicious!

A few years back my friend Ann made some scalloped potatoes for Easter—she’s a wonderful cook, like many of my friends (lucky me!) These weren’t low calorie, everyday potatoes, they were a little bit fancy. Something you can serve company with a baked ham or a grilled tenderloin or even a meatloaf. So when our Supper Club met last month and it was my turn to bring a starchy side dish, I tried to replicate those. I tell you people were swooning over them! In fact it makes me hungry just to look at the picture I took!

Ingredients

¼ c. butter

3-4 large leeks, cleaned and chopped, white and light green parts only

2 cups whipping cream

3 minced garlic cloves

4 lbs russet potatoes, peeled and sliced

2 cups grated white cheddar

1/3 c. grated Parmesan

First of all, make sure the leeks are well washed. Nothing ruins a dish quicker than a gritty mouthful of sand. (To digress a little, we’ve noticed that the leeks we grow in our garden aren’t as sandy as the ones from the market.) Sauté the chopped leeks over low heat in the melted butter, cover and cook until soft (8 or so minutes.)

Oil a 9 by 13 pan well with olive oil. Mix the chopped garlic into the cream. Layer half of the potatoes into the pan, top with half of the leeks, add salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle half of the cheese over this layer, then carefully pour in half of the cream. Repeat these layers and grate the Parmesan over the top. Bake in a preheated oven (375) for about an hour and fifteen minutes. Check about 45 minutes in—if the top is quite brown but the potatoes aren't soft, cover it with foil for the rest of the time. Let stand another fifteen minutes to set up before serving. You'll want to put a cookie sheet under your pan in case they drip.

I know you'll get rave reviews for those potatoes. And I hope you'll also rave about the Key West food critic mysteries:). An Appetite for Murder is in stores right now. Watch out for DEATH IN FOUR COURSES, coming in September. I'd love to have you follow me on Twitter, or like my Facebook page (as silly as that sounds!), or sign up to get occasional email news on my website. 

Herb Scalloped Potatoes

Dear Readers, our latest Iron Chef contest is completed, and we'll be using the special ingredient our winner Molly Ebert suggested in December, but we'll be having another Iron Chef contest in December, with the special ingredient to be announced in January, so continue to sign up and drop us suggestions! Someone will be a lucky winner close to the holidays! And the prize is a Junior's Cheesecake! Remember, one entry per person, per day, and you must be a follower of the blog.

And now for more "Thanksgiving Week Goodies."

Turkey isn't the only thing to eat at Thanksgiving. There are all sorts of side dishes. Stuffing, veggies, sweet potatoes.

But let's not forget the real POTATO. Add CHEESE. And WOW! Scalloped Potatoes, done right, can be the one item on the Thanksgiving buffet that trump all others. There's texture, taste, and satisfaction all in one casserole.

So what if you add a boursin cheese? That's a creamy concoction mixed with herbs and spices, delicious on a cracker, but absolutely fabulous in scalloped potatoes. Top with plenty of Grana cheese (which, if you remember, is parmessan cheese in the USA). And YUM!

So this Thanksgiving, don't just think mashed potatoes and gravy. Think layered potatoes and cheese! Here's my version of Herbed Scalloped Potatoes.

HERB SCALLOPED POTATOES


Ingredients:

3 russet potatoes, peeled
1 pinch salt
1 pinch ground black pepper
4 oz. Boursin cheese with garlic and fine herbs
4 whole eggs
1/4 cup milk
1 pinch paprika
1 whole yellow onion, finely chopped
4 oz. Grana (hard parmessan) cheese

Directions:

Thinly slice the potatoes and cook them for 2 minutes in boiling water. Drain and cool by rinsing.

Line 8” square pan with foil. Grease the foil.

Mix Boursin cheese, eggs, milk and spices to make a “sauce.” [I used a blender to whip the cheese into the mix.]

Layer the square pan, alternating with potato, Boursin sauce, onions, parmesan. 2-3 layers. Finish with grated cheese.

Cover the pan with foil and place in oven.

Bake a 350 degrees for one hour. REMOVE FOIL. Bake one half hour longer.

Enjoy!

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