Recipe: Yukon Gold Potato Gratin
This is a cheesy potato dish you can make with all local ingredients.
This is a great cold weather and holiday side dish. It’s rich, comforting and celebrates so many great local ingredients, from the recently dug Yukon gold potatoes to the grass-fed heavy cream and the amazing variety of cheeses that are produced in our area. I often fulfill the cheese quota by grating the ends of various cheeses in my cheese drawer — even if there is a little goat cheese or blue cheese in the mix. It makes sure that the gratin is deliciously different every time I make it. Don’t hesitate to make the full recipe even if you’re feeding fewer of you; it holds up very well for several days in the fridge and when you want to reheat it, just add a drizzle of whole milk, cover with foil and pop it back into a 325 degree oven until it’s hot and cheesy and bubbling all over again!
Yukon Gold Potato Gratin
Serves 6-8
1 Tablespoon of pastured butter
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
6 large Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed but not peeled and sliced very thin on a mandoline
2 cups pastured heavy cream
½ cup pastured milk
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
2-3 teaspoons of sea salt (use more if your salt is coarse and less if it’s fine)
½ teaspoon of freshly grated black pepper
1½ cups finely grated semi-aged local cheese in the gruyere style or any semi-aged cheese you fancy
¼ cup finely grated hard cheese like a parmesan
Preheat oven to 325°. Smear the butter over the bottom and sides of your baking dish and rub the inside with the crushed garlic cloves, leaving the somewhat spent garlic in the bottom of the dish.
Stir together the cream, milk, salt, pepper and nutmeg.
Arrange potato slices in an overlapping shingle-like pattern in the prepared dish until you have covered the bottom of the dish. Tuck smaller slices into any gaps to fill. Pour enough of the seasoned cream mixture over potatoes to just coat them — approximately a third of the cream mixture. Sprinkle the first potato layer with a third of the combined cheeses. Repeat the potato layering, cream mixture and cheese layer until all the potatoes are used. Cover the dish tightly with foil. Bake potatoes until tender and creamy, about 60 minutes. Turn oven up to 375 degrees, remove the foil and let the gratin cook for 10 minutes longer until the cheese is nicely golden.
