Wednesday 27 February 2013

Easy Potato Recipe - Cheesy Potato Bake

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When autumn comes, potatoes are wonderful comfort food, and with cheese they make a good wholesome dish that can be served with meat, or beans and green vegetables such as broccoli. There are many different kinds of potato bakes, and the easiest is to boil potatoes, then drain and mash them with a little milk (and butter if you must), salt and freshly ground black pepper and cheese. You can use a blue cheese such as Stilton, or Blue Cheshire, or one of the French blue cheeses such as Roquefort or Saint Agur, or one of the Italian blue cheeses such as Gorgonzola or even creamy blue Dolcelatte. Usually people use Cheddar though and this works very well. Grate the cheese or crumble it and mix with the mashed potato, put this into a greased oven-proof dish, top with more grated cheese and cook in a moderate oven, Gas Mark 5 or 190° C for 20 minutes until the cheese is bubbling and beginning to brown. You can also mix hard-boiled eggs into the potato mixture for added protein.
A slightly more sophisticated cheesy potato bake is Gratin Dauphinois Potatoes. For this you slice the potatoes thinly, you will need about a kilo for 4 people if you use this recipe as a side dish to accompany meat or poultry.
Ingredients
1 kilo potatoes thinly sliced
3-4 cloves of garlic very finely chopped
150 ml milk
300 ml double (thick) cream
300 gr cheddar or other cheese of your choice, grated
a few sprigs of rosemary with the layer of potatoes
salt and pepper to taste
Method
Grease a fairly deep oven-proof dish, and put a layer of potatoes on the bottom, then add a layer of cheese, and put freshly ground pepper (and salt if you wish) and a sprinkling of garlic over each layer.
Make sure you have a layer of potatoes at the top and sprinkle with the last layer of cheese.
Mix the milk and cream and pour it over the potatoes evenly. It should come to about ¾ of the way up the sides of the dish.
Bake in a preheated oven Gas Mark 4 or 180° C for about an hour. When you can pierce the potatoes and they are tender, and the cheese is starting to brown, the dish is ready.
Both these dishes make a heart-warming meal - just the thing for a cold autumn devening.
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