recipe: scalloped potatoes

Before we get started, let me just say, if your New Year's resolution was "eat healthy" ... you should skip this recipe. Ain't nothing healthy about it.

So last fall, I made a tasty tasty macaroni and cheese that used a bechamel white sauce. I made the recipe once with cow's milk, and once with soy milk, and there was no discernible difference. Which was an exciting discovery for me because the soy-based bechamel can be a good way to make creamy recipes without any dairy. So for the past several months, I've been trying/inventing recipes with bechamel sauce, but none have turned out well enough to post on the blog.

Until today, my friends.

I was talking to my mom about bechamel one day, and she said she makes it for her scalloped potatoes.

So I turned to whom I presume is the authority on the matter of scalloped potatoes and bechamel: Julia Child. Except her recipes for scalloped potatoes (which she calls gratin dauphinois, how fancy) doesn't use bechamel. She says to just use boiling milk.

But I really wanted to use bechamel, so I made some adaptations to Julia's recipe. (Is that blasphemy -- tweaking a Julia Child recipe?)

The result? OMG, delicious. Mmmm, crispy brown edges.

Scalloped Potatoes

Inspired by Mastering the Art of French Cooking

For bechamel sauce

• 1 cup milk (or soy milk)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 1/2 tablespoons flour

For filling

• 2 pounds potatoes
• 5 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
• 1 teaspoon salt
• pepper to taste

Peel potatoes, and use a mandoline to slice into super thin 1/8-inch slices. Store in a bowl of cold water until ready to use.

For the bechamel sauce, begin heating milk in a saucepan over medium-low heat.

In a separate saucepan, melt butter. Add flour, continue stirring, and cook for 2 minutes while mixture froths. This is called the roux. Remove the roux from the heat.

Turn the heat up on the milk, so it begins to boil around the edges.

Add hot milk to the roux, and whisk vigorously until the mixture is smooth.

Put saucepan over the heat again, continuing to stir with the whip, and boil for 1 minute. Remove the bechamel from the heat.

Grease a 9-by-9 casserole dish with 2-inch sides.

Drain the potatoes, and pat dry on a dish towel.

Layer half of the potatoes in the casserole dish. Spread half of the bechamel. Dot with half of the butter. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper to taste. Repeat with the remaining potatoes, bechamel, butter, salt and pepper.

Bake at 425 degrees on top rack, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Then broil for 2 minutes, turning the dish 90 degrees after 1 minute.

Julia says it serves 6, but it's more like 4 or 5.

recipe: scrambled eggs

I scored some farm eggs at the farmers' market yesterday afternoon, and I decided that was the perfect reason to have breakfast for dinner. These eggs are from Haskins Family Farm in Middletown, Va., which is west of Washington. The lady who sold me the eggs said they were all laid in the past three days. In addition to be quite tasty, they come in various sizes and colors (including blue!) -- how fun is that.

Tony grew up with chickens, and he just informed me that in the late 1990s he earned first place in the Lorain County Fair for chicken showmanship. He said these eggs took him back to the days when he'd start his mornings checking the nesting boxes for eggs.

I learned to make scrambled eggs from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. This quite possibly is the easiest recipe in this cookbook. And these are, hands down, the best scrambled eggs I've ever had. (Sorry, Mom!) Julia figured out the precise amount of liquid you must add to scrambled eggs to make them fluffy.

Scrambled Eggs 

Beat the eggs in a bowl with 1/2 teaspoon water or milk per egg. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Smear the bottom of a nonstick frying pan with butter or margarine, and heat to medium-low. Pour in the eggs, and stir constantly with a rubber spatula until the eggs set.