Scalloped Potatoes

Last weekend we had a couples Valentines Day dinner, and I cooked a fillet roast with my favorite scalloped potatoes recipe.  Although the fillet roast and scalloped potatoes where fabulous together, scalloped potatoes would be good with anything.  Who doesn’t like potatoes and cheese?  In my normal recipe I usually use 1/2 sweet potatoes and 1/2 Yukon Gold potatoes, but a few people I was cooking for did not like sweet potatoes.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds medium Yukon Gold potatoes (approximately 20 potatoes) or 10 russet potatoes (you can also mix it up and use some sweet potatoes as well)
• 2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 2 cups milk
• 1 stick butter
• 4 to 5 cups Gruyere cheese, grated
• 2 to 3 cups Fontina cheese, grated (or some other favorite cheese)
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• fresh thyme removed from stem (I used almost the entire package)
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 to 3 teaspoons nutmeg
• 1 to 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper (optional)
• 1 to 2 bay leaves

Directions:

1. Fill a large bowl with cold water and salt.
2. Peel one potato at a time and use a mandolin slicer to cut very thin potato slices.  Place them in the bowl of water and repeat until you have peeled and sliced all the potatoes.  If you do not have a mandolin slicer, try to cut as thin as you can using a knife.  Mandolin slicers are easier to find these days, and you can find them fairly inexpensively.
3. Keep potatoes in water until you are ready to put them in a large Pyrex baking dish to put in oven.
4. In a medium sauce pan add butter and garlic and cook at very low heat until melted.  Then add spices, heavy whipping cream and milk.  Keep at low heat and stir occasionally.  You do not want to curdle the milk.
5. Add 1/2 to 3/4 of the Gruyere cheese to the milk mixture.  Stir for a few minutes and remove pan from heat.
6. Pour the water out of the bowl with the potatoes and then start placing the potatoes in a large Pyrex pan.
7. Pour the milk mixture over the potatoes and then add the remainder of the cheese on top.  Note:  Depending on how large your pan is, you might have excess liquid.  Be careful not to overfill the Pyrex dish.
8. Place in over at 400 for approximately 30 minutes covered with foil and then another 20-25 minutes uncovered to brown the top a bit.  You might want to place something underneath the baking dish in case liquid comes overflows.
9. Let stand for at least 10 minutes and serve.

NOTE:  This makes a lot of potatoes, so if you are cooking for just your family and not a party, cut the recipe in half with the exception of the bay leaves and cayenne pepper which is really more to taste anyway.