Not the baked potato song…

I only had one potato left last night, and much as I love baked potatoes, there are two of us, so I thought I should avoid a potentially nasty potato-related incident. I can just picture the divorce papers now – fighting over custody of the potato…

Anyway, we had steak last night, which was lovely (and the last steak in the freezer), but I plumped for scalloped potatoes as a side dish to make our brave little pot go further.

Slice up potato and layer, dredging in flour, knobs of butter, salt/pepper as you go. I also add nutmeg for a bit of extra interest. Add milk up to the top of your container, and I usually have to build a little foil moat to try to save the overspill from burning onto my oven tray.

It’s not a pretty dish, especially halfway through when the milk has formed a skin on top, and you have to push the potatoes down to get them covered. I sometimes have to pour off some of the milk at this point, which for some reason always involves a complicated dance of breadboards and pot stands.

Just before the end, and I’m looking around furtively and whispering – I added some shredded cheese to the top, from a bag…. -  and cooked for another ten minutes.  I just love these potatoes – they’re so gooey and unctuous and I could happily eat a plate of these and never mind the steak (although the steak was good)

Yesterday’s dinner prep was also fun because when I went to turn the oven on, there was bread dough in it proving. We have a perfectly good proving box (my other half does love a gadget), but our tomato plants were in the proving box. So potato cooking had to wait until the dough was proved, which by default delayed dinner. The upside was I had time for another G&T, so as they say over here – it was a wash :)