Even if I didn't learn anything else from Julia I would be grateful for the wonderful new "Gratin de Pommes" (Scalloped Potato) recipes she has taught me. I"m not sure that I could say this is my favorite recipe but it is certain.y one of the top ones. This variation, Gratin de Pommes de Terre Crecy (Scalloped Potatoes an Carrots with Cream) combines creamed scalloped potatoes with creamed carrots. Julia knew what she was doing on this one -- they taste great.
The carrots were sliced about 1/8" thick and then braised in butter for about 10 minutes. Being the newly efficient chef I've become (yeah, right), I sliced my potatoes while the carrots were cooking. Once again I had the chance to use the food processor to slice up two and a half pounds of potatoes. In just a couple of minutes I had thinly sliced my potatoes and was ready for the next step. To be honest, the food processor is so much fun to use I'd probably use it for a single potato, but it is a big time saver when doing a larger batch.
To convert the sliced potatoes and carrots into "Gratin de Pommes de Terre Crecy some assembly was required. As with all good French recipes, butter seems to be the first step and a tablespoon of butter was used to butter the bottom and sides of a 9x13 pyrex pan. About half of the potato slices were layed out in the bottom and then the additional layers were added. The layers for this were potatoes, then a layer of carrots, then shredded Swiss cheese. On top of that I added about six pea-sized dots of butter plus a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Of course the butter has to be added -- remember this is French cooking, right? a second layer of potatoes, carrots, salt, pepper, butter dots, and finally cheese. On top of that, 1 1/4 cups of cream was poured evenly over the whole thing.
Adding the cream on top seemed like a really weird thing that was bound to make the dish really soupy but it really worked. Unlike some of the other scalloped potato recipes in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," this one needs to cook at a lower temperature of only 300 degrees for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. The secret to success with this is keeping the cream from boiling so that it is all absorbed into the potatoes. The surprise with these potatoes is that there's no juice to speak of because the cream and butter ends up being soaked into the potatoes.
I had no major mishaps preparing this so I don't have much to tell you other than this is another dish I'll be making again. It was nice to have this dish come together as planned and come out of the oven exactly as expected. Especially so since this was serenely baking away in the oven while only a foot above the cream sauce was creating a smoke screen. This recipe will always bring back some fun memories for me. Perhaps you'd like to come over for dinner and I'll make some for you? If you want another dish served together with these potatoes you may want to bring some smoke goggles along...just in case.
Bon Appetit!
Loved the addition of Carrots.