Power to the Potato

After I left home I didn't eat potatoes for about 2 or 3 years.

Why, you ask?

We had potatoes almost every night (okay, maybe every OTHER night) for dinners. Home made French fries, silver dollars, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, potato cakes, shredded potatoes, taters, scalloped potatoes...you name it. I still have to think about working potatoes into my current menus because I have somehow banished them from my mind. They turned into one of those food items that just made me sigh.

This week I found myself tackling one of the staples from our home dinners: Scalloped Potatoes. Mum always did them pretty plain old jane style, because "your father likes them that way". I couldn't resist adding a twist to the dish with capers and hard white cheddar to infuse at least a bit flavour into it.

4 russet potatoes, peeled and sliced
1 large onion, sliced and then quartered
2 heaping tbsp flour with S&P for seasoning
2 tbsp butter or margarine
milk (skim OK and then finish off with cream!)

Butter casserole dish with 1 tbsp butter. Put a layer of potatoes, then layer of onions, sprinkle with 1 tbsp of flour mixture. Do another layer of potatoes, then layer of onions, and sprinkle with remaining flour mixture. Top off with one thin layers of potatoes. Dot with butter. Add milk almost to top level, but not quite.

Cover and microwave on high for 15-20 mins. You could also bake at 375 for 45-60 mins. Watch out for bubbling over. It makes a generous amount (serves about 6).


For a twist, I added a wee bit of dried thyme flakes to the flour mixture, a few capers and about ½ a cup of sharp white cheddar cheese in the onion layers. It was fabulous. Great texture, flavourful, and quite easy to make. It probably helped that I had my Rotato Express :-)

It's definitely nice to get to know this dish the second time around. Power to the potato.