Pure Carb Love -- Scalloped Potatoes

Happy New Year everyone! My first resolution is to get in the habit of posting regularly. If nothing else, it will help remind me of special meals and times playing in the kitchen. Now, if I could only get used to the photo posting piece (maybe I can manage that for the next post).

As a fitting start to 2008, rather than digging into diets, we're giving in to the fun of food.

A few nights ago, Brian and I were in the throes of wintertime carb cravings. A sack of russet potatoes in the pantry and a fresh block of extra sharp cheddar cheese from the West Side Market sang their siren song.

So, we opened the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook -- which is close to passing Joy of Cooking for our favorite -- and found a delicious-sounding recipe for Scalloped Potatoes. Ah!... the perfect solution for a chilly, wet evening.

The recipe itself wasn't very fancy, and we were short a few ingredients, so the usual modifications began even before we started.

First, I love potato skins, so ignored the skinning and just rinsed and sliced the potatoes about 1/8" thick -- about 2.5 lbs. in all.

Not having a cup of cream in the fridge, and definitely not in the mood to go out to the grocery, I substituted 1 cup of plain yogurt that I placed in a coffee filter & strainer over a bowl to remove some of the liquid and make it more creamy.

Brian was eager to use his cast iron pan instead of the called-for dutch oven. I could see it was going to be a tight fit, but who was I to complain? We've never had a bad result from using cast iron.

I had found several shallots in the pantry that needed to be used, so we ditched the onion and instead chopped 3 shallots and 3 cloves of garlic, and softened them in 2 Tablespoons of butter in the pan. OK, softening was called for, as well as adding the garlic later, but the shallots and garlic ended up going in together, and then we accidentally carmelized them while I was distracted playing with the food processor blades. Never fear, only potatoes were cut! All was happy accident, as it turned out. Then we added a bit of thyme, salt and pepper to the pan.

To that, we added the potatoes, 1 cup Kitchen Basics chicken stock (the only brand we'll buy anymore and much more flavorful than the broth called for in the recipe) and the strained yogurt. Completely forgot the bay leaves -- a travesty when you consider that we're in the spice business and have more of those things than we know what to do with. We covered and cooked for 10 minutes on the stovetop (forgetting to stir at first, so we actually let it cook another 5 minutes after stirring). Rather than transferring into another pan (more dishes!), we simply sprinkled 1 cup of shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese on top and put the pan directly in the oven at 425 for 20 minutes, then another 5 with the broiler on to give it a little more bubble & browning on top.

As you can see, our slight alterations continued to stack up. The key to that is not freaking out if you can't do the recipe exactly as written. Sure, sometimes it's a flop, but most of the time we've found something wonderfully unexpected.

This was a pretty good batch of scalloped potatoes, but you can never have too much cheese, and it definitely needed a little heat, so before we even finished the first plate-full, we decided to try it again, with even more changes!

I've got to tell you. Sometimes there's nothing more satisfying than homemade scalloped potatoes. That night, even Brian went without meat for a few servings of pure carb love.