Mary Berry’s Potato Dauphinoise is a wonderful standbye recipe for lots of people. I’ve cooked it many times and it was requested last night for Boxing Day lunch.The book that I have this recipe in is the original Mary Berry’s Aga Book where it’s called Aga Garlic Cream Potatoes and which you’ll have to pay quite a lot for now as it’s no longer in print.
There are plenty of books on Aga cookery but this is my all time favourite, mainly because my first lesson in Aga cookery was with Mary Berry in her home kitchen. However you don’t need an Aga to make this, I made two yesterday one in my Aga and one in a conventional oven and you couldn’t tell the difference.
The recipe for potato dauphinoise (or Aga garlic cream potatoes) specifies the following:
2lbs potatoes
2 large cloves of garlic
1/2 pint double cream
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
I usually make this in a large gratin dish, using about 12 baking sized potatoes, a pint of cream, about 6 cloves of garlic (but of course it’s up to you) salt, pepper and a little butter.
Pour the cream into a jug, crush the garlic and together with salt and pepper mix into the cream.
Butter your gratin dish. Peel the spuds and slice them preferably using a mandolin slicer (and the safety guard) and layer them in the dish so you have quite a thick layer of half the potatoes.
Pour over half the cream, then slice the remaining potatoes and layer them on top, being as decorative as you want about this. Pour over the remaining cream, dot with a little butter if you want to, cover with foil and put in the top of the oven (Aga with grid shelf on second set of runners in the roasting oven) or normal oven on 225. Leave for 30 minutes. Then remove the foil and cook for another 40 minutes. The potato dauphinoise should be just starting to brown and will smell delicious.
Mary Berry’s book tells you to serve immediately or keep warm for 30 minutes. I have to confess that this is such a friendly dish I prepared it in the morning, covered it with foil again, let it cool down and then put it in a warming oven for about an hour before serving.
This is always a great favourite. And if, like me, you have hoards of kids clamouring for eggs and bacon in the morning they’ll finish this one off too, slightly warmed, and you’ll have nothing left.
