52 Recipe challenge - week 52 dauphinois potatoes.

So as my last post mentioned I've kind of failed this 52 recipe challenge... but I did actually try a new recipe last week. Honest!

The recipe I tried to make was Dauphinois potatoes from the Marks and Spencer's cooks bible.

To make this I used:

2 small red Onions
25g Butter according to the recipe but I didn't really measure..
900g/ 2 lb Potatoes
A block of Wensleydale cheese
300ml/ 10 fl oz single cream
Salt and pepper

To start off with I chopped up my onions, before washing and peeling my potatoes.

Then I greased my casserole dish with some butter, pre-heated my oven to 190c/ gas mark 5 and started to try and thinly slice the potatoes without slicing my fingers.

This was probably the hardest part of the recipe! Some of the potato slices almost looked like chips or wedges so I remembered there's that slicy bit on the back of the cheese grater and tried to use that but the potatoes were too big for it!

After I'd managed to chop up enough potatoes to create a layer in my casserole dish I took my knife and got some butter and dotted it on to some of the potatoes.

After doing that I sprinkled some of the onion on top of it this layer, then grated some cheese on it and shook a bit of salt and pepper over this potato layer.

I then poured over some cream and realised that the 150ml/ 5 fl oz of single cream the recipe suggested wouldn't be enough so I decided to use the whole tub.

Once I decided this I carried on chopping up the potatoes, making a potato layer, topping it, pouring cream over it and then making another layer for what felt like forever. Obviously it wasn't but I did make another four or five layers...When I eventually got to the top of the casserole dish I finished off by grating all the remaining cheese on to the top layer and poured the last of the cream on top of that before putting it in to the oven.

After about an hour and three quarters I, browned the cheese under the grill and then removed the dish from the oven and served it.  I don't have any pictures of this as I was too hungry...

Once we ate tea I remembered to take a picture of the left overs.

It was tasty and cheesy but there was a lot of it! I also probably over cooked it a little as when I started cooking it I didn't think about what I'd serve with it so I ended up popping to the shop for some peppers to stuff and put with this dish.  It was a good accompaniment to couscous stuffed peppers and to a cheese and spinach bake I had the day after.  I'm not sure if I'll make this again as it felt very time consuming, maybe for a special occasion as my scales aren't thanking me for indulging in this!