If you are familiar with Pommes Dauphinoise then you probably know that some recipes use cheese and some leave it out.  I prefer to use a cheese as you can see in my original version here.

In my original recipe I cooked and served the dauphinoise in an earthware dish for simplicity but for this version I wanted to show you how we make dauphinoise potatoes in a top restaurant.

To do that we need to line the casserole dish completely with baking paper so we can turn it out and cut it into squares or circles for better presentation. You will need to make the dauphinoise a day before so it can cool and set in the fridge.

Ingredients (makes 8 portions)

700g baking potatoes, peeled
250ml double cream
125ml milk
1 sprig of thyme
2  fat cloves garlic
25g butter100g Cambozola cheese (reserve 200 grams) to decorate.

METHOD

1. Line the bottom and sides of your casserole dish with buttered baking paper (parchment paper).
2. Slice the potatoes no thicker than 4mm and soak in cold water to prevent them from discolouring.
3. Combine cream, milk, thyme and remaining butter in a non-stick saucepan and simmer gently.
4. Chop and crush the garlic to a fine paste and add to sauce, stirring occasionally to prevent the cream from boiling over.
5. Cook slowly for about 20 minutes to allow garlic to infuse into the sauce, then remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.
6. Strain sauce into a clean container, making sure to press sauce through the strainer so you lose very little of the volume then season with salt and pepper.
7. Preheat oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5. Make it 180C if your oven is fan-assisted.
8. Begin to lay potato slices in an overlapping fashion in the bottom of the oval dish. Sprinkle over a little pieces of the cheese, then cover with another layer of potato slices. *Use 80 grams of the cheese but don’t put any on the top layer.
9. Repeat this process, making your layers as neat and as even as possible until you used all of your potatoes (you need to leave at least 6mm-8mm to have room for the liquid).
10. Press down potato slices firmly and evenly as you can then carefully ladle the cream sauce over them. Keep back 50ml of the cream sauce to use when you finish the dish.
11. Cover the top with a buttered parchment paper circle and bake on the middle shelf, placing a tray underneath to catch any drips.
12. Cook the potatoes until they are tender (about 50 minutes). Most of the milk and cream should be absorbed into the potatoes. Allow to cool on a trivit for 45 minutes before putting in the fridge.
13. Next day use a palette knife to ease the potatoes from the edge of the casserole dish and then turn out the dauphinoise onto a cutting board that is covered with a sheet of baking paper.
14. Remove all of the baking paper that was used in the casserole dish then use a sharp knife to trim all the sides of the dauphinoise.  Keep all the delicious trim for another use.
15. Cut the dauphinoise into equal sized squares.
16. Place the number portions you wish to heat in a microwave and heat until the centre is hot.
17. Top each portion of dauphinoise with a small piece of the reserved cambozola and transfer to warm oven  (100C ) oven to keep hot.

*Cambozola cheese is a wonderful tasty yet mild cheese made from is a cow’s milk that is creamy like Brie because they add extra cream to the milk, but with a mild blue veins in it. This is in fact made in Germany, in the Allgäu region which is also the home of Neuschwanstein Castle  that was supposed to be the inspiration for Disney’s fairy castle.

Cambozola Dauphinoise©Kevin Ashton 2023