Potatoes in milk
This dish from Elizabeth David’s Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen (London 1974)is a lighter, firmly-textured cousin to both mashed potatoes and potatoes au gratin. It is both quick and easy, and sufficiently unusual to impress your friends. No number of servings is specified; you need only peel and slice as many potatoes as you need.
-large potatoes, peeled and sliced about ½ inch thick
-whole milk just to cover the potatoes
-scant amount of salt
-unsalted butter
-dried thyme
-mace
- Bring the potatoes, milk and salt to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are barely tender: You do not want them to fall apart; you do want coherent slices.
- Preheat the oven to 350°.
- Lightly grease a shallow oven dish big enough to hold the potatoes in a single layer with butter and arrange the potato slices in it.
- Add a scant 4 Tablespoons of the cooking milk to the dish for each pound of potatoes and sprinkle the slices with dried thyme, the barest hint of mace and a little good salt.
- Roast the potatoes for about 20 minutes, or until the potatoes show patches of light crust along their edges.
Notes: David offers good advice in arresting prose about cooking these potatoes at step 1: “simmer (if you let them gallop, the milk will boil over and the potatoes will stick, so look out).” (Spices, Salt 131)
- She also notes that the unused cooking milk ought to be saved; it makes a stock for soup.
- Along with many of David’s recipes, however, this one suffers from inattention to detail; she neither greases the oven dish (starchy potatoes want to stick) nor seasons the potatoes before roasting them. She also specifies nutmeg rather than mace, which tastes fine as well--but is not so authentically English.