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I'm getting cravings though now. Damn!

Delia Smith's recipe from her Complete Cookery Course is the best I've tried. From memory, it's about a kilo of potatoes, half a pint of milk, half a pint of double cream and a fat crushed clove of garlic or two. A layer of potatoes, bit of garlic and salt and pepper, then repeat until you've run out of potates. Pour on the milk and cream, dot with butter and cook at 150° for an hour and a half.

The recipe was from her website. I put in a little less of the milk/cream combo but it was still too much.

The potatoes I'm unsure as to how cooked they needed to be.

Generally at least 2 hours in my experience.

I cooked this dish on Saturday as I saw it mentioned and thought I hadn't done it in a long time. The problems I've had before is it not being cooked in the centre so I avoided that this time by par-boiling the potatoes and putting them into a hot dish straight from the oven. Put a layer of cheese half way (no gruyere so used cheddar) and it was cooked beautifully after only 50 mins at 160C.

Got the left over portion for lunch today.

Extra Coconut milk and lime. Thats what I used last night after putting too much chili in the Thai style dish I made.

Ah finally someone who can help me!

Which recipe did you follow?
I followed Delia's but it didn't come out as I think should have done. How long did you parboil for? I'm guessing you already sliced the potatoes? How much milk/cream did you use?

I really want to try and do this dish properly. I think it has the potential to be immense.

Wouldn't go in Dauphinois potatoes. Do keep up at the back there!

What? I only read the first two posts then skip to reply

I've just had a look online and the one that comes up here isn't quite the same as the one in her "Complete Cookery Course". If I remember, I'll copy it out on here this evening for you.

Also the potato slices shouldn't be any thicker than about 5mm, I try and aim for 3mm using a mandolin, or there's a slicing attachment for my food processor which does a good job.

[quote="cloaked_wolf"Ah finally someone who can help me!

Which recipe did you follow?
I followed Delia's but it didn't come out as I think should have done. How long did you parboil for? I'm guessing you already sliced the potatoes? How much milk/cream did you use?

I really want to try and do this dish properly. I think it has the potential to be immense.[/quote]

I tend not to follow recipes but may do so if I'm trying something I've never done before, or maybe just to get a jist of what is going on.

What I basically did was this:

Choose a baking dish to suit how many serves to prepare.
Put potatoes into the dish so I know how many to use.
Turn oven on to 160C and put empty dish in.
Put on a pan of water.
Peel and slice potatoes to 5mm, par boil for 5 mins.
While the potatoes are boiling slice up some garlic according to taste and grate some cheese.
Drain the potatoes and add to a large mixing bowl, add garlic and cream, I think I used half a pint of double cream for 4 serves.
Mix the potatoes around until well covered and then tip excess cream back into container.
Take the dish out of the oven and put in half potatoes, cheese, potatoes, cheese.
Finally pour the rest of the cream over the dish and stick it back in the oven until nicely browned.

As you can see I use quite a lot of guesswork. I hate having to weigh things and always having to go back to a recipe book. I only rarely add salt so you could add this when the potatoes are boiling or being mixed with the cream.
What I do probably isn't a traditional dish, but if it tastes good then who cares?

I ended up doing it by hand and the thinnest slices were 3mm and the thickest 5mm. Most were around 2-3mm.


Ah. There were two recipes (one from the BBC Good Food section and one from Delia's website) both advocating a mix of milk and cream (around 50:50 or thereabouts). Any reason why you used just cream?

I didn't follow delia's recipe to the letter in terms of steps but everything was pretty much the same:
- grease baking dish with butter
- peeled and sliced potatoes, washed them, dried with paper towels
- layer of potatoes followed by salt, pepper, garlic and nutmeg
- repeat until finished
- flecks of butter over the top, along with salt/pepper/garlic/nutmeg.
- pour mixture of cream and milk (50:50, 568ml)
- bake at Gas Mar 4. After one hour, it wasn't done (poked a fork lower down). After a further 90 mins, still thought the potatoes were a tad too firm. The potatoes were still swimming in a lot of the cream/milk mixture.

I will try parboiling and using less cream/milk next time.

To be honest I haven't parboiled before and evey thyme it was never cooked properly inside whilst it was starting to look very well done on the top. I think milk would allow the mixture to move more freely and help to cook things in the middle, but if they are already parboiled then that shouldn't be a problem. Having a thicker mixture also means less bubbly mess on the dish, which I've never bothered to grease before, especially at such low temperatures. Also I guess that coating the potatoes with cream before you put it in the dish helps coverage when you don't use milk. As I didn't use milk then also no butter on the top, cheese instead, the most important food group.

Although having a perfect signature dish is great I almost always change something just for variety. This time I added paprika to the top of each cheese layer, only just remembered. Next time I might add herbs or something completely random.

The dish I prepared would have been between 3-4cm, keep it thin and it will cook much better.

I'm can't really work out what you're doing wrong TBH! It's often the case that other people's dauphinoise I've eaten haven't been cooked when not parboiled, but 90mins at 150 has always worked fine for me. I suspect it would dry out quite a lot at a higher temperature, too. Another thing that could make a difference is the type of dish. I use a relatively large and shallow gratin dish that means I don't end up with any more than four layers of potatoes. However, I don't know that a deeper, narrower dish would necessarily cause a problem, it's just a guess.

I really enjoy cooking and aim to get the job done to a decent level of satisfaction. What that means is it will be ready when it's on the table, I hate being rushed, I cook to relax not a timetable.

Damn, I'm hungry.

Luckily I've had some beef simmering in stock for the last 3 hours. Gonna fry some mushrooms with butter and mustard, boil some potatoes, carrots and swede to throw in for the last 10 mins, and serve with sprouts and cabbage. I've never fried mushrooms with mustard before, just thought of it as I was typing, we'll see how it turns out.

Might even make pate tomorrow.