Eric's Kitchen in NJ: Potatoes Au Gratin

Recently Jenn and I had our engagement party and my Uncle Doug and his wife Tara got us these wonderful le Creuset dishes that are perfect for this! We had some amazing Aged Dubliner cheese that we wanted to use up so we thought we'd make some potatoes with it and put our new dishes to use. That being said, for some reason I thought I'd need to fill both dishes and ended up making WAY too much. So this recipe probably feeds about 8...

Ingredients:
1+ lbs. Peeled and sliced Russet potatoes
1/2 cup of 2% milk
1/2 cup of half and half
Aged Dubliner cheese
Gruyere cheese (honestly not sure how much)
Cracked black pepper
Paprika
Garlic powder

I had never done this before so I looked up a few recipes online and most of them called for heavy cream but I really didn't want to have heavy cream sitting around and knew I had some half and half left that I usually use for coffee. It probably would have tasted better with the heavy cream but tasted pretty fantastic with the milk and half and half so I didn't feel like I missed out.

I pre-heated the oven for 400 degrees and started layering the potatoes, covering each layer with a generous amount of grated Gruyere and Dubliner cheese. You can kind of get a sense from the picture here. Once I had the layers built up on both I mixed the milk, half and half and some black pepper and garlic powder and poured it over the potatoes before adding the last layer of cheese. I then added a little more black pepper and some paprika at the end before putting it into the oven. I cooked it covered with aluminum foil for 30 minutes and then uncovered it and put it back in for another 30 minutes. They were nicely browned and crispy at the top by the end but some of the potatoes weren't cooked quite enough at the end. We had plenty of leftovers and when reheating those in the toaster oven they have been perfect.