Bacon-y garlic-y potato-y
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Okay. This is my official statement on achieving the perfect potato dish: bacon, garlic and potato are the ménage à trois that is out here changing lives. It’s the modern-day throuple that’s right every time. Unless you’re veggie, that is – in which case, this dish is still a stand-out with just the garlic.
Feel free to serve up alone and just dig right on in, or serve alongside a big, fat juicy steak and some seasonal greens. It’s one of those simple dishes that really wows. I also couldn’t think of a better name than bacon-y garlic-y potato-y so suggestions are welcome.
Find my classic cheese sauce recipe here. You’ll need it to make this recipe!
This recipe is from my book, Poppy Cooks: The Food You Need
Photographs © Louise Hagger, 2021
Ingredients
metric imperial
The cheese sauce
- Find the recipe for the cheese sauce in the bio above.
For the gratin
- 4 large potatoes, peeled, and sliced into 5mm-thick (1⁄4 inch) rounds
- 1 tsp salt, plus extra to season
- 200g smoked bacon lardons
- 3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
- 2 rosemary sprigs, leaves picked and roughly chopped
- 100g cheddar, grated
- black pepper
Method
- Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/400°F/Gas 6.
- Tip the spuds into a large saucepan and just cover with water. Add the salt and place over a high heat. Bring to the boil, then cook for about 7 minutes, until tender.
- Drain the potatoes in a colander, then suspend the colander in the potato pan and cover with a clean tea towel for about 5 minutes, until the potatoes have steamed off and dried out a bit.
- While the spuds are boiling, add the lardons to a cold frying pan and place over a medium heat. Fry for about 6 minutes, until cooked through and golden. Remove the lardons from the pan and set aside on a plate lined with kitchen paper.
- Tip one third of the spuds into a medium ovenproof dish, spreading them out in an even layer. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle over one third each of the garlic, rosemary, lardons and cheese. Top with a good ladleful of cheese sauce (if it’s been chilling in the fridge, you may need to spread it out a bit) and repeat twice more (potato, garlic etc, cheese, sauce), until the dish is full and you’ve finished with a final sprinkling of cheese. Bake for 30 minutes, until golden and a bit crispy on top. Dig in!