Potatoes Dauphinoise: a rich dish made for sharing

There’s no getting away from the fact that potatoes dauphinoises is a rich dish. It’s a celebration of richness, of creaminess, and of carbs. If you recoil from richness, or are the first person at the table to bring up calorie counts, potatoes dauphinoises is probably not the dish for you – and frankly, any attempts to lighten it, or slim it down are misguided. But if you can resist bronzed slabs of thin, tender, perfectly cooked potato, with a garlic-infused creamy sauce bubbling up around the edges, you’re made of sterner stuff than I am.

Dauphinoises hails from the historical Dauphiné region in South-East France; the region dissolved in 1789 but its potato namesake has lived on. For all its richness, it’s a simple dish – potatoes oven-baked in cream with a little garlic – but one that is host to countless variations: different proportions of milk and cream, homeopathic amounts of garlic or enough to scare away vampires, additions of herbs – thyme, usually – or cheese. Normally, I can’t resist a little lily-gilding, but actually when it comes to dauphinoises, I’d rather keep things simple. I like enough garlic that you can smell it in the air when you pull the dish from the oven, but not so much that it obliterates the mellow flavours of cream and potato. And technically, adding cheese turns it into a slightly different dish – potatoes savoyarde – but rather than being a stickler for authenticity, my objection is that I think it changes the nature of the dish. The thing is, melted, stringy cheese always takes the starring role, no matter how good the other components, and it’s simply not needed here for the potatoes to shine.

There’s always something quite soothing about reducing a pile of potatoes to slices, and then placing them in even layers, which makes potatoes dauphinoises a rather satisfying dish to make.