Scalloped Potatoes With Mushrooms -- The First Frost Dish That Carries You Through

Another week. Another set of sunrises over Lake Superior. Another set of meals cooked for one and eaten at a table set for two. The two-place setting is the thing the kids have stopped commenting on. They used to remark when they came to visit. They used to gently suggest, in the way grown children gently suggest, that perhaps it was time to set just one. Now they set their own additional plates around mine and they let Paul's plate be Paul's plate. The setting is the love. The setting is the staying. Elsa called from Voyageurs. She had a sighting of a wolf — a single gray adult crossing a frozen bay at dawn, fifty yards from her cabin. She had a sighting of a moose two days later. She is happy in the woods. I am glad someone in this family is happy in the woods. I have always loved Lake Superior, but the deeper woods are not for me. Elsa is for the deeper woods. The match is right. Anna sent photos from Minneapolis — the kids in their school uniforms, David's new bookshelf, the dog (their dog, not mine; their dog is named Cooper, and Cooper is a Bernese mountain dog who weighs more than Anna and who is, by all accounts, the most relaxed dog in the upper Midwest). I printed three of the photos and put them on the fridge. The fridge holds the family that is not currently in the kitchen. I cooked Tater tot hotdish this week. The first frost dish. Ground beef, soup, green beans, tots in concentric rings. Damiano Thursday: soup. The crowd was the usual size — about a hundred and twenty plates served between five and seven. Gerald and I worked side by side without talking. The not-talking was the friendship. The work has its own rhythm: ladle, hand, smile, ladle, hand, smile. The rhythm carries us through. I sat in the kitchen at 11 PM with a glass of wine and Paul's photograph. I did not cry. I just sat. The not-crying is its own form of being with him. We did not need to talk all the time when he was alive. We do not need to talk all the time now. The companionable silence has carried over. It is enough. Paul is not here. Mamma is not here. Pappa is not here. Erik is not here. They are all here in the kitchen, in the smell, in the taste, in the wooden spoon and the bread pans and the marble slab. The dead are not where the body went. The dead are in the kitchen. Paul used to say that the difference between a place and a home was that a home was a place where you knew, from any room, what was happening in any other room. I knew, from the kitchen, when he was reading in the living room. I knew, from the bedroom, when he was getting coffee in the kitchen. The Kenwood house is still that kind of home. From the kitchen I know that Sven is asleep on his bed in the dining room (the small specific snore). From the kitchen I know what time the radio in the living room is set to come on. The home is the body of knowledge of itself. I still live inside that body of knowledge, even though Paul is not the one creating most of the data anymore. I keep a small notebook on the kitchen counter — green spiral-bound, from the drugstore. I write in it most days. The notebook holds the things I do not want to forget — Erik's stories about Pappa, Karin's notes about Mormor, Sophie's first words about her babies, the recipes I have changed slightly and want to remember in their changed form. The notebook is a small museum. The museum will go to Anna eventually, and then to Sophie, and then to Sophie's daughter Ingrid, and then onward. It is enough.

The tater tot hotdish got me through Tuesday, but it was Thursday’s quiet — the long stretch after Damiano, after the wine, after setting Paul’s photograph back on the shelf — that made me want something I could build slowly, layer by layer, with my hands doing the remembering. Scalloped potatoes with mushrooms is that dish for me: earthy and deliberate, the kind of thing that fills the kitchen with a smell that gets into the walls. It is not a fast dish, and that is the point. The oven does the long work while you sit.

Scalloped Potatoes With Mushrooms

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 65 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 25 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/8-inch thin
10 oz cremini or button mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups whole milk, warmed
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup shredded Gruyère or sharp cheddar, divided
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
3/4 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Pinch of ground nutmeg

Instructions

Preheat. Heat oven to 375°F. Lightly butter a 9x13-inch baking dish and set aside.
Sauté the mushrooms and onion. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms in a single layer and cook without stirring for 3–4 minutes until golden. Stir in the onion and garlic, season with a pinch of salt, and cook another 3 minutes until softened. Remove from heat.
Make the cream sauce. In a medium saucepan, melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Slowly pour in the warmed milk and cream, whisking to prevent lumps. Cook, stirring, until the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon, about 5–7 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in 1/2 cup of the cheese, thyme, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
Layer the dish. Arrange half the potato slices in an even layer in the prepared baking dish, overlapping slightly. Spoon half the mushroom mixture over the potatoes, then pour half the cream sauce evenly over everything. Repeat with the remaining potatoes, mushroom mixture, and sauce.
Bake covered. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 45 minutes, until potatoes are nearly tender when pierced with a knife.
Finish uncovered. Remove foil, scatter the remaining 1/2 cup of cheese over the top, and bake uncovered for another 20 minutes until the top is golden and bubbling and the potatoes are completely tender.
Rest before serving. Let the dish rest for 10 minutes before serving. This helps the layers settle and makes it easier to portion cleanly.

Nutrition (per serving)

Scalloped Potatoes With Mushrooms -- The First Frost Dish That Carries You Through