Sliced Potatoes with Herbs and Cheese

Three weeks engaged and the engagement is still new enough that I look at the ring and feel something that I expect will settle with time but has not yet. Tyler and I have started talking about the wedding in the preliminary way you talk about large things before you have any specific plans: what kind of thing it will be, roughly when, roughly how many people. We want it to be ours, which means small enough to be real, large enough to include the people who are necessary. That list is longer than I would have expected six years ago. That is a good problem.

I have been cooking through my sadness this week as well. James has been under the weather, just a cold, but he is seventy-eight and I notice these things more than I used to. I made him a batch of the chicken and rice soup that I have been making since I was seventeen, the whole-bird method, and brought it to their house on Thursday when I was supposed to be at work because I had a personal day coming and I used it for soup delivery. James said thank you in the way he says thank you, once, looking at the container. Gloria said: you took off work for this. I said: it is a personal day. She said: that is a person using her personal day correctly.

He was better by Sunday. I made roast chicken and sat with them for the evening and James ate two pieces and said: I like this chicken. I said: I know. He smiled a little. That is its own kind of medicine.

The roast chicken was already doing the heavy lifting that Sunday — I knew it would — but I wanted something alongside it that felt equally unhurried, equally warm. These sliced potatoes with herbs and cheese are what I reached for: layered, simple, the kind of thing that fills the kitchen with a smell that says you are welcome here before anyone sits down. When James said he liked the chicken, I think he meant all of it. I think he meant the whole table.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 50 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed and very thinly sliced (about 1/8 inch)
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme)
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped (or 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup shredded Gruyère cheese
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
Fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped, for serving

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 400°F (200°C). Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish or a similarly sized gratin dish with olive oil or butter.
Season the potatoes. Place the sliced potatoes in a large bowl. Drizzle with olive oil, then add the garlic, thyme, rosemary, salt, and pepper. Toss well until every slice is evenly coated.
Layer the dish. Arrange roughly half the potato slices in an even, slightly overlapping layer in the prepared dish. Scatter half the Gruyère evenly over the top. Add the remaining potato slices in a second overlapping layer, then scatter the remaining Gruyère and all of the Parmesan across the top.
Dot with butter and cover. Distribute the small pieces of butter across the surface. Cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil.
Bake covered. Bake for 30 minutes, until the potatoes are tender when pierced with the tip of a knife.
Uncover and brown. Remove the foil and continue baking for 18 to 20 minutes, until the cheese is golden and bubbling at the edges and the top layer of potatoes has a little color.
Rest and serve. Let the dish rest for 5 minutes before serving. Scatter fresh parsley over the top and bring it to the table warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Sliced Potatoes with Herbs and Cheese — The Side Dish That Belongs at the Table