Creamy Au Gratin Potatoes

In the culinary arts, the term au gratin refers to a dish that is baked with a topping of seasoned breadcrumbs and cheese. The au gratin topping should be golden brown, which can be achieved by baking or by placing the dish under a broiler. 

This is one of my favourite ways of cooking as I just love crispy brown cheese at the sides of the dish!

Discovered this wonderful recipe which is not only easy but yummy as my son who does not really favour eating potatoes, ended up eating a lot of this!

Ingredients ( servings of 4)
- 4 russet potatoes (sliced thinly)
- 1/2 onion (sliced thinly in rings)
- butter (3 TB)
- plain flour (3 TB)
- milk (2 cups)
- shredded Cheddar Cheese (1 1/2 cups)
- salt and pepper to taste

Steps
1) Preheat oven to 190-200 degrees celcius
2) Lay 1/2 the sliced potatoes in the casserole dish
3) Then lay the sliced onions over it
4) After that, lay the rest of the potatoes over it. Season with salt and pepper

5) For the sauce, melt butter over medium heat in a saucepan
6) Mix in the flour and use a whisk to mix it

7) Add in the milk slowly and keep stirring. (Pressure point: Do not dump in the milk all at once just in case its too much and end up too watery)
8) Once the mixture has thickened, put in about 1 cup of cheddar cheese. 

9) Finally, pour the whole mixture into the casserole dish together with your potatoes and onions. You can see some whitish cream over my potatoes as I added my leftovers buttermilk. That's what I like about cooking, you can throw anything in just as long as the flavour goes together. Its fun!

10) Then I finally top it with more cheese.

11) Cover the dish with aluminium foil and put in oven for about 1h to 1h 30 mins

12) The final 30 mins, I remove the foil so as to have the golden colour from the cheese.

13) Garnish with spring onions after that!

Enjoy! Great side dish for a family dinner!