Simple or dressed up, I love potatoes.  As the fall harvest ends, I placed a bulk order of root vegetables from a local farm, including a 10 pound bag of gold potatoes and a pound of garlic.   When I read through this week’s recipe for Cook the Book Fridays, I was excited I could enjoy my local vegetables in Scalloped potatoes with blue cheese and roasted garlic by adding only a few more ingredients: cream, sage from my garden (instead of chives), and the wedge of Jasper Hill Farm’s Bayley Hazen Blue in the fridge.

First, a few cloves of garlic are roasted until they are soft and mellow, then mashed into a paste.  The garlic is infused into some cream (which I lightened with some half-and-half).  Layers of thinly sliced potatoes are seasoned, then scattered with chopped sage and chunks of the blue cheese: three layers of potatoes in all.  The fragrant garlic cream covers it all.  The casserole is then baked for an hour until the potatoes are tender.

The potatoes were delicious.  They reminded me of the Pommes Dauphinois we made for French Fridays with Dorie back in 2010.  I served this one night with sous-vide turkey thighs confit that Howard and the next with roasted chicken thighs.  Both were a nice foil to the potatoes.  However, this one was a little rich for a weeknight dinner, probably more appropriate for a meal shared with company.

Read what my Cook the Book Fridays friends thought of the potatoes here.  You can make them yourself.  You can find the recipe here or on page 211 of David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen.

As a side note, I’ve been working my way through the approximately 3 gallons of green cherry tomatoes I harvested before our first frost last week.  I love this recipe I found for Tiny Fried Green Tomatoes.  They are so cute and quite delicious.  Also loved this seasonal cocktail, Autumn Margaritas, with apple cider, fresh squeezed lime, and tequila served in a cinnamon-sugar rimmed glass.