For the past few months, I've been ripping recipe pages out of Williams Sonoma catalogues (the one part of the catalogues I look forward to looking at). I finally got an excuse to use one of the more recent catalogue recipes when I was asked to make some sort of potato dish for a holiday brunch last month. I chose the Potato-Leek Gratin because it seemed to be less time-consuming than hash browns and other breakfast potato recipes (no overnight soaking of potatoes needed), seemed to bring an interesting twist to the standard breakfast potato side, and because I wanted to make sure that I didn't take up any stovetop space at the brunch location because I knew a lot of people were going to bring bacon, sausage, etc. to make there. I also recently used leeks for the first time in the Butternut Squash and Leek Risotto, and really loved the flavor they brought to the dish.
So, off I went! It only took about 45 minutes to one hour to prepare the dish for the oven. I altered the recipe in the following ways: I used rosemary instead of thyme, excluded nutmeg and chives (didn't have any), and probably used slightly less than the amount of leeks called for the in the recipe (maybe 3.5 pounds of leeks, pre-cutting, which was PLENTY). I also made the dish using a standard large fry pan and a 9 inch by 13 inch baking dish because I wasn't sure if my fry pan was oven safe.
The dish turned out wonderfully — it was incredibly tasty, even without the nutmeg and chives, and was not only perfectly bubbly right out of the oven, but the leftovers were actually pretty good when re-heated later that week as well. It definitely was a much more interesting breakfast/brunch potato option, and I highly recommend it to any for potlucks or hosting events at home. The one flag is that this recipe makes a LOT of servings, especially because heavy cream and potatoes can be filling, so I would assume this serves more like 16 people as a side dish, rather than the 8 – 10 the recipe recommends. Enjoy!
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