I had pork steak and chicken breats soaking in a homemade brine. The attack plan for dinner was simple: grill the meat. The converstion with myself went something like this. "What else to make?"; "We have a huge bag of potatoes and I love fries."; "We heard about baking the potatoes to make oven-chips"; "Can I make scalloped potatoes without cream?"

End result: baked potato chips and scalloped potatoes. I'm sure you all agree with me that this was a very sound idea. As you'll see in the pictures, I had to slice the potatoes for both dishes, so why not make them both?!

Scalloped Potatoes

The sliced potatoes soaking in cold water. I use my salad spinner so that I pull the basket out and leave the water with the starch. All I have to do next is spin them.

My mother-in-law inspired me to make scalloped potatoes without cream. She uses regular milk, so I figured I would too. I wanted the whole thing to be thick and saucy and not runny, so I made a flour slurry with a few extra seasonings: black pepper & seasoned salt.

Layering time. I buttered the dish to ease extraction and add some taste, but thought that wasn't enough butter goodness. I added a layer of butter with the potatoes.

Unfortunately, we were out of cheddar cheese, so chipotle to the rescue.

Milk flour mixture goes in next

Hey, I'm experimenting here. This is discovery time, so I'm okay with it if it turns out to be a big flop.

Chips

Here are my sliced potatoes

Here is my fancy bottle of olive oil

I hope this part is obvious

In the oven they go. I didn't want to crowd the chips, so I was very conservative in loading the sheet. Notice the scallop potatoes dish under the chips?

Dinner Time

My dinner. The scalloped potatoes where not finished, but the chips were happy to help me. I zapped the green beans in the microwave for 15 seconds to soften them a tiny bit, but leave the hard crunch.

I am very comfortable making my own iced coffee, but Starbucks was easy enough to pour. (I got out the ranch dressing for the beans, but never used it.)

Done!

Scalloped Potatoes Continue

Out of the oven. Nice crusty top. Great smell.

My slurry idea seemed to have worked, because there were thick slow popping bubbles around the inside of the dish.

Nope. It didn't really work. The spuds were swimming in water. The taste was very good, but it lacked the creamy sauce mouth-feel typical of scalloped potatoes. I drained the liqud away.

Summary

Overall, I'm pretty proud of myself for making an entire meal without using a recipe card. It is fun to play with my food and I hope everyone out there will take the adventure of playing with there (opps, sorry, Chica for the typo) their food.