Calories, Schmalories. Fat is Insulating: Ham and Potato Pot Pie

This started as a post about scalloped potatoes, which are easy to make and utterly delicious. The problem with side dishes, however tasty and substantial they may be, is that they are side dishes. Hence you have to make something else to go with them. Nuh-uh. Not this week.

Pot pie to the rescue! I absolutely adore pot pies of any kind; in fact, I have an entire cookbook of pot pie recipes, which I have sadly neglected since we went gluten-free. While I admire David's spirit of culinary adventure, there's nothing quite like the actual recipe cooked as actually intended when you're feeling a bit weary from all the substitutions. Now that he's in school again I have a couple of nights each week when I can go back to some old favorites. Translation: We're eating a lot of potatoes and dairy on  Tuesdays and Thursdays. So of course, I had to go back and find the recipe for Ham and Potato Pot Pie.

(On a side note: I was pleasantly surprised to see how many recipes from this book we could make with minimal substitutions. Look for lots more pot pies this winter!)

This recipe has a lot going for it. One, everything in it could conceivably be in your kitchen right now, which means you can skip heading out to the grocery store in this awful cold. Or in my case, you get to use up the last of the Annual Ham, which is a holiday tradition that deserves its own blog post. Two, you don't need to pull out the mandoline slicer (unlike the scalloped potato recipe). Three, it's really good and even Mr. Picky will like it. Four, it looks impressive when your brother stops by for dinner at the last minute ("Why, yes, we eat like this every day!").

From Diane Phillips' ("Cooking shouldn't feel like a root canal") Pot Pies: Comfort Food Under Cover

Ham Pot Pie Topped with Scalloped Potato Gratin 

5 medium red potatoes, sliced 1/4 inch thick (you can use Idaho potatoes if you forgot to put the red kind on your grocery list. Just peel them first.)
salt 
pepper
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1/2 lb of ham (or thereabouts), sliced very thin. (If you're using a spiral-cut ham instead of the deli ham, cut it into julienne strips or chop it into fairly small pieces.)
2 1/2 cups heavy cream (yes, I hear your arteries closing in protest. You can use half and half, or whole milk, or some cream and some whatever-milk-you-have-on-hand. Just don't use all skim milk or this will turn out watery)
3 eggs (really, after all that cream, do you even care?)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 cups grated Swiss (or the mysteriously-named "brick cheese" if your fruit market doesn't carry Swiss for some unfathomable reason. I'd suggest grating the cheese yourself instead of getting the pre-grated, which is often not gluten-free anyway)

Preheat the oven to 400. Butter a 13x9 baking dish and mentally cuss out your husband for leaving your nice gratin dish at a church potluck.

Spread a layer of potatoes on the bottom of the dish. Sprinkle a few onion slices over the potatoes, season with salt and pepper, and add a layer of ham. Repeat. Top with a layer of potatoes.

In a bowl, beat together the cream, eggs, and mustard. Pour over the potatoes and top with grated cheese. This is point in the recipe where the author says you can cover it, stick it in the fridge, and cook it the next day; just be sure to bring it to room temperature before putting it in the oven. I'd probably keep the cream mixture separate and pour it over the potatoes at the last minute just to save on the amount of time it sits on the counter waiting to go in the oven.)

Cover the casserole with aluminum foil (spray the foil with non-stick spray and your top layer of potatoes won't get mangled later) and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for an additional 30 minutes. The potatoes should be very tender and the cheese will be golden brown; you'll want to take a picture of it, it's so pretty. Unfortunately you'll be so hungry you forget, so you'll borrow a picture from Dara Michalski at www.cookingcanuck.com.