Sweet Potato & Ham Dauphinoise

You know that thing when you come up with an original recipe idea, and it’s utterly brilliant, and you’re so so pleased with yourself, and it’s so damn tasty, and you’re really excited about sharing your genius new idea with the world…

…and then you search the internet and realise that the old adage “there’s nothing new under the sun” really is true after all, because loads of people have come up with the same idea before you, and now you feel rather deflated?

Yeah. That.

Our home made yakiniku (indoor barbeque) was fantastic but the sliced sweet potato just didn’t work, so we had around 350 grams of thinly sliced sweet potato to use up. We also had 4 thick slices of ham leftover from the cheese, ham and chilli jam pancakes we made the day before that. The leap to creating a sweet potato and ham dauphinoise seemed ingenious!

Well, it was! The resulting dish was so darn delicious that I’m going to share it with you anyway, even if it’s not as much of an innovation as I thought at the time!

We decided to base the recipe on the easy potato dauphinoise recipe we make regularly, so we added 150 grams of regular potato to the sweet. And as we had some grated cheese left over (from those same pancakes), we sprinkled that over the top before baking, too.

 
Apologies for the photos – I just grabbed a couple of snaps to record it and I want to share it with you right now!

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Sweet Potato & Ham Dauphinoise

Ingredients

• 200 ml double cream
• 200 ml full fat milk
• 2-3 garlic cloves , crushed or finely chopped
• 350 grams sweet potatoes , peeled and sliced fairly thin, about 3mm
• 150-200 grams potatoes , peeled and sliced fairly thin, about 3mm
• 100-150 grams thick sliced ham , cut into small pieces
• salt
• pepper
• handful grated cheese (optional)

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 170 C.
  
• In a large sauce pan place the double cream, milk, garlic, salt and pepper on a gentle heat.
  
• Add the potato and sweet potato slices into the hot cream and milk and simmer for 15 minutes, until they have softened a little.
  
• Use a slatted spoon to transfer some of the (mixed) potatoes into an oven dish, so that the slices are reasonably flat.
  
• Scatter some of the ham pieces across them before adding another layer, and continue till all the potatoes and ham are in the oven dish. You don’t need to worry about being very neat, but it’s best to get an even height to the top layer, so everything bakes evenly.
  
• Pour or spoon the remainder of the thickened cream and milk over the potatoes.
  
• If using, sprinkle the grated cheese over the top.
• Bake for 30-40 minutes.
  
• Check if done by inserting a knife into the dish; the potatoes should feel soft all the way through.
  
• Serve hot.