Pandemic potatoes: Comfort food rules
When my sister and I were growing up, we got to choose what the family ate for our birthday dinner.
A tradition instilled from her own childhood, my mom would cook anything we wanted on our birthday, something that felt very grown up and special at the time. It still does.
I always opted for Carmen's Capers casserole — a Company's Coming standard with ground beef, noodles, canned mushroom soup and tomatoes, topped with grated cheese. My sister always requested honey garlic wings, caesar salad and scalloped potatoes.
It turns out her go-to side dish has gained a renewed popularity in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Scalloped potatoes are everything you want in a side dish: the rare mix of comfort food that also has an impressive presentation. Filling, creamy and cheesy, you could scallop a napkin like my mom used to do scalloped potatoes and I would probably have eaten it with a smile.
And, apparently, so would the rest of Canada. Scalloped potatoes were amongst the top 10 food-related searches across the country in 2020, coming in at number five. And in Newfoundland and Labrador, we searched for it the most.
MEMORIES REKINDLED
At first, this might seem shocking. What about all those sourdough loaves people were making during the lockdown? Nope, your neighbour wasn't making air fryer fries, they were looking for scalloped potatoes recipes.
It's even more surprising when you consider that a major component of the favourite Sunday meal — Jiggs Dinner — is boiled potatoes.
During these trying times (aren't we all tired of living through "unprecedented times"?) it's the comfort foods from our childhoods, like my birthday casserole or my sister's honey garlic wings, that we're turning to. They remind us of times with our loved ones, loud family tables, bustling kitchens filled with cousins, of holidays, of comfort. And let's be honest, scalloped potatoes aren't exactly a weeknight side; they take time (which, when you're stuck inside, you have).
And then I started thinking about ham. The smell of ham baking in the oven on a Sunday afternoon. The sound of the sizzling mustard sauce as the baked ham came out of the oven before a family dinner. And what's always right next to it? Scalloped potatoes.
At least, that's the way it is in Newfoundland and Labrador.
For many Newfoundlanders, ham and scalloped potatoes are a must-have during the holiday season. Some enjoy it on Christmas Eve, others ring in the new year with this dynamic duo dinner. It's also popular at Easter when a ham is a must-have.
PASSION FOR POTATOES
Thinking it wouldn't raise too much chatter, I went to my social media channels for advice on scalloped potatoes. The floodgates opened into my inbox. Little did I know the vigour and passion with which my fellow online foodies would present their own versions of the classic side dish.
Like any homemade standard, there are tons of iterations. Some people emailed me full recipes, others talked me through what they remembered of their mom's famous recipe.
They talked about scalloped potatoes with curry powder,
with mushroom soup, with cream cheese, with sour cream, with onion (or adamantly with no onion).
Others put breadcrumbs on top — one person even told me they used potato chips on top for extra crunch. Some cooks made a roux, some used
heavy cream or a mix of milk and chicken stock, while others sliced up half potatoes and half sweet potatoes for their treasured dish.
One person, who hasn't lived here in Newfoundland for long, told me about his astonishment at how different potatoes au gratin and scalloped potatoes were, which incited my spiral into the neverending font of recipes on the internet.
I'm ashamed to admit, until researching for this article, I had always assumed scalloped potatoes and potatoes au gratin were the same thing. After all, my mother's infamous birthday scalloped potatoes were most definitely smothered in cheese. But in the cheese lies the difference.
Traditionally, there is no cheese in scalloped potatoes at all, just layers of a bechamellike cream sauce and potatoes, while potatoes au gratin (also known as potato dauphinoise) are first cooked in milk then layered and topped with tons of cheese, au gratin.
But classic definitions be damned, put the cheese on your scalloped potatoes. Everything you eat these days could be au gratin, couldn't it?