Sour Cream & Chives Potato Bake

Scalloped Potatoes with Sour Cream and Chives

4 large potatoes or 6-8 small/medium potatoes
3 tablespoons butter
1 clove crushed garlic
1 onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons plain flour
2 cups normal milk
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup grated parmesan
250 gram tub sour cream
1 large handful fresh chives, chopped finely
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

Turn the oven on to 180 degrees celsius.

Wash and peel the potatoes and slice them up thinly (about half centimetre slices). Place them in a pot of water and boil them for about 10 minutes, until they are beginning to get soft.

While the potatoes are boiling, make a white sauce.

Place the butter in a medium sized saucepan and heat it until it is sizzling. Add the garlic and onion and cook for a couple of minutes, until they are translucent and soft. Stir in the flour and cook the resulting paste for a minute or two (the heat should be medium-low). Then slowly add the milk, about 1/4 cup at a time, stirring well after each addition so that the sauce is always smooth. When all the milk has been added the sauce should be slightly thick - you don't want it to get too thick yet so take it off the heat instead of letting it simmer. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, then stir in the parmesan cheese.

Take a large, square oven dish and spoon in enough white sauce to just cover the bottom (no more than a third of your sauce). Layer half of the potato over top of the sauce, then spread half of the sour cream over the potatoes. Sprinkle over half of the chives and then pour over half of the remaining white sauce.

Repeat the layering process. The last of the potatoes, then the sour cream and the chives. Pour over the last of the white sauce, then sprinkle the top with grated cheese.

Bake the potatoes for about 30 minutes at 180 degrees celsius, until a knife inserted into the middle goes through all of the layers of potato easily and the cheese on top is golden and bubbly.

Just to finish, this recipe is based on something my mum used to make. She emailed me these instructions:
"Well that was peeled potato sliced thinly, boiled in water till just starting to get soft and then the water was drained. This is the bad part. You add a knob of butter, and about 2 cups of milk mixed with the powdery stuff in the box. Oops. Sour cream and chives was my fav flavour. To make it yourselve you would add some milk and butter with cheese, salt, pepper and seasoning and a wee bit of cheese and sour cream and chives. I reckon that would work just fine. If it needs thickened a wee bit of cornflour mixed into the milk :) Yum."