Danielle's Sweet Potato Gratin

This dish is delicious! It comes from a cookbook my mum gave to me for Christmas, Ottelenghi: The Cookbook. Her friend, Sharon Hannah, recommended this book and I trust her recommendations since she is an amazing cook and knows a lot about food (See her website: http://www.gardenwiseonline.ca/shanna). All the recipes in the book are quite simple and not too time consuming.

Ingredients

6 medium sweet potatoes
5 tbsp roughly chopped sage, plus extra garnish (or 1.5 tablespoons dried sage)
6 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp coarse salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
250 ml whipping cream

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C/Gas Mark 6. Was the sweet potatoes (do not peel them) and cut them into discs 5 mm thick. A mondolin is best for this job but you could use a sharp knife.
2. In a bowl, mix together the sweet potatoes, sage, garlic, salt and pepper. Arrange the slices of sweet potato in a deep, medium-sized ovenproof dish by taking tight packs of them and standing them up next to each other. They should fit together quite tightly so you get parallel lines of sweet potato slices (skins showing) along the length or width of the dish. Throw any remaining bits of garlic or sage from the bowl over the potatoes. Cover the dish with foil, place in the oven and roast for 45 minutes. Remove the foil and pour the cream evenly over the potatoes. Roast, uncovered, for a further 25 minutes. The cream should have thickened by now. Stick a sharp knife in different places in the dish to make sure the potatoes are cooked. They should be totally soft.

3. Serve immediately, garnished with sage, or leave to cool down. In any case, bringing the potatoes to the table in the baking dish, after scraping the outside clean, will make a strong impact.